Today we’d like to introduce you to Maddie Foley.
Maddie, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Acupuncture for the People was started in 2006 by Rob Singer, who was inspired by practitioners in Portland that pioneered a different style of care called Community Acupuncture, modeled after clinics in Asia that treat people in a group. Before this movement started, acupuncture was most often delivered in the U.S. in a private room setting, and that usually came with private room or insurance-based price tags, which tend to be out of reach for many people with average incomes. Community Acupuncture provides care in comfortable recliners in a quiet group, so patients can pay a low sliding scale price that still sustains the clinic. This most often mirrors the cost of a copay (our sliding scale is $25-$65 per follow up treatment), keeping our pricing within reach for the average person.
Acupuncture for the People was the 5th such clinic calling itself “Community Acupuncture” in the U.S.; fast forward to 2026 and there are 200 or more clinics using a similar practice model all over the country, and increasingly, all over the world. Most people need a series of treatments, as in many other therapies, and our pricing prioritizes getting people the care that they need. Since we don’t take insurance, we don’t have to negotiate with a third party payer for payment, and our patients get to decide what they can afford without the clinic grappling with the administrative burden of billing insurance.
We love this work! And our patients do too; we’ve grown from 2-3 chairs in a small office to 8 chairs in a double suite over the years; we currently employ four acupuncturists and are open 7 days a week. Our clinic provides ~300 treatments per week, and we treat everything from back and neck pain, to menopause symptoms, various autoimmune diseases, digestive disorders, you name it! Acupuncture helps peoples minds and bodies regulate more effectively, so you can apply the benefit to a pretty wide range of conditions.
My name is Maddie Foley, I’m a licensed acupuncturist in the great state of Oregon, and I’m the incoming Executive Director of People’s Acupuncture, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that’s filling the shoes for Acupuncture for the People, LLC (we’re keeping the name and everything else once we’re all clear and legal). I’ve been with this clinic for about a year, loving every minute of it, and am undertaking transition planning with Rob, our founder. In addition to assuming administrative responsibilities, I provide about 80 affordable acupuncture visits a week. I treat people of all ages, health conditions, socioeconomic statuses, religious and political beliefs, races, etc and all are welcome.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Rob provided wonderful care all throughout the past 20 years, both managing the clinic and treating the community. Now he is approaching retirement, and we’re in the midst of updating a lot of our old administrative systems. With the goal of keeping the clinic’s mission going for many years to come, this year we undertook the process of becoming a 501(c)3 nonprofit-no small task for a clinic that was operating as an LLC for years. This involves a lot of moving pieces, from filling out the IRS’s extensive application, to assembling a dream team of a board, getting all our ducks in a row changing the name on accounts, and making sure everything we do is clean, legal, and honors the spirit of the clinic that started all those years ago.
Because we operate on a low-cost and high-volume business model, natural dips in the schedule can be a challenge. Holidays, back-to-school, bad weather, etc, can impact the schedule, and since our acupuncturists make an hourly wage plus commission per visit, we all feel an impact if the things are slow. For the most part, we weather this well and are really busy! But our income can have some variability that’s hard to predict. This is true for many people in similar professions like therapists or body workers, but it’s a real challenge to providing care outside of a large institutional setting. Providing affordable care while providing our employees a living wage is a balancing act. Word of mouth has always been our strongest marketing tool, and we are fortunate to have a great local reputation and a big fan club, but current economic challenges can make even our low sliding scale a luxury for some.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Medical Clinic, Public Health
How do you think about luck?
Luck is huge! Eugene got lucky when Rob first happened to read an article about Community Acupuncture in Portland 20 years ago and inspiration hit. We got lucky to find a wonderful, reasonable, and stable commercial space with accessible parking right on Willamette Street. I got lucky when Rob was looking for a successor, and happened to chat with my mentor to look for a mystery person to fill his huge shoes. The clinic has gotten lucky over and over again to have wonderful, caring employees who have brought their own flair and magic to the community.
There is a certain element of magic that comes into play with many business success stories, and we’ve had a fair dose of serendipity with the relationships and community we’ve formed throughout the years. You can have all the business acumen and funding in the world, but I think you really need that spark to create something meaningful and lasting. Some successful businesses start with nothing at all but that spark, so I’d definitely say it’s a non-negotiable element for success.
Pricing:
- Initial visit: $45-$85 sliding scale ($20 intake fee applied to first visit only)
- Follow up visit: $25-$65
Contact Info:
- Website: https://acupunctureforthepeople.org/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064749380018
