This Aspen Institute report examines the growing landscape of benefits screener tools. These resources help people identify what public benefits they may qualify for. The report offers a practical framework for evaluating them across four dimensions: discoverability, usability, accuracy, and actionability. Drawing on interviews with 55 experts across government, civic tech, and nonprofits, it finds that screeners work best not as standalone tools but as part of a broader navigator-assisted strategy, and that self-service screeners alone rarely drive meaningful enrollment increases. It also surfaces a critical infrastructure gap: screeners struggle to integrate with government eligibility systems, making it difficult to measure their actual impact. For NC funders and advocates, it is a highly actionable resource for deciding whether and how to invest in screener technology, and what to look for when evaluating tools already in the field.
