Who We Are

We are a holistic education nonprofit that takes a heart-centered approach to inspiring transformative actions that create connected, equitable, and climate resilient communities. We believe in the power of our daily actions to reconnect people to self, community, and place, which helps to heal our society and planet.

Our Mission is to inspire transformative action that creates connected, equitable climate resilient communities.
Our Vision is to create healthy, just and sustainable communities built upon the daily actions of many people.

What We Do

Our holistic approach starts in the soil and swells into culture and policy change:

Climate Resilience

Leadership Training

Personal Ecology

Networks & Alliances

Action Campaigns

Who We Serve

Daily Acts primarily serves the diverse population of Sonoma County, California, through our wide array of program offerings.

Residents

We work alongside residents to implement community-driven models that catalyze action, educate and engage, build community, protect our most vulnerable, and support leaders to boldly advocate for a brighter future.

Local Schools, Businesses, and Organizations

We motivate local schools, businesses, and organizations to be a force of good in our community by providing them with replication support and skill-building workshops.

Governmental Agencies

We collaborate with different city and county agencies to encourage environmental and climate justice policy and provide hands-on sustainability programs to residents.

Our Theory of Change

The crisis of connection is at the core of our environmental and social issues. People are disconnected from their power, from nature, from community and from this big planetary moment of crisis and opportunity. To address this crisis, we…

Spread Solutions & Models

We Spread Solutions and models to offer the skills, tools, and resources to conserve resources while growing food, medicine, habitat, and community.

Our strategies include:

  • Producing education programs and skill building workshops

  • Installing public landscapes

  • Providing replication support and training

  • Convening Resilient Homes & Hubs

Because change happens through mindful collaboration, we invest in Strengthening Community Leadership by equipping leaders who understand the interrelations of social, economic, and environmental justice issues through our networks, alliances, and leadership programs.

Our strategies include:

  • Partnering with municipalities, schools, businesses, nonprofits

  • Growing and strengthening networks and alliances

  • Training and connecting leaders

  • Facilitating conversations

We Build Public and Political Will by mobilizing our community’s power towards environmental and climate justice policies.

Our strategies include:

  • Mobilizing community for shared action

  • Advocating for equitable climate action

  • Organizing public voice for policy changes

RIPPLES | REVERENCE | RELATIONS | RESILIENCE

Learn more about the values that drive our work.

Our Impact

Since our beginning in 2002 we have inspired tens of thousands of resilience-building projects, built civic engagement through our Leadership Institute for Just and Resilient Communities, installed dozens of demonstration gardens for fire survivors, previously homeless veterans, and schools, and launched new coalitions and programs to support the environmental health needs of vulnerable populations in the last five years of record drought, flood and fire.

We love keeping track of our impact.
Here are just a few of the “stats” we have been keeping over the years.

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People Educated & Engaged
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Programs Run
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Demonstration Gardens Planted
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Partnerships & Informal Partners

We are committed to championing policies and programs that empower underrepresented people to co-create an abundantly diverse, inclusive and equitable world.

Learn more about our commitment to equitable process and action.

Our Story

In 1996, Daily Acts founder Trathen Heckman quit his job at a Fortune 500 consulting firm to follow his passion for snowboarding. After several years of snow, travel and becoming more aware of the huge environmental and social issues our world faces, Trathen discovered Bioneers, a whole community of deeply inspired and activated people and leaders. Soon after, he stepped into Penny Livingston’s backyard at the Permaculture Institute of Northern California and was astounded to witness how a water-wasting lawn had been transformed into a fecund forest of food, medicine and wonder. These two experiences had a profound effect on Trathen and motivated him to actively seek out other concerned people purposefully engaged in living their inspiration while regenerating nature and community.

Then, just as he was getting filled up on hopeful visions of inspiring people and transformed landscapes, in 2001 the tragedy of 911 struck. Adding deep personal hurt to this incredible national loss, a month later he suddenly lost his mother. Having been exposed to inspiring people and solutions helped Trathen to turn the grief, frustration and overwhelm from both his personal loss and the hurt he saw in our world into an uplifting and transformational experience.

“People change when you show them a more beautiful truth they can move to.”
– Paul Hawken

Daily Acts was born in 2002 and is founded on the belief that by reclaiming the power of our daily actions, we can transform our lives, our homes, gardens and neighborhoods and that through inspired action, education and collaboration, we can create more nourishing, connected and resilient communities.

We can be the change we wish to see in the world, and it starts with each one of us.

Daily Acts began with the publication of our first Ripples journal, promoting a healthy, just and sustainable lifestyle:

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