Founded by Elaine Abelaye-Mateo In 2012, Everyday Impact Consulting (EIC) enters our second decade in supporting our partners’ powerful, movement-building work across California.
In the past 10 years, we’ve come a long way. When EIC was first launched, Elaine was our sole staff member. Before she founded the firm, Elaine was the Executive Director at Asian Resources, Inc., (ARI) in Sacramento, before having a vision of starting a firm that could approach movement building and engage in systemic change work from a broader perspective.
Ten years later, our firm has grown to a staff of 11, and our budget size has grown 20-fold. In this past year, we onboarded key staff, including a new Director of Human Resources, Policy Consultant, Fund Development Associate and Deputy Director of Strategy and Growth. Our portfolio continues to grow and embrace fund development, policy and advocacy work and cross-sector collaboration . In recent years, EIC has worked closely with philanthropy to encourage a trust-based giving approach that places stewardship back in the hands of communities most impacted by systemic inequities. We have worked on major initiatives such as the 2020 Census campaign, partnered to co-lead health advocacy campaigns, and collaborated with small but mighty BIPOC-led, grassroots organizations to support a range of projects, including building out multi-year strategic plans and successfully executing annual retreats. EIC has also worked closely with major R1 institutions in California, including UC Berkeley and UC Davis, and we continue to support BIPOC-led coalitions, including Sacramento Building Healthy Coalitions and the Central Valley United for Power.
During EIC’s most recent summer staff retreat (August 2022), our team had rich discussions on how we want to approach our work in this second decade. Our firm’s approach is unique and distinct: our work is not prescriptive; we do not gate-keep; we do not profess stronger expertise on community-based issues than our partners. Rather, we act as bridges; we provide tools; we act as honest sounding boards. If we were to achieve our mission, EIC would not exist; our services wouldn’t be needed. This is what we’re striving for: to build a powerful movement that liberates all of our communities.
For EIC, we know that the nonprofit sector is, unfortunately, deeply shaped by scarcity. A universal zeitgeist that haunts the nonprofit sector is: there simply aren’t enough resources to go around. Nonprofits are placed in challenging situations where they need to compete with sister agencies for resources, which ultimately leads to silo-ed work. We see frontline staff and leaders burn out, over and over again.
Well-being must be central to our work; it should not be a luxury. It should be our North Star. Well-being, wellness–truly incorporating these values for everyone within an organization–is revolutionary in a capitalistic society that caters to burnout and 70-hour work weeks. If we aren’t taking care of ourselves, how do we build and grow a healthy, dynamic movement that seeks to liberate our communities, so we can all truly thrive? EIC wants to build a culture where we incorporate care and rest, and do away with a scarcity model that has shaped too much of our movement. In our second decade, EIC will contribute to our movement by centering well-being. Internally, we’ve begun this work by transitioning to a four-day work week that we hope provides our staff with more time to take care of themselves and their families. EIC also launched our new brand: a mosaic “e” that integrates an array of warm colors, which also celebrates the holistic nature of our movement-building work.
EIC gives gratitude to our partners, supporters and community stakeholders for their powerful work, which is never easy or linear. We are encouraged to see gradual, concrete changes that hint at what liberation might look like, including the recent rematriation of land back to indigenous peoples. We look forward to continuing our work that builds a liberated future for all.