The October Ripple Effect Institute Cohort
Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin. Last updated 9/1/26
Applications close at 5pm ET Friday September 25 — unless sold out sooner.
If you’ve spent the last decade paying attention, caring deeply, doing what you can, and still wondering “Am I making the biggest difference I could right now?” I’m working with a small group of people just like you starting in October.
It’s for people who want to get better at making a difference, do it without living in a permanent state of overwhelm and confusion about what they can contribute, and help to build the better world we all know is possible.
Because resisting what we don’t want is only part of the work.
We also have to build what we want in its place.
That’s what we do inside the Ripple Effect Institute.
Over the next year, we’ll help you do three things:
Get out of overwhelm and burnout and build the resilience to stay engaged for the long haul.
Figure out where and how you can make the biggest difference, using the skills, experience and capacity you already have.
Build and scale social justice work, with the strategy, organizing skills and support to create meaningful, sustainable impact.
Whether you’re looking for your place in this work, starting a new initiative, or strengthening the work you’ve already begun, the destination is the same: less overwhelm, more clarity, and the skills and confidence to build a real contribution toward a better world.
We’ve seen members, like Eugene, arrive knowing they care deeply but having no idea where to put their energy, and then use our training to gain focus and build skills. Six months later, Eugene worked with his community to stop an ICE detention center from opening in his city.
Others, like Laurie, arrived with an idea for an organization to help marginalized people, and learned to build and scale their project through our curriculum and community. Laurie’s non-profit to help trans folks launches next month.
Still others, like Jess, came in already leading mutual aid groups and non-profits, and have used our coaching and training to grow their work sustainably. Her mutual aid project helps thousands of unhoused people in her city weekly.
The range is intentional. You don’t have to arrive with the perfect project. You don’t need organizing experience, political expertise, an extroverted personality, or endless spare time. You do need curiosity, generosity, and enough initiative to take what you learn and use it. You do need to be willing to learn, contribute, try things that challenge you, come back when you need support, and keep working to create change.
This isn’t for someone looking for another place to consume bad news with people who already agree with them. It’s for you if you’ve got some life behind you, skills you earned the hard way, and a nagging feeling that more of what you know could be useful right now.
Over the next year, we’ll help you get clear about where your time, skills and experience can actually make a difference, then turn that clarity into work you can do in the real world.
You’ll learn how to stay engaged without letting every crisis consume you, how to choose where your energy belongs, and how to organize and build with other people once you’ve chosen what to do next.
The result is less time wondering “what should I be doing?” and more confidence that the thing you’re doing is genuinely useful.
Phase 1: Resilience & Purpose
We start with the thing that makes everything else possible: getting your attention and your nervous system back under your control.
You’ll look at where your attention is going, what keeps tipping you into overwhelm, and what you need to stay engaged without letting the work consume you. Then, we map your experience, skills, relationships, available capacity and the issues you care about.
The first win is clarity: a much sharper sense of where you belong in the work and what deserves your energy next.
Phase 2: Strategy & Action
Once you know where you want to focus, we turn it into a real plan.
You’ll decide what you’re trying to change, who needs to be involved, what your next moves are, and how you’ll know whether they’re working.
And as you take action, you’ll bring what happens next back to our community. We’ll solve problems together, strategize about next steps, and you keep moving.
Phase 3: Build & Scale
Then, we stay with you as you do the work, and help you make it stronger without it consuming your life. You’ll learn how to bring more people in, handle resistance, grow your leadership and build something that can keep working beyond your own individual effort.
The point isn’t to make you indispensable. It’s to help you build work that lasts. And you'll do it alongside other great people who are building a better world too.
Here’s what you’ll get when you join us:
Two live calls every week. One is a coaching and strategy session with me, where we work on the real things our members are trying to move forward. The other is with the REI community, where you can bring a problem, learn from someone else’s experience, find a collaborator, or simply stop trying to figure everything out alone. All calls are recorded in case life intervenes and you can't be there live.
Our full REI training library, covering resilience and purpose, communications, strategy, organizing, community building, leadership, navigating pushback, addressing systemic oppression, and more. Don’t worry, the assignment is not “watch everything.” Go to the piece that matches the problem in front of you, use it, then bring what happens as you apply it back to us.
Our private REI community website, hosted on a non-oligarch-owned platform where you can safely and privately connect and collaborate, without relying on Facebook or the major social media platforms.
Our private, worldwide, and inclusive community of progressive activists and organizers—smart, experienced, kind and generous people working across different issues, communities and forms of social change, so you don’t have to solve every problem alone.
Ongoing coaching, community and support for as long as you're a member.
To get started, you apply with a $500 deposit to hold your spot.
After your initial $500 deposit, it's $500 a month for the following 12 months.
After that, we'll go month to month, for as long as you want to remain part of the REI community.
There's also a 30-day “love it or leave it” period.
By the end of your first 30 days, we'll both know whether REI is the right place for you.
If something's not right, or either of us isn't feeling it, all you'll pay is your initial $500 deposit. We'll tear up the rest of the agreement and part ways as friends.
As long as we're both good, we'll continue working together for the next 12 months—and hopefully well beyond that.
Here’s what happens next:
Step 1: Complete our short application here and submit your $500 deposit.
Step 2: We'll personally review your application and respond within 72 hours.
Step 3: If you're accepted, your deposit secures your place and you'll start with us on the first of the month. If you're not accepted, we'll refund your $500 deposit right away.
And you won’t spend your first month sitting around. On day one of October, you’ll get access to your first module of training, on resilience and purpose, as well as access to the community, so you can start getting clearer about where your energy belongs right away.
Come in with questions. Come in with an idea. Come in knowing only that you’re ready to do something useful with what you’ve got. We can work from there.
Elizabeth
PS. Join the October cohort and you’ll also get immediate access to two bonus programs on the first day. The Dual Power Accelerator will help you start thinking practically about how stronger local communities can support and protect people when existing institutions fall short. Truth or Fiction gives you tools for spotting propaganda and disinformation, talking about it without making everyone defensive, and helping other people recognize it too.
You don’t have to wait until you’ve “figured out your thing” to use either one. You can start straight away.