The Response
What’s Getting Created?
Given the significant concerns across the Florida disabilities community regarding:
- the iBudget Redesign
- the annual challenge of adequate budget appropriations
the community is responding via the Action for Disabilities campaign to create:
- awareness, education, and collective action regarding the iBudget
- a statewide infrastructure that protects services and funding from cuts every year.
How?
Stakeholders are coming together to implement the Uniting for Action Campaign Components utilizing a crowdsourcing and crowdfunding business model.
Crowdsourcing / Crowdfunding Approach
We’re utilizing a crowdsourcing approach to collectively achieve our shared interests and outcomes.
This allows all stakeholders to contribute what they are able to in terms of:
- time
- talents
- expertise
- finances
- connections
By organizing all of these individual and organizational contributions through the Campaign Components, we can accomplish much larger-scale objectives than any of the contributors could achieve on their own.
Groundhog Day
Most stakeholders in the disabilities community have been frustrated by what seems like a never-ending battle with the Florida legislature to fight budget cuts and loss of services for the I/DD community.
Members of the community often describe it as fragmented – having many voices, but lacking:
- collective strategy
- unified messaging
- coordinated actions
Consistently Underwhelming
Many in the community feel a lingering sense of despair – a disturbing feeling that the community has never been able to speak with the powerful voice that it should have, given that the community includes:
- more than 34,000 iBudget funding recipients
- more than 21,000 individuals on the waiting list
- hundreds of thousands of impacted family members
- thousands of providers, businesses, and organizations
- tens of thousands of industry professionals
What Do We Need to Do?
It seems like there’s more than enough people and organizations, with a big enough stake, to be a powerful force, so what do we need to do?
We need to organize all of the resources that we have to work with, and bring all of those distributed resources to bear to this issue.
It’s more than just organizing though, there are several different aspects of a successful campaign that all need to be executed on a high level, and in coordination with each other, in order to achieve the high-level results that all the stakeholders know they want, but are unable to achieve without the type of high-level support Action for Disabilities is providing.
Stakeholders
- waiver funding recipients
- recipient families
- individuals on the waiver waitlist
- families of waitlisted individuals
- friends
- advocates
- groups of advocates
- waiver support coordinators
- waiver provider businesses
- waiver provider organizations
- involved agencies
- media outlets
- legislators
- public
Will You Show Up?
Action for Disabilities is providing the way for all stakeholders to leverage their individual and collective power by:
- sharing different strategies
- aligning around a collective strategy
- sharing and recommending information
- commenting on information
- discussing specific issues
- aligning around collective actions
If you’re a stakeholder that wants your voice to be heard, we strongly encourage you to contribute it.
Organizations
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Advocates
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Other Stakeholders
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Uniting for Action Methodology
Recognizing that most stakeholders in the disabilities community have been frustrated by what seems like an every-year battle with the Florida legislature to fight budget cuts and loss of services for the I/DD community, Action for Disabilities is taking a phased approach to creating systemic changes in how stakeholders across the state organize and mobilize in response to community challenges.
Strategy
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Organizing
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Financing
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Management
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Technology
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Media
Our strategic approach:
- stakeholders
- issue experts
- strategy specialists
- campaign development professionals
Taking a Phased Approach
Recognizing that most stakeholders in the disabilities community have been frustrated by what seems like an every-year battle with the Florida legislature to fight budget cuts and loss of services for the I/DD community, Action for Disabilities is taking a phased approach to creating systemic changes in how stakeholders across the state organize and mobilize in response to community challenges.
Phase 1
- Create awareness of this collective effort.
- Provide sufficient details to allow organizations and advocates to choose if they want to participate:
- Describe what we’re creating:
- short-term results
- long-term infrastructure to facilitate year-after-year strengthening of the community, and the ability to have legislative influence
- Describe how we’re going to do it:
- business model
- strategic framework
- Describe opportunities for participation and contribution to creating the collective result.
- Describe what we’re creating:
- Provide the mechanisms for organizations and advocates to join, choose roles, and plug into the collective effort.
Phase 2
- Engage in the strategic planning process.
- Organize into teams and team members, preparing for directives established by the strategy, messaging, outreach teams.
- Establishing infrastructure, including communications and information sharing within and between teams.
Phase 3
- Implement the strategic plan.
- Engage all teams in executing the strategic plan.
- Collect and produce content (e.g. videos, testimonials, etc.).
- Ramp up the public relations campaign with media outlets.
- Coordinate outreach through email blasts, social media channels, etc.
Medicaid Waiver iBudget Redesign
What’s happening?
The Concerns
Many families, organizations, and advocacy groups are very concerned about how this could potentially significantly and detrimentally impact beneficiaries.
The Response
The disabilities community, historically described as fragmented, is uniting in one clear and powerful voice to demand that the community is treated with the dignity, respect, services, and funding it deserves.