The Globe and Mail

Eric Boyko's office walls are adorned with photographs of the grinning entrepreneur and his buddies hiking in Madagascar, mountain biking in Mongolia and ice-kayaking north of the Arctic Circle.

Just in case he — or one of his 180 employees — should forget, thumbtacks pressed into a massive world map indicate where he has been.

Though the purpose of some of these journeys has been charitable fundraising (he has climbed mounts Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua and Denali to raise funds for Alzheimer's disease), his zestful spirit informs his business philosophy: work hard, play hard.

Even his title is kinetic. Mr. Boyko is the CEO — that's chief energizing officer — of eFundraising, an online distributor of fundraising products and services. With such North American clients as sport teams, churches, clubs, charities and a whopping 48,000 U.S. schools, eFundraising is the leading IT company in that country's $4-billion youth fundraising market (less than 1 per cent of sales are in Canada).

"It's the next generation to selling chocolate bars and Girl Scout cookies," Mr. Boyko explains. "It's a very simple model. Instead of selling door-to-door, kids sell via e-mail. We're investing a lot in technology to make the experience as personal as possible, so you get that same feeling as when a kid knocks on your door."

With reported sales of about $25-million annually, eFundraising works with the likes of eBay, Yahoo, Classmates.com and Active.com. "Most of my job is business development, travelling to the U.S. and forming partnerships with these corporations," he says.

The company was born in 1991 as Universal Fundraising when he and fellow McGill University student Eric Aubertin masterminded a scratch-and-win fundraising card. In 2001, eFundraising was acquired by Quality Service Programs, Inc., a subsidiary of The Reader's Digest Association (Canada) Ltd.

For Mr. Boyko, who earned his bachelor of commerce from McGill in 1992 and his CGA in 1994 while interning at KPMG, success means freedom. He works hard but schedules play time first. "I map out my business around my free days — days with no contact with my office, no e-mail, no phone calls. I think I've cancelled one free day in the last four years."

While he has invested in other firms, Mr. Boyko has avoided accumulating the trappings of success. No house in Florida, no yacht, no clutter, because, he explains: "Then you become a slave to your goods, you still don't have freedom."

And what does freedom mean? "Having the flexibility to decide the hours you want to work, and to spend time with people you want to spend time with."