The pay-for-data program
When somebody sells what your footage built, you get paid
Research into childhood behavior is starving for one thing: real footage of real behavior at home, not in a clinic. Families in our program decide, grant by grant, who may use their child's video. Two of those grants are commercial, and saying yes to either one pays you $10 for every 15 minutes of usable footage. The other two go to universities and nonprofits. Those institutions do pay the Institute a licence fee, and they still pay you nothing, because their licence forbids them from selling anything built on your child's footage.
Payment is attached to the two commercial grants: commercial use (C2) and the Institute’s own technology (C3). Granting either one puts you in the paid program at $10 per 15 minutes of usable footage. Research (B) and nonprofit tools (C1) are unpaid. Universities and nonprofits do pay us a licence fee for those, but their licence bars them from selling anything built on your child’s footage, so there is no sale to share with you. Commercial research sits in C2, not B, so nobody can buy commercial access at an unpaid rate.
Launching soon We are finalizing the consent, compensation, and privacy framework with legal counsel before opening enrollment. The program will not accept a single video until that framework is published on this site. Curious how sign-up will feel? Try the interactive demo (nothing you type is saved).
Paid $10 per 15 minutes of usable footage
- C2 Commercial useCompanies, who profit from the research or the product
- C3 Our own technologyThe Institute, which sells the result to fund the free programs
Unpaid A contribution you can still choose to make
- B Behavioral researchResearchers, and families like yours over the long run
- C1 Nonprofit toolsNonprofit and academic developers, and the families who use what they build
You can contribute to research alone and earn nothing, contribute to commercial use and be paid, or do both. Nothing is bundled, and refusing the paid grants never affects the free programs.
Our four commitments
Paid when somebody sells
When a company or the Institute profits from your child's footage, whether by selling a product or by running the research behind one, you are paid for it: $10 per 15 usable minutes, priced openly instead of harvested quietly the way most "free" apps do. The research and nonprofit grants pay nothing, and that is on the consent screen where you can see it.
Opt-in, always
Contributing is a choice you make explicitly, with informed consent, for each contribution. The resource library and the courses never depend on it.
Coded before licensed
Identifying details are stripped under a published standard and your family becomes a code rather than a name. Video of a child can't be made anonymous, so the rest is held down by contract: licensees are vetted, barred from identifying anyone, and barred from reselling.
Explained in plain English
We don't hide the mechanics in a 40-page terms of service. The full data lifecycle is documented on our Data Transparency page, written so a tired parent can absorb it at midnight.
What you're agreeing to, piece by piece
There is no single yes here. Reviewing your footage to write the feedback you asked for is part of the service itself. Everything past that point is four separate permissions, listed below in the order you would see them. Two of them pay and two of them do not. The chip on each one tells you which, and the note under it gives the reason, before you answer.
B Behavioral research
Research into child development, autism, ADHD, and behavior.
Who benefits: Researchers, and families like yours over the long run
Unpaid
Unpaid. Universities and nonprofit institutions do pay us a licence fee, and we are not hiding that. What they cannot do is sell a product built on your child’s footage; their licence forbids it, and their output is published research. Because nobody at the end of this chain is selling anything, there is no sale to share with you. If one of those institutions later wants to commercialise, they need a commercial licence instead, and then you are paid.
C1 Nonprofit tools
Universities and nonprofits building tools for children like yours.
Who benefits: Nonprofit and academic developers, and the families who use what they build
Unpaid
Unpaid, on the same terms as the research grant. Nonprofit and academic developers pay us a licence fee and are barred from selling what they build on your child’s footage. If they want to sell it, they need a commercial licence, and then you are paid.
C2 Commercial use
Companies doing research or building products they sell, for this same population.
Who benefits: Companies, who profit from the research or the product
Paid $10 per 15 minutes of usable footage
Paid. A company profits here, whether it sells a product or runs the research to build one, so the family whose child is in the footage is paid too. Research done by a company sits in this grant rather than the research grant, precisely so that nobody can buy commercial access at an unpaid rate.
C3 Our own technology
The Institute training its own behavior-detection software.
Who benefits: The Institute, which sells the result to fund the free programs
Paid $10 per 15 minutes of usable footage
Paid. We sell what we build here, and it is the revenue that keeps the library and the courses free and pays for the reviewers who write observations. Since we profit, you are paid.
Each permission has its own consent sentence, its own list of what the footage may be used for, and its own withdrawal terms. You can grant the two research and nonprofit permissions, earn nothing for it, and still be a participant in good standing. You can refuse all four. Neither choice touches the resource library or the courses, and neither one keeps you out of the program. Video observation is the one service that turns on a grant, the research one, and the terms of that exchange are set out on its own page. The full detail lives on our Data Transparency page, and it is worth reading before you decide.
Where the program is available
The paid program will launch in 43 states. The other 7 have statutes that collide with what this program does, which is pay a family for behavioral video of their child and license that video onward. A few of them bar a private company from profiting at all from biometric identifiers, and a parent's consent cannot cure that. Others bar selling the personal data of a minor even when the parent agrees. We read those laws as a closed door, and we would rather say so here than test how far the wording bends.
- IllinoisBiometric Information Privacy Act (740 ILCS 14), § 15(c)
- TexasCapture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 503.001)
- WashingtonMy Health My Data Act (Ch. 19.373 RCW) and the biometric statute (HB 1493)
- ColoradoColorado Privacy Act as amended by HB 24-1130
- ConnecticutConnecticut Data Privacy Act as amended by SB 1295 (effective July 1, 2026)
- MarylandMaryland Online Data Privacy Act
- OregonOregon Consumer Privacy Act as amended
This applies only to the paid program. Every free resource, every course, and the video video observation are available in all 50 states, including the ones listed above. If a statute changes or counsel reads one differently, the list changes here first.
Why this model exists
Most platforms monetize families invisibly, through ads, tracking, and the sale of attention. We think parents of children with autism, ADHD, and challenging behavior deserve the opposite deal: everything educational is free, the data model is public, and anyone whose child's footage ends up inside something we sell gets paid for it. Licensing behavioral data under the permissions above, and only the ones a family actually grants, is our entire business model. It is written here, on our Data Transparency page, and in our privacy policy, not buried in fine print.
Program questions
How much can I earn?
Payment is attached to the two commercial grants: commercial use (C2) and the Institute’s own technology (C3). Granting either one puts you in the paid program at $10 per 15 minutes of usable footage. Research (B) and nonprofit tools (C1) are unpaid. Universities and nonprofits do pay us a licence fee for those, but their licence bars them from selling anything built on your child’s footage, so there is no sale to share with you. Commercial research sits in C2, not B, so nobody can buy commercial access at an unpaid rate. "Usable" means the video meets basic quality standards and shows relevant everyday behavior. The full criteria will be published in the program terms before launch, so you will know exactly what qualifies.
Does it matter which permissions I grant?
It decides whether you are paid at all, though the rate itself never moves. Granting commercial use (C2) or our own technology (C3) puts you in the paid program at $10 per 15 minutes of usable footage. Granting behavioral research (B) or nonprofit tools (C1) earns nothing. Those institutions do pay us a licence fee, which we are not hiding, and their licence bars them from selling anything built on your child's footage. Since nobody at the end of that chain makes a sale, there is nothing to share with you. If one of them later wants to commercialise, they need the commercial grant instead, and at that point you are paid. You can contribute to research alone and earn nothing, contribute to commercial use and be paid, or do both. Nothing is bundled, and refusing the paid grants never affects the free programs. You will see which grants are paid before you answer them, never after. One limit belongs in this answer rather than in a footnote: if you allow your footage to be used for building software, either ours or a licensee's, the training that has already happened cannot be undone. You can stop future use and we will delete your footage, but a model that has already learned from it cannot be made to unlearn. That part of the grant is permanent, and you should decide with that in front of you.
What happens to the videos?
Contributed video is reviewed before it enters any dataset. We strip the identifying details that can be stripped: names spoken aloud, addresses, school insignia, paperwork left in the frame. Your family is referred to by a code rather than by name, and the key that connects the code to you stays with us. What we cannot do is make video of a child anonymous. A face is identifying, and blurring it would destroy most of what makes the footage worth studying. So the rest is handled by contract: licensees are vetted, barred from attempting to identify anyone, barred from reselling or sublicensing, and required to delete footage on request.
Do I have to contribute data to use the free resources?
No. The resource library and every course are free whether or not you ever contribute a single minute of footage, and that will not change. The pay-for-data program is strictly opt-in, and refusing it costs you nothing there. Video observation is the one service with a condition on it, and the condition is the research permission (B) rather than money: your footage joins the research corpus and a BCBA writes up what they see in it. You are neither charged nor paid for that exchange.
Can I change my mind after contributing?
The consent framework we are finalizing with legal counsel includes withdrawal rights: how to request removal of your contributions, and what happens to data already licensed. The full policy will be published before the program accepts its first video.
Why would companies pay for this data?
Real-world footage of children's behavior at home is what researchers and developers need to build better assessment tools, therapies, and assistive technology, and it barely exists in research datasets, which mostly come from clinics. Families hold the missing piece. When a company buys access to it, or when we build a product on it ourselves, the family whose footage made that possible gets a share. A company that only wants to run research still buys the commercial grant, not the research one, so there is no unpaid door into this footage for a business.