About The Good Retreat

The Good Retreat is a small UK sole-trader business with a simple idea behind it: people do far more good than they ever get credit for, and writing it down makes them do more of it.

What you can do here

• Keep a diary of your good deeds — daily, weekly, monthly, whenever.
• Share deeds publicly, or keep them private just for yourself.
• Vote for the deeds that move you. Hearts decide Deed of the Week and Month.
• Start a project when a good idea needs more than one pair of hands.
• Build a dated, public record of your contribution you can show an employer.

Why there is no money in it

Paying people to be kind quietly replaces the reason they were being kind. So the rewards here are recognition only: a badge on your profile, a place on the leaderboard, and an invitation to the annual online ceremony where the year's ten best deeds are honoured.

Half of the profits The Good Retreat makes go to charity — 50% to Cancer Research UK. The other half goes mainly towards reinvestment to expand the business — marketing, app development, hosting and safety — and eventually a minimal amount will support its founder through university, so he can leave his current job and spend that time developing The Good Retreat. Where the money goes.

Help us grow

The Good Retreat is early and growing fast. If you would like to help it reach more people and become a polished app, we are running a crowdfunding campaign for marketing, annual-ceremony awards and the official mobile app. This is separate from the business profit-to-charity pledge — it is a direct way to support the build.

Honesty and safety

We can't verify every deed, and we don't pretend to. What we do is keep the community honest: anyone can report a post, moderators review reports quickly, vote manipulation disqualifies an entry, and award winners are checked by a moderator before anything is recorded. Members must be 13 or over, and we ask everyone to keep other people's personal details out of their posts.

Who runs it

The Good Retreat is run personally by Sonny Phillips in the United Kingdom. Registering as a sole trader is planned, and this page will say so as soon as it happens. We are the data controller for the personal data you give us, and we handle it as described in our privacy notice.