The following stages document the forty years that have gone into developing a worldwide planning and decision-making process.

Stage 1: 1960-1964

Stage 1 covers the period 1960-1964, beginning with the Kennedy administration and the President’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime (PCJDYC). It was during this period that the importance of planning came to the forefront. PCJDYC was chaired by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the executive director was David Hackett (later YPI founder). Sixteen communities around the country received ‘planning grants’ from PCJDYC to develop strategies for comprehensive, coordinated attacks on the causes of delinquency. These local planning efforts were the first steps towards integrated decision-making at the community and metropolitan level. In the summer of 1963, an interagency task force was created through the Council of Economic Advisers to develop a poverty plan for the Kennedy Administration. PCJDYC submitted an outline for the poverty plan based on the experience of the 16 planning grants. PCJDYC recommended demonstration projects nationwide to test a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy. These projects would feature metropolitan-wide planning at the local level, involving the public and private sectors. The PCJDYC poverty plan was endorsed by the task force and Robert Kennedy. After President Kennedy’s assassination, however, the subsequent administration chose an entirely different approach and local bottom-up planning became secondary to a federal top-down strategy. This history is described in detail in two chapters of Allen J. Matusow's "The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960's."

Stage 2: 1965-1994

The philosophy of PCJDYC survived through Senator Robert Kennedy, then the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, and finally the Youth Policy Institute (established in 1983). Based on this past experience, YPI developed a modest two-step change in the planning and decision-making process. Step One of this process change is the missing link which makes all the rest possible -- the collection and organization of the best thinking on topic after topic using the “planning tree” research methodology. See diagram below. Step Two of the process change is the facilitation of the planning trees so that they can be used for real-world planning and decision-making. This work came together in 1995-96 in a successful demonstration project in Washington, D.C.

Stage 3: 1995-2004

In 1995-96, YPI established a comprehensive planning and community building process as part of the Ellen Wilson project on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (funded by a $25 million HOPE VI redevelopment grant from HUD). The residents of the Ellen Wilson neighborhood developed their own $3 million social services plan from scratch, with planning trees and facilitation provided by YPI. In the end, the community endorsed a 40-year strategy for using the funds and continuing the planning process in perpetuity. Stage 3 also covers the subsequent years as the Youth Policy Institute went through a learning process of its own, discovering that direct program activities cannot be combined with the process change. On the process change side, YPI headquarters has spent this period collecting and organizing a vast amount of information in the areas of: 1) economy and business; 2) government; and 3) non-business, non-government. On the program side, YPI was involved in education, workforce, and technology projects in low-income communities nationwide. What became clear over time though was that YPI had become engaged in two entirely separate activities: process vs. program. On the one hand YPI was devoted to the process change and the objective information that was necessary for planning and decision-making. On the other hand YPI was involved in the implementation of specific programs. YPI needed to be split into two independent entities.

Stage 4: 2006-future

The goal of Stage 4 is to develop the best way to implement an international process change that will benefit all individuals, organizations, and communities. Just like in 1961, one of the first steps is to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. For instance, all the pieces are now in place for a major demonstration project in the field of transition from education to employment. In this demonstration project, career education will be implemented and evaluated as well as the other solutions in the planning tree. The focus of PolicyOptions.org is to organize the raw information for the education-to-employment planning tree and other topics so that it is immediately accessible via the PolicyOptions.org website and print publications. We seek to build an international non-partisan institutional network to provide this information on an ongoing basis. YPI will evolve into this new entity.

Glossary

• Process Change: The definition of the process change is the collection and organization of the best thinking on topic after topic using the “planning tree” research methodology. This methodology has been painstakingly developed by YPI. The process change empowers individuals, organizations, and communities by providing the distinctly different solutions on all topics of concern.
• Collection: The information collection which is at the heart of the process change focuses on three areas: 1) economy and business; 2) government; and 3) non-business, non-government. Within each of these areas there are then hundreds of topics. YPI has been handling this collection and the development of an information database, but the process is open to universities, for example, so long as the information collected is comprehensive and objective.
• Planning Tree: The framework for presenting the distinctly different solutions for achieving a goal. See attached example. The planning tree is the product of the collection process and also the tool that can then be used for planning, decision-making, and empowerment.
• Distinctly Different Solutions: The distinctly different solutions presented in the planning trees are the different choices for achieving a particular goal or solving a particular problem.