Policy Change and Legislative Affairs
We pass policy after policy. Nothing truly changes.
The bill passed. The press release went out. And the problem it was written to solve is still here, because the policy was never designed to meet the need from the beginning, and there was no true way of analyzing that before the vote. We equip the people who make, inform, and advocate for policy to analyze it before it is ever passed, and to design policy and programs built to deliver, so resources are not wasted, needs are effectively met, and the trust your institution runs on is built, strengthened, and maintained.
YOU MIGHT BE HERE IF
The policies pass. The problems stay.
Policies keep passing, and the problems they were written to solve are still here.
Policy debates run on opinion and politics because there is no shared standard for judging design.
Your team can react to legislation but does not have the tools to analyze it or design an alternative.
If this is familiar, the problem is not effort or intent. It is that policy keeps being passed without a true way of analyzing, before the vote, whether it was designed to work. That is exactly where we come in.
Before the vote, no one can say objectively whether a proposal was actually designed to meet the need.
Rollouts keep disappointing, and the postmortems blame implementation when the design was the problem from day one.
Every policy that passes and underdelivers spends public trust your institution cannot afford to lose.
WHO WE BUILD WITH
Three sectors. Three versions of the same gap.
Policymakers, advocates, and researchers face different pressures, but the underlying gap is the same: everyone is rewarded for passing policy, and almost no one is equipped to analyze whether it was designed to work.
Government policymakers and policy teams
"We pass it, we fund it, and the needle doesn't move."
Policies routinely fail from design flaws that were visible before the vote: a thin understanding of the problem, weak evidence, and implementation never considered at the design stage. And the incentives reward passage, not outcomes. We give your team an objective way to score design before public money and public trust are committed.
Advocacy organizations and nonprofit policy teams
"We win the campaigns. The outcomes don't follow."
Advocacy teams pour years and budgets into passing bills, then watch the wins underdeliver, because most organizations were never equipped to analyze whether the policy they championed was designed to produce the change they fought for. We build that analysis and design capacity in-house, so every campaign is spent on policy built to work.
University policy centers and research teams
"Our research should be shaping policy. Mostly, it isn't."
The distance between published research and adopted policy stays wide, because translating evidence into well-designed, politically viable policy is a skill set most research training never covered. We equip your center and your researchers to move from findings to policy designs that decision makers can evaluate and adopt.
WHAT WE DO HERE
We build people and systems that develop strong policy.
The center of this work is our proprietary scorecards and the skills to use them, so your team can analyze any policy or program confidently and design ones built to deliver. We care about the outcomes and the systems that get you there.
Policy and Program Scorecards
Our proprietary scorecards analyze a policy or program on two dimensions: the design process that produced it and the outcomes it is built to deliver. For the first time, your team can know before the vote whether a proposal was designed to meet the need.
Policy Analysis Capacity
We build your team's skills to analyze policy confidently: your own drafts, other institutions' proposals, and raw legislation as written, against a shared, objective standard instead of opinion.
Policy Design Capacity
We build your team's skills to design policy that is data-driven and responsive to the full scope, complexity, and need of the issue, so what you pass makes the strongest, most transformational impact.
Program Development
The same discipline applies to programs. We equip your team to analyze and design programs whose design process and intended outcomes actually match the need, before launch rather than after disappointment.
Legislative Analysis and Advising
We analyze raw legislation with your team and provide strategic advising to move a policy from idea or need to law, so the path to passage is walked with a design worth passing.
Systems That Sustain Strong Policy
Through the Restorative Design and Leadership Model, we build the internal systems so strong analysis and design are not a one-time event but how your institution develops every policy and program going forward.
HOW WE WORK
Analyze before it passes. Design so it delivers.
Your team builds these skills on live policy work, so the capability is proven on legislation and programs that matter before we step back.
1
Score the design before anyone votes
We apply the scorecards with your team to live proposals, analyzing the design process and the intended outcomes, so weaknesses surface while there is still time to fix them instead of in the postmortem.
2
Build analysis skills on real legislation
Your team learns to analyze policy confidently, including raw legislation, using our trainings and tools on the actual bills and proposals in front of your institution right now.
3
Design the policy or program the need requires
We coach your team through designing data-driven policy and programs responsive to the full scope and complexity of the issue, and we advise strategically as it moves from idea to law or launch.
4
Build the system so strong policy is repeatable
The scorecards, skills, and design practices become your institution's standard way of developing policy and programs. If we are not teaching you how to fish, we are not doing our job fully.
300+
policy and program redesigns influenced
GamblinConsults' policy work has been cited by the NY State AFL-CIO, Children's Health Watch, and the Georgetown Law Review. Clients include Montgomery County MD, City of Alexandria VA, and Prevent Child Abuse America.
2.4 million
people reached
147
U.S. counties touched
QUESTIONS Policy LEADERS ASK US
Straight answers on policy and program change, before you ever book a call
By analyzing the design, not just the intent. Our proprietary scorecards analyze whether a policy or program was actually designed to meet the need: the quality of the design process behind it and the outcomes it is structured to produce. That analysis happens before the vote, when there is still time to strengthen the design, instead of after implementation fails.
The scorecard is our proprietary tool for analyzing a policy or program on two dimensions: the design process that produced it and the outcomes it is built to deliver. It gives policymakers, advocates, and policy teams a shared, objective standard for judging proposals, turning debates about opinion into decisions about evidence. We train your team to use it themselves.
The engagement is built around your people. We build your team's skills to analyze policy confidently, including raw legislation and others' proposals, and to design data-driven policy responsive to the full scope, complexity, and need of the issue. Strategic advising is available to move a policy from idea or need to law, but the core of the work is building people and systems that develop strong policy on their own.
Yes. The same scorecards and design discipline apply to program development: analyzing whether a program's design process and intended outcomes actually match the need, and building your team's capacity to design programs that deliver. We care about both the outcomes and the systems that get you there, through the Restorative Design and Leadership Model.
WHERE THIS CONNECTS
Policy work rarely travels alone.
Research and Development
If the evidence behind your policy needs strengthening, we build your research team's capacity to produce data that holds up.
Organizational Development
If the policy was designed right and still is not being implemented the way it was intended, the culture and systems inside the institution are the next layer to examined.
Explore Organizational
Development
Leadership Development and Transformation
If the people leading your policy agenda are burning out under political pressure and the work depends on them personally surviving it, leadership development is where that changes.
Pass policy that was built to work.
Tell us what keeps passing without changing anything. We will tell you, honestly, whether and how we can help.