Democratizing
the policymaking
process.
In 2019, we came together with an idea to arm the next presidential administration in January 2020 with 100 implementation-ready policy proposals crowdsourced from the science, technology and innovation community. Not only was our call for ideas met with an overwhelming response, but along the way we honed a vision for policy entrepreneurship: how anyone can convert a merely promising idea into real movement.
Since then, we have helped a growing community of contributors develop promising policy ideas — an amazing number of which have already become policy. Together we have inspired over $2.6 billion in federal investment across key science and technology priorities, eight new cross-cutting federal initiatives, four executive actions, and more.
Have an innovative new idea but don’t know where to start? Here’s what we need from you in order to work with you to make your idea an action-ready policy memo:
- The basic gist of your idea, including research or data that supports your course of action
- What the pressing issue society is facing that your idea would solve
- Why now is the time to solve that issue
- Who the customer is for you idea, and what steps they should take to implement your solution
- What becomes possible if your idea is successfully and fully implemented
Looking for inspiration? Review the 200+ ideas of Day One 2025.
Day One memos are short (2-3 pages and under 1000 words), targeted documents that explain the challenge and opportunity associated with a particular societal issue, and provide a clear plan of action for the federal government to respond. You can read the latest ones here.
You will submit an idea for our open call via a short application. Submissions will include a description of your idea in 350 words or less, and a few sentences on the challenge, opportunity, and plan of action. Authors with the most compelling ideas will get to work with our team of experts to develop their idea into a policy memo, and be connected to relevant idea customers who can help drive implementation.
There is no limit to how many ideas you can submit and work with FAS to develop.
Yes! A memo can have multiple authors. We ask that one member of your team submit on behalf of the group and, if your idea is accepted, we will begin coordinating on memo development with the entire team.
Program teams will be internally reviewing all ideas that come in on a monthly cadence and will accept ideas on a rolling basis. FAS accepts ideas through its Day One open call year-round, so there is no deadline for submissions. We also run topic-focused, time-bound policy sprints throughout the year.
We will ask that you engage in written exchanges with our team of experts to further refine the ideas into policy memos; we expect this might add up to ~10-15 hours over a couple of months.
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The U.S. should create a new non-governmental Innovation Accelerator modeled after the successful In-Q-Tel program to invest in small and mid-cap companies creating technologies that address critical needs of the United States.
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“I feel I have a much clearer vision of how the government operates and how we can make things happen in the nation. The guidance helps not only to push forward new policy but also how I apply for grants at NSF and how I integrate policy discussions in my research papers (which can help me to ensure i have much better impact)”
“The Day One accelerator took me from 0 to 100 in 9 weeks: Literally from zero knowledge about policy-making to feeling very confident about what I need to do to affect it. The knowledge alone is just one part, and the hard work lies ahead, but Day One was superb at conveying the knowledge, and also in showing how within reach policy influence could be.”
“As a graduate student studying public policy, I found that the Day One Project did a brilliant job of concisely distilling and substantiating in 9 weeks some of the most important lessons I’d learned over the course of a year. More importantly, they took these lessons three steps further by adding practical insights on the reality of policy entrepreneurship, by having us test and refine our ideas with our cohort and seasoned policymakers, and by pushing us to publish and implement our proposals.”
“This was a fantastic experience. I teach graduate students about US information and telecommunications policy and the opportunity to share what I’ve been working on with them and to bring in some of the lessons I’ve learned about writing about policy in a concise and persuasive way was awesome. I appreciate the resources that your team has developed and the time you spent to think with me about developing a coherent proposal. I learned a great deal from the guests, too.”