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IMPACT MAKERS
Richmond, Va.-based Impact Makers is a unique consulting firm. Impact is a for-profit management and
technology firm that has gifted its ownership to the
community and contributes 100 percent of its net profits to charities over the life of the company.
In 2006, Michael Pirron founded Impact Makers with
a single healthcare client, $50 in the bank and a laptop.
The idea originated in an academic paper Pirron wrote
while earning his MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Inspired by Newman’s
Own, he had the vision for a for-profit consulting firm
that donates 100 percent of profits to charities.
It started as an idea to build a company that delivers
both client and community value—and gives employees
more from careers than simply paychecks. “Ten years later,
Impact Makers employs more than 125 professionals, had
2016 revenue of over $22 million, supports seven nonprofit
community partners, and has contributed $2 million to the
community,” Pirron, CEO of Impact Makers, says.
Perhaps even more impressive, Impact Makers has
created a replicable model that is applicable across industries, mission-aligned, scalable, able to raise capital to fund
growth, pays market reasonable salaries, creates shareholder
value in a way that is mission-aligned, and enables employees to share in the upside (non-equity) of value creation.
“It is not just about doing things differently; it’s about
creating a movement that has broad reaching impact
on our local, regional, national communities—and the
world,” he says. “Impact Makers is committed to being
a force for change—from changing the way people view
consulting to changing the consulting industry, the way
companies structure their businesses, the way values/mis-
sions are embedded in cultures, the corporate philanthrop-
ic model, the way business and communities work togeth-
er—and the world. We are democratizing philanthropy.”
Impact Makers began as an effort to create a different
model for consulting. Ten years later, Pirron says the firm
is focused on maximizing its impact by growing aggres-
sively, but purposefully. “Our plan for 2017 is aligned
to a broader five-year roadmap that is crafted to deliver
maximum impact to the communities where we work
and, therefore, deliver on our mission,” Pirron says. “We
will continue to focus on leveraging our shared values
while ensuring the exponential growth does not come
at the expense of our culture or trust our clients have in
us. We’re excited about 2017 as we anticipate continued
growth resulting in additional community impact, suc-
cess for our clients and opportunities for our employees.”
Pirron expects Impact Makers to continue to grow at an
accelerated rate and be about $50 million in revenue and
more than 300 employees in the next three or four years.
“Our biggest challenge is managing growth to max-
imize our impact without compromising our purpose
and culture,” Pirron says. “For Impact Makers, it’s not
just about hitting numbers, it’s about hitting our num-
bers and not losing sight of our mission and shared val-
ues or compromising the strong culture we’ve built.”
Pirron says he does not accept the premise that
the kind of growth we are going through inevitably
changes the company. “It may change what we do,
where we do it and who does it, but we believe it will
not change our ‘why’ and ‘how’, he says. “That’s im-
portant to us because it is what makes Impact Makers
a different consulting experience all together.”
