Zak Wood / Colorado Daily

Chris MClimans, the self-proclaimed Hippy Hacker, poses for a photo in his van along Boudler Creek on Thursday.

You may have seen it cruising around Boulder: a 1979, avocado-green Volkswagen Kombi bus with the words “Hippy Hacker” scrawled on the sides in white shoe polish.

Chris McClimans, owner of the hard-to-miss van and the titular Hippy Hacker, on Thursday acknowledged that although he’s had his van marked up for several months, he only recently discovered that “hippie” is spelled with an “ie” at the end.

No matter; McClimans isn’t your average hippie.

While McClimans has long hair and a beard, owns a VW bus, is devoted to living in moderation and actively seeks to better the lives of his fellow man, his supreme knowledge of computers and a self-employed job as an IT security programmer and Web developer keep the rest of his roots grounded firmly in cyberspace.

“Most people accumulate wealth over the course of their life and then use it for philanthropy in their later years,” McClimans said. “I didn’t want to wait. So for every hour of consulting work I do, I match that with an hour working with a nonprofit entity.”

The idea of mixing nonprofit work in with his security consulting and Web development services came to McClimans after 12 years of doing the same job for large banks, which paid handsomely, but, as McClimans put it, never gave anything back.

“I looked at my education and what I’ve done, and the amount of effort I need to put into creating a large amount of wealth is low,” McClimans said. “I want to have enough money to live meagerly.”

According to McClimans, this means enough money to keep his bus going from place to place and to keep him and his dog fed. He even said he’ll be leaving his apartment soon to begin living out of the bus, a situation he’s no stranger to.

In fact, the bohemian lifestyle is how he found Boulder in the first place.

After acquiring the bus, McClimans spent months going from town to town — staying for days at a time in his bus and visiting various people before moving on. This brand of travel brought him to Boulder a few times, until his most recent visit nearly a year ago made him decide to stay.

“Boulder is one of the reasons I’ve stayed around,” he said, referring not only to the beautiful scenery but also to the large number of humanitarian causes available for his business model. “Boulder has a larger percentage of nonprofit organizations per capita than other communities.”

The more nonprofit groups, the better, says McClimans, because it increases the possibility that he can find for-profit organizations with a nonprofit counterpart in mind for him to contract the additional work.

“What I’m trying to do is not create competition,” he said, “but instead do the opposite.”

And, when for-profit businesses and nonprofit businesses can help further each other’s causes through the work McClimans does for them, everybody wins.

“If I can get it to where I’m working 15 to 20 hours for-profit and 15 to 20 for non,” he said, “then I’ll be at a point where I’m working a full week, sustaining myself, and contributing back to my community.”

Contact Lance Vaillancourt about this story at (303) 443-6272, ext. 125 or vaillancourt@coloradodaily.com