From organizations that provide child care and early childhood education programs for preschoolers to groups that offer after-school and computer literacy programs for teenagers, nonprofits play crucial roles in the lives of children in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Vital Signs, a series of community profiles, compares the nonprofit resources and fiscal health of organizations serving children in the region's 11 jurisdictions. Taken together or individually, the profiles are a tool for the region's policy-makers, philanthropists and child advocates.