What does Principle Before Profit actually mean?
For us at Reach this is not a clever play on words or a snappy sound bite, it’s a philosophy on which our organisation has been built.
We have developed an attitude and culture that is based on the belief that charity really is good for the soul. Our experience has taught us that kindness and compassion are essential ingredients for personal and world transformation.
What this means in practice is that we offer our products and services as near to cost as possible. As a private practice we obviously have to generate profit, otherwise the organisation would sink but the profit we do generate needs to be consistent with our values and principles.
Over 85% of what we produce is given freely via our numerous websites and social media platforms, which offer hundreds of handouts and worksheets as well as countless articles and research items on every aspect of personal development. In addition there are hundreds of audio visual materials, all designed to help individuals help themselves.
Where we do make charges for our services – supervision, training and personal therapy – the fees are kept as low as possible in order to make these services widely accessible. Where there is surplus, we use that to support those who are in financial difficulty.
It currently costs us approximately £30 an hour to run the clinical side of our practice, and so any payment below this figure means we are subsidising the work. Given that the average hourly cost for therapy is between £40 and £75 (although in different parts of the country this fee may vary) it’s clear that the profit we make is modest when one takes into account our training, experience, skills and the substantial body of resources we produce.
We do have and always have had subsidised spaces, but this only works when those numbers are kept at manageable levels for each therapist, otherwise as already stated, this would lead to our demise. For those practitioners who work from premises other than their own homes there is an additional cost. In those instances, room rent is somewhere between £10 and £15 per hour – this is also subject to regional variations.
Aside from our face-to-face work we offer a range of products. The price of these goods is always maintained low to make them as affordable as possible. Examples of these can be found in our well-stocked gift shop and include: pens, calendars, CDs, MP3s etc. We also have an online clothing store, producing a range of t-shirts and hoodies, which showcase some of our key mantras and affirmations. The profit to us from these garments is negligible as we only produce these goods and products to spread the message. In addition, we have an award winning app, Happy Hints, which has spread our philosophy, approach and positive messages to over 35 countries. All this is part of our charitable consciousness.
The reason for offering this explanation is because it seems that our Principle Before Profit philosophy is at times misunderstood by those who expect us to offer our services for even lower costs than we currently do. This is a position we simply couldn’t sustain for more than a few months… and our wonderful work and approach would then be denied to a much wider audience.
We hope this brief insight will help you better understand what we mean by Principle Before Profit. Put simply, although we need to make a profit in order to survive, we will not do this by compromising our beliefs and values.
We believe passionately that everybody wins in a charitable world!
Also see: FAQs and What Makes The Reach Approach Unique?