The Discovery phase is all about learning, research, and establishing strong relationships. Some of your focus during this phase will be rooted in the location of your pilot, some will be exploring the broader frameworks and existing best practices that are consistent across pilots. During this phase, be sure to think beyond conventional research methodologies and include many opportunities to engage with your community to access needed information. Consult with subject matter experts, organizations working deep in-field, and community members who are part of your targeted demographics. All of these community members can help answer key questions you have and inform critical design decisions you need to make in the early phases.
In the early phase of Discovery, it is important to focus predominantly on your team and local partners while laying the foundation for future interactions with the broader community. This is a time to establish your partner coalition through basic income education and trust-building. For the broader community, this is also a time to educate them about basic income and your plans to run a pilot in their community. You can begin trust-building by learning more about them and creating opportunities for them to learn more about each other. Think about these as initial conversations and relationships that will grow over the full lifecycle of the pilot.
Below are different goals for each of the key community groups you will likely engage with during the Discovery phase, and some strategies and resources for you to achieve these goals. As always, please reach out directly to Income Movement to discuss these ideas further. If you would like to access the full list of community engagement activities click here.
Educate coalition members about basic income and connect the pilot contextually to the broader movement.
When your partner organizations understand the context of the pilot as part of a larger movement for basic income, they will not only feel more invested and inspired to work with you, they will also be able to function as a more strategic partner throughout the pilot lifecycle.
Build a culture based on trust, collaboration, and transparency across the coalition of organizations.
Building processes that include the voices and perspectives of all members while having clear communication around timelines, tasks, roles, and responsibilities builds high trust and deeply engaged, flexible coalitions that can weather bumps as your pilot program grows and evolves in the early phases. This is critical work and is deeply nuanced. Income Movement has strategic program management and communication tools to help with these. Reach out to learn more.
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Understand the landscape of knowledge that your partner organizations bring to the table that may be relevant to any part of the pilot process and design.
This will ensure that you are utilizing everything your coalition has to offer and not creating any sense of hierarchy when it comes to designing and running the pilot. People have joined your coalition because they are eager to get involved, make sure you have the knowledge to make that happen.
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Educate folks about basic income and connect the pilot contextually to the broader movement.
This is an important first step to cultivating an active local movement that will support your pilot’s work and encourage people to join the larger movement for basic income. This is something that is integral to the work of running a local or state pilot as you can serve as the catalyst that creates an active local hub for basic income.
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Learn more about the everyday experiences of your target demographic, including biggest pain points / roadblocks, what’s working well, and the complexity or simplicity of engaging in a range of activities and tasks.
Understanding your broader community members on a more personal level will help you craft events that feel more relevant to them and can increase turn-out. This can also create a space where community members feel like they can tackle real issues that are affecting them.
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Lay the foundation for trust, anticipating long-term interaction and relationship-building over the course of the pilot lifecycle.
Doing genuine community-building with your broader community members will be the stepping stone that turns curious people into active advocates for state and national basic income policy. This activation can lead to local, state, and national attention for your pilot and the movement. This is critical work and is deeply nuanced. Income Movement has strategic program management and communication tools to help with these. Reach out to learn more.
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The Discovery phase will establish and solidify the core questions around a pilot program: who it is intending to serve, what research questions it hopes to answer, and how this program can inform and support broader policy, and more. To help answer some of the key questions of the Discovery phase, we have compiled resources, best practices, and tools from across the broader basic income pilot community to help organizations fully consider the implications of early decisions related to funding, distribution, demographics targeting, and more. For a full list of reports and resources that are part of the compilation, click here.
Effectively engaging stakeholders throughout the lifecycle of a pilot is key to the pilot's success. The Discovery phase is an important time to map out who the pilot's primary stakeholders will be and how to utilize their knowledge and expertise for an effective design of the pilot.
Deciding who the pilot will serve is the backbone of the program and will inform almost every aspect of the pilot’s design and implementation. Depending on the amount of funding a pilot is able to secure, the recipient group can be determined on a more universal or targeted basis. Many pilot programs target a specific demographic based on an understanding of who in their community would most benefit from the program.
Pilot programs should aim to improve upon the convoluted, punitive, and often discriminatory social safety net systems that many are forced to navigate to make ends meet. Thus, pilot programs should be designed to empower and center the dignity, autonomy, and lived experiences of recipients — the foundation of human-centered design. Starting your Discovery and Design work from this framework is critical.
Hiring staff members, implementation partners, and determining the appropriate team size for every phase of the pilot life cycle requires a great deal of planning and coordination. As staffing can be an expensive overhead cost, it is important to understand the skills and experience you need and their implications on hiring. Advisory boards or task force / committee models can be helpful in covering smaller one-off efforts unique to specific phases to offset consultancy costs.
In order to disburse cash to recipients, a pilot organization needs to secure funding from public or private sources, or a mixture of both. The decision is strategic, as funding sources entail different obligations to stakeholders that can affect how a pilot is designed, carried out, and perceived by recipients and the general public alike. Getting clear on expectations of funders is important.
The method of cash distribution must reflect the needs and preferences of the recipients to ensure access and give them as much agency as possible. It is therefore crucial that the amount, frequency, conditionality, duration, and disbursement method of the payments are aligned with what would best serve the recipients in the context of their lived experiences.
When determining your target demographic, it is important to understand the landscape of benefits they currently receive and work to minimize negative impacts on these. There are a variety of ways to navigate benefits loss prevention so that recipients experience a net improvement in their financial stability through your program. The broader pilot community has amazing resources and best practices to support this effort.
Pilots can produce valuable research on a variety of topics, from impact to implementation to qualitative research in the form of storytelling and narrative work. During the Discovery phase, it is important to take into account the role that data will play in achieving your goals and the implications on participant engagement, data collection tools, and staffing required to support data collection and evaluation.
When you begin your work in developing a pilot program, it is incredibly important to decide how your program will help push against the negative stereotypes around poverty that are pervasive in our culture. It will be essential to know how to develop effective messaging, collect recipient stories, and how to frame communications around research and results.