As states and communities work to improve the accessibility and quality of supports and services for young children and their families, they find that their greatest challenge is in gaining and maintaining concerted attention and resources for planning, financing, implementing, and sustaining high-quality, coherent systems. This brief addresses strategies that parents and other community members can use to influence the basic legislative processes and when to use alternatives to legislation, and includes examples and lessons learned from state and local efforts. The sections of the brief are: (1) "Supporting Early Childhood Initiatives: Legislative Strategies for Everyday People," describing growing concerns about early childhood and when to use alternatives to legislation; (2)"The ABCs of Legislation: Legislative Strategies to Support Early Childhood Initiatives," reviewing the basic purposes and forms of legislation, including statutes, resolutions, and budgets; (3) "Legislative Strategies in Times of Budget Crisis: Case Studies of Caring Communities and Healthy Start," illustrating how advocates for Missouri's Caring Communities and California's Healthy Start influenced their state legislatures to restore some of the programs' funding; and (4) "The Art of Advocacy (for Everyday People)," offering basic guidelines for educating and working with policymakers at all government levels, including identifying the problems, building coalitions, getting to know key policymakers, becoming a source of information, understanding the process, making ideas heard, and supporting policymakers who support the advocate's issues. The brief concludes with a list of additional resources on financing early care and education initiatives. (KB)