Hello! I'm back to doing #BudgetPlanningForToday!

Today: how do you turn policy ideas into actionable proposals?

A thread! (What else would it be?) /1

So you've had some ideas of your own. Or you've talked to friends or community members and wrote down things you want to see happen.

What next? How do you harden the proposals into something actionable? /2

The basic thing I do is check the ideas against subject matter experts, ideally people who are either very close to people in government, or are in government themselves. /3

NYC, in my experience, is not super-great at advertising all the things it does. Also, there is likely a gap between what the City *thinks* it's doing to meet community needs, and what community needs are. /4

So go to the source: talk to folks in government to see what they're doing. Yes, this probably means calling people, DMing people, emailing people you've never met. Pro tip! Building the ability to cold-contact people is really helpful in advocacy, so build that up. /5

How do you know who to contact? A few steps to that process. First off, think of the subject matter, and try to figure out which agency makes the most sense. This takes some thinking through which city agencies exist, and which ones make the most sense. /6

It could take trial and error. I'm going to give an extended example of how advocates I work with and I went from an idea to a budget victory. /7

A few years ago, some advocates and I wanted to get a trans, gender non-conforming, and non-binary (TGNCNB) health navigator program off the ground. I.e., staff to guide TGNCNB folks through tricky health care issues. /8

This was literally an idea brought up in TGNCNB community forums, written on chart paper. An idea, from the community, and a good one! /9

We thought through relevant City agencies, and arrived with the Health and Hospitals Corporation (H+H), and Dept of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). We talked through our proposals with folks at those agencies. There was interest; the position didn't exist, and needed to. /10

Someone in those agencies suggested just putting a position in H+H: H+H oversees public hospitals, so it would be great to have health care navigators at the point of public health care, overseen by folks running public hospitals' LGBTQ+ affirming health efforts. /11

We also talked to the fabulous @CarlinaRivera and @MarkLevineNYC, who, overseeing Hospitals and DOHMH respectively in Council, could push the idea into reality via the budget process. /12

We learned enough about H+H's infrastructure that we realized navigators could function as a part of H+H's existing LGBTQ+ services. We found cost of a comparable staff position, fringe costs, added them up, multiplied by the number of staff positions we thought made sense. /13

Then we pitched the idea to our Council friends to see if they made sense. We got . @CarlinaRivera and @MarkLevineNYC held a hearing on TGNCNB health needs. Community members spoke to horrors of what they faced in health care, and asked for help from the City. /14

Shortly after that, H+H announced they were hiring for LGBTQ Community Outreach Workers--running essentially the same function as what we had pitched earlier. /15

Then in the FY20 budget process, our Council heroes pitched super hard, and the program, LGBTQ Community Outreach Workers, was given multi-year (aka "baselined") funding. /16

This is all getting a *little* ahead of things, but it illustrates the process of going from an idea--TGNCNB health navigators--checking it with policymakers to see if it was something they'd be into, figuring out the basic costs to make it work, and advocating. /17

So, to the main point at the top, you'll want to take your idea, and run it by folks in City agencies who you think probably cover the area, and also Council Members and their staff who oversee that area. /18

Where do you find relevant agencies and staff? There's a directory! It's called the Green Book. It gives an outline of City agencies, then departments and the top staff of those departments. http://a856-gbol.nyc.gov/GBOLWebsite/GreenBook/City /19

It gives phone numbers (not super useful in COVID times), not email addresses, but you can Google the name of the person, see if you find an email address. /20

Or just figure out the pattern of email addresses at the agency in question, and try it out with peoples' names who you find in the Green Book. E.g., maybe it's first initial full last name. So try that pattern with the url of the agency. [e.g., [email protected]] /21

Ask for a meeting. Say you're a community advocate, have been talking with folks about ideas to improve [name your issue], and would like to talk with them about whether it currently exists, and if not, whether your idea is feasible and how to make it so. /22

You can also talk to people who are experts in City Council. How do you find them? Go to https://council.nyc.gov/budget/fy2021/ ... /23

find the "Financial Analyst" and oversight committee staff listed on the most recent budget report for that agency. Their email addresses are typically [email protected]. Ask for their help figuring out how to make a policy idea make sense. /24

My main questions in these conversation are:
1) Is my proposal already something that exists, and if so, how does it currently work?
2) If my proposal doesn't exist, could it, and how?
3) If my proposal doesn't exist and you think it couldn't work, why? /25

Take notes, follow through. Check with community. Maybe folks in government aren't quite as clued into political possibility as you think, and you disagree with their analysis. All good. Just--do your homework. /26

Power concedes nothing without a demand, and in hardcore policy/budget terms, that means having a proposal so thought-through that it's hard to disagree with. And if your idea is unprecedented, maybe figure out something *kind of like it* that exists, and use that as a model. /27

Also look to other cities. Maybe they've got stuff that's more far reaching. I also really recommend, as I've said before, talking with folks at @nycibo, who are really friendly and can guide you to what exists, how funding works for it, etc. /28

I'm happy to answer any questions about this! This is *A LOT*, but it's a really vital part of the policy process. If you're planning to advocate for something in the FY22 NYC budget, you really want to have it ready to go by January. So do your work to solidify it *now*. /29