Our Philosophy

This site has been created for a single purpose: to provide a central resource for anyone who is running a charity or non-profit and is looking to take the very best insights, expertise and practices from the commercial world, and adapt them to imrpove their organisation.

The private sector is not “better” than the third sector. Most businesses would give an arm and a leg for the brand power of a national charity, or the incredible loyalty and commitment shown by people working in the sector. But there are some things that some businesses do extremely well, and if you want your organisation to be the best it can be, you could do a lot worse than adopt some of their practices.

Last year, over 50% of the sector’s revenue came from earned income – from commercial trading. Half of that came through government and local authority contracts, the rest from straightforward commercial and retail services. It’s a landscape that is rapidly evolving and increasingly competitive, but for those organisations that can adapt, it offers huge opportunities for both income and impact.

Using a commercial business approach to address a social problem can:

• Generate unlimited, totally unrestricted income
• Enable your projects to rapidly become self-sustaining
• Attract competition, creating a market that permanently locks-in the change

In a competitive, changing market, charities have a number of big advantages, but so do businesses. The organisations that can work out how to align and combine the very best of both worlds, will define the future of those markets.

That is the Profit on Purpose philosophy