Fifteen months ago, a small group of IT consultants decided they were going to launch a new consulting firm with only two goals in mind:

1. They were going to turn a profit by the end of the company's first year.

2. They were going to give their all of their profits away to a nonprofit organization.

That's right. All of its profits.

While that well-intentioned plan would seem to be an easy target for a skeptical man, Richmond-based Impact Makers actually met both of those goals in 2007 and are looking toward an even more successful 2008. Most importantly, Impact Makers has proved a new business model that tackles both capitalism and benevolence at the same time.

Since beginning its benevolent journey of social entrepreneurship in October 2006, Impact Maker's president Ross Decker and CEO Michael Pirron have been giving it all away, everything down to the last penny. At the end of 2007, after paying all business expenses, market rate salaries and taxes, the company collected its remaining profits and made a cash donation of $41,000 to Safe Harbor, a Richmond-area domestic violence shelter. Impact Makers also donated more than 200 hours of consulting work to the nonprofit shelter, which is valued at $30,000.

"With the $41,000 cash donation plus the $30,000 in-kind donation, we actually made up 10 percent of Safe Harbor's total budget this year," said Pirron. "We think that is pretty amazing after only one year."

After receiving Impact Maker's big check at the end of the year, Shannon Heady, Safe Harbor's executive director, couldn't agree more.

"We absolutely loved that," she said.

Because of Impact Makers' involvement and financial commitment to Safe Harbor, Heady said the shelter was able to hire a new bilingual counselor and start a new support group for Spanish-speaking domestic violence victims.

"That is a small program and it is only one support group, but Safe Harbor would have never taken that leap to start it, knowing that it is going to grow, without the support of Impact Makers," Heady said. "We couldn't have started it this soon without the support of Impact Makers."

Heady said the additional funding also has allowed Safe Harbor to begin making plans for a new domestic violence shelter in the Richmond area.

"There is a critical shortage of beds in the area for domestic violence victims," she said. "We are in the process of doing a capital campaign and I think Impact Makers' large gift is going to help us move forward in planning that shelter a lot quicker than we would have without their funding."

While the additional funding was a Godsend for Heady's organization, it was simply part of the plan for Pirron and Decker. But the question remains - how does a company survive and grow if it gives away all of its profits every year?

For Impact Makers, it's all about simplicity, minimal overhead and constantly keeping their social commitment at the top of the priority list.

Impact Makers is set up as a non-stock corporation, so there is no ownership, but there is a volunteer board of directors that holds Decker and Pirron accountable to the company's mission.

"It's owned by the community and it is for the community," Pirron said. "We have a model that maximizes stakeholder value in the community rather than shareholder value because there are no shareholders. The board holds Ross and I accountable to maximize profit. Because profit can be manipulated, we have checks and balances to make sure it can't happen. If we wanted to bonus out all the profit and say 'Sorry, no profit,' we can't do that. We would have to go to the board if we wanted to give a bonus."

To maximize the profits it will later donate to Safe Harbor, the company keeps its overhead low by renting a small, non-descript office in the Fan. It also keeps its staff small and only hires additional IT consultants on a project-by-project basis.

"If we were a startup software company, we would have had to raise $500,000 to create the software and we would have to look for angel and institutional investment," Decker said. "But in the services industry, the capital is your people and that is how we were able to keep the investment down. We invested the time of some really talented people whose work we could sell and who had the ability to hire and recruit some really dynamite independent people for project work.

"On the business side of Impact Makers, the investment was low on purpose because we wanted to make sure we could prove the business side of the model, which is that we can have a successful business that creates economic value and can pay market salaries and be able to give money to the community right away."

Though the $41,000 check Impact Makers stroked to Safe Harbor seems like a pretty good sign that Ross and Pirron's new business model can work, Pirron said he doesn't think it has been totally proven just yet.

"We are just now proving the theory, but we are not a $10 million company yet," he said. "Unfortunately, we have a theory and I think we proved that in the first couple of months, but have we proven the business? Until we are a $5 (million) or $10 million company I am not sure that we are going to get lots of attention at the national level. And to prove this model, people are going to want to see this business working, which is strange because companies go in and out of business, but that doesn't prove or disprove capitalism."

But it does prove that even the competitive free market can still have compassion. Just ask any of the folks down at Safe Harbor.