Firm’s aim is to give profits to charity

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
June 2007

Michael Pirron had the dream that a lot of employees do: to spend his days doing work that makes a positive impact on society. But like most would-be philanthropists, he didn’t have the financial wherewithal to quit his day job and start a charitable foundation.

So Pirron, 36, a former IT management specialist for Andersen Consulting, came up with the “competitive social venture,” a for-profit business model with a nonprofit mission. “My idea was: What if you could create a company that worked to make profits, but instead of being based on maximizing shareholder value was based on maximizing community value?” Pirron says. “What kind of impact would you have?”

Last October, he got his chance to find out. Pirron started Impact Makers, a Richmond-based firm that provides management consulting, IT consulting, Web design and IT staff augmentation to corporations and health-care organizations.

Impact Makers is designed to fit Pirron’s socially conscious vision: It is a nonstock corporation overseen by a volunteer board of directors. Its books are open to the public, its officers earn salaries but no equity, and all profits are donated to charitable partners.

Those partners must be nonprofit organizations that meet four criteria: They must be secular, nonpolitical, local and have a philosophy of helping people help themselves. For its first charity, Impact Makers chose Safe Harbor, a Henrico County-based advocacy organization for victims of domestic violence.

Pirron says that in addition to giving its profits to its charitable partner, Impact Makers will make a minimum monthly pledge even if it’s operating in the red. What’s more, employees and officers volunteer 10 percent of their monthly work hours providing help to the charity.

“The idea is that we become truly a substantive partner to them,” says Pirron. “And we’ll stick with Safe Harbor until we’re funding a certain percentage of its budget each year before we pick the next partner.”