AAFCPAs fully understands the nuances of the education industry and its particular business and operational challenges, including funding and regulatory issues.
Financial Stewardship & Operational Support
AAFCPAs’ Education Practice serves a diverse range of academic and education clients, including independent schools, colleges and universities, special education schools, education services organizations, charter schools, and charter management organizations (CMOs).
Our experience across the sector gives us a deep understanding of the operational, financial, and regulatory challenges education institutions face, including funding complexity, compliance requirements, and evolving reporting standards.
Education Clients
AAFCPAs works with a broad cross section of mission-driven organizations. The pages below represent some of the education industries we serve. Our experience extends across the nonprofit and education landscape, shaped by decades of collaboration with organizations of all sizes and structures.
Strategic Financial & Operational Advisory
Integrated Advisory Services for Education Institutions
We help education institutions strengthen financial operations, manage complexity, and support long-term planning through specialized advisory, accounting, and compliance services.
Financial Advisory & Compliance
If you’re preparing for a capital campaign, AAFCPAs can help you develop a financial plan that supports long-term success. We work with schools to model operating forecasts, assess the accounting impact of bond-financed projects, and evaluate financing structures such as interest rate swaps and letters of credit—so you can approach fundraising and debt with confidence.
Your capital campaign is a major investment. AAFCPAs supports your efforts by helping you align fundraising policies with compliance requirements and donor expectations. We review appeal language, evaluate campaign performance, and ensure funds are tracked and reported properly—strengthening the trust of your donor community.
If your school maintains a diversified portfolio, we help you establish and enhance internal controls over alternative investments. Our team advises on due diligence, valuation methods, foreign reporting requirements, and unrelated business income (UBI) considerations—ensuring that your investment oversight supports accurate, transparent reporting.
AAFCPAs helps you take full advantage of tax credit opportunities that can fund major initiatives. We guide you through programs including New Markets, Low-Income Housing, and Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits—as well as renewable energy incentives. From cost certifications to exiting compliance periods, we support your school every step of the way.
We assist you in developing and evaluating investment and spending policies, designing reporting and unitization structures, and evaluating and improving internal controls over investment activities in line with the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA).
AAFCPAs demonstrates to clients how they compare to industry averages and other select nonprofits. We analyze and present ratios and benchmarking, comparing revenues per student, return on fundraising expenses, occupancy costs, net assets, working capital, and other measures.
We have helped clients improve their accreditation scores through strategic initiatives designed to improve a school’s balance sheet, financial statements and credit picture.
Intimately familiar with all policies, procedures, and regulations related to independent school reporting, accounting, auditing, and tax filing.
What Our Clients Say
AAFCPAs brings consistency, professionalism, and a deep understanding of our operations across the board. Their team is detail-oriented, responsive, and committed to delivering quality work across every engagement. What stands out is that their advice is clear, balanced, and rooted in experience. They are not transactional. They function as trusted advisors who understand the broader context of our work and help us navigate it.
I highly recommend AAFCPAs to any large CMO and any organization in the education sector.
I highly recommend AAFCPAs for anyone looking for an attractive alternative to national CPA firms. It’s so nice to have that partnership and team by our side. Before we switched to AAFCPAs, we worked with a national firm. When it came time to conduct another rotation, though AAFCPAs came highly recommended by so many, we treated them as we would any other auditing firm. At the end of the search, we went with AAFCPAs. The national firm we left was adequate. But there is just a certain white glove touch with AAFCPAs that is preferable.
Managing compliance and financial strategy in a charter school takes precision and foresight, and that’s where AAFCPAs truly shines. Their expertise in charter school accounting is unmatched. For more than 20 years, they’ve been a cornerstone of our success, guiding us through audits, tax filings, and major financial decisions with confidence.
Our Advisors
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Contact Us
Every situation is unique. We look forward to speaking with you to determine how we may best solve your needs.
