Robert F. Smith funds initiative to increase the number of Black CPAs

[get these nets]

Robert F. Smith Commits Up to $1 Million To Support NSBCPA’s Groundbreaking Efforts To Increase Black CPAs
December 08, 2020

WASHINGTON--The National Society of Black Certified Public Accountants (NSBCPA) announced today a major gift from Vista Equity Partners Founder, Chairman and CEO, Robert F. Smith, who pledged $1 million to support the NSBCPA’s first-of-its-kind Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Exam Bootcamp Program for Black Accounting Students.

Smith’s gift will pay for students to take the CPA exam and contribute wrap-around support to ensure the program’s participants have the tools they need to pass the exam and succeed in the accounting profession. The program, open to all colleges and universities in the United States, will enroll 100 students per year in a hands-on, virtual “bootcamp” to prepare them for their CPA exam, in an effort to boost Black representation among CPAs.

The program is supported by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Foundation and is aimed at increasing Black representation in the accounting profession. According to Bloomberg, Black Americans make up less than 1% of all CPAs in the United States.

“Raising Black representation in the financial workforce doesn’t just put more Black people in high quality jobs. It helps build opportunity and wealth over generations while promoting financial literacy that is so crucial to achieving prosperity,” said Smith. “Representation matters, and this program will help aspiring accountants see that they belong in this field.”

The virtual program will provide students with the roadmap necessary to complete their coursework and navigate all exams and entrance materials required to become a CPA, including placement assessments, educational sessions with Black professors, CPA exam review sessions led by Black CPAs, study sessions, and a CPA mentor assigned to each student upon entrance to the program, as well as books, applications and test fee support. The program will also heavily feature material on the first 100 Black CPAs as part of its holistic education.

“We’re proud to partner with Robert Smith and the AICPA on this groundbreaking project,” said Felicia Farrar, Vice Chair of NSBCPA. “Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the hire of the first-ever Black CPA, John Cromwell.

John W. Cromwell
For that and so many other reasons, now is the perfect time to build on his legacy and create new ones in the financial community for future generations to look up to.”

 

[EndDomination]

No reason not to support this.

As critical as I am of billionaires - I find Smith's tight focus on improving Black access to professional spheres to be refreshing.

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

 

[get these nets]

*Article with more details.*
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ent=firefox-b-1-d&hl=en&gl=us&strip=0&vwsrc=1
Dec. 8, 2020
Robert F. Smith’s Latest Move Supports Black CPAs as a Path to Building Generational Wealth

NSBCPA Board and Committee Meeting

When we last wrote about Black billionaire and increasingly active philanthropist Robert F. Smith, he had made a $50 million gift to the Student Freedom Initiative, addressing the overwhelming student debt faced by HBCU students. The gift built upon his Fund II Foundation’s $50 million grant to launch the fund, offering Black juniors and seniors majoring in STEM fields at HBCUs a more flexible, lower-risk alternative to private student loans.

Such funding reflects a key theme emerging in Smith’s exploding philanthropy—Fund II has made nearly 80 grants worth some $250 million since its founding in 2014—as the donor tackles systemic inequities in education, healthcare and other professional arenas.

Continuing that theme, Smith now has made a $1 million gift to the National Society of Black Certified Public Accountants (NSBCPA) to support a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Exam Review Program for Black accounting students. The program is supported by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Foundation and aims to increase Black representation in the field. According to Bloomberg, Black Americans make up less than 1% of all CPAs in the United States.

On another front, Smith has been in the news for different reasons, avoiding prosecution by entering into an agreement with the Department of Justice in exchange for cooperating with the investigation of billionaire Robert Brockman, who has been indicted in the largest tax evasion case in U.S. history. While Smith is by no means the first Wall Street donor to deal with legal trouble, the case has loomed over his growing reputation as a philanthropist. Even so, the Giving Pledge signatory continues to be one of the nation’s highest-profile donors.

With Smith’s latest gift, he takes on a surprising field, but one that offers a lot of potential—funding will pay for students to take the CPA exam and offer additional support to ensure the program’s participants have the tools they need to succeed in the accounting profession.

“Raising Black representation in the financial workforce doesn’t just put more Black people in high-quality jobs. It helps build opportunity and wealth over generations while promoting financial literacy that is so crucial to achieving prosperity,” Smith said in a press release. “Representation matters, and this program will help aspiring accountants see that they belong in this field.”

Historically, the Cornell-educated engineer has put a premium on STEM education, including Fund II Foundation’s $50 million gift to establish an endowment for the Cornell University School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and provide scholarship and fellowship support for underrepresented groups.

But what got Smith interested in diversifying the field of accounting, and how did he connect with NSBCPA in the first place?

A familiar story of systemic barriers

Founded just six months ago, the National Society of Black Certified Public Accountants aims to increase the number of Black CPAs by providing knowledge, resources and advocacy. Its vice chair, Felicia Farrar, is a Texas-based CPA, an accountant and leader who’s well aware of the systemic barriers in her field. She founded the National Society of Black Certified Public Accountants Inc. CPA Review Program ("CPA Breakthrough"), which prepares accounting grads and professionals for the CPA exam.

“It’s not an easy exam. But who better to make Black CPAs than Black CPAs?” Farrar told me in a recent Zoom interview. For Farrar, the lack of diversity in her field cuts deeper than clinical numbers and statistics. When she started attending swearing-in ceremonies at the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy in Austin, she noticed that out of thousands of new CPAs, Black CPAs only numbered in the single digits. It became her duty to make sure she was there, assuring the next generation of Black CPAs that they belonged.

To Farrar, the pipeline issue isn’t just a matter of a dearth of Black accountants. In fact, a Bloomberg piece last year noted that 9% of all 1.9 million accountants and auditors in the U.S. are Black, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So how does that 9% get whittled down to 1% as CPAs?

Well, one big issue is actually making more people aware of the CPA certification and its enormous value. Certified professionals can provide services on their own as consultants or as founding members of a firm. And in an era when there’s talk of diversifying corporate and philanthropic boards, CPAs could represent a perfect pool of candidates.

“If you don’t go to the Ivy Leagues, which many of our students do not, the connection between accounting and the test is not taught,” she tells me, adding, “A lot of people have good grades, but they don’t have the skillset.”

In addition, the CPA exam is not cheap, running an average of $300 per exam, with a total of four exams over the course of 16 total hours. And if the would-be CPA fails one test, they have to pay to take it again. Once the first test is passed, accountants have 18 months to pass the other three, or they must retake expired tests. Do not pass go and do not collect $200.

NSBCPA’s virtual program will provide students with the roadmap to complete their coursework and navigate all exams and entrance materials required to become a CPA, including placement assessments, educational sessions with Black professors, CPA exam review sessions led by Black CPAs, study sessions, and a CPA mentor assigned to each student upon entrance to the program, as well as books, applications and test fee support.

Generational wealth

Smith and Farrar first connected at an event where Smith was being honored for recovery work after Hurricane Harvey. They later connected at a Congressional Black Caucus event, where Farrar sold him on the importance of Black accountants in building generational wealth for the community at large. “It’s good to give back to our community, but we need to make sure we account for the money, too,” Farrar emphasizes.

Farrar says that Smith empowered her to start conducting bootcamps, including a pilot in Houston, which helped her fine tune her product. With a new model that included teaching more accounting skills, bringing on mentors and taking away the burden of cost, Smith signed on with a seven-figure check.

“I totally respect him and am overwhelmed with what he does,” Farrar says of Smith.

Smith and Farrar share a passion for history and Black America’s place in that history. One of Smith’s early philanthropic efforts was Lincoln Hills Experience, a youth empowerment program on a ranch and fly fishing preserve outside of Denver. Lincoln Hills has strong historic roots and was frequented by the likes of Zora Neale Hurston in her day.

Farrar, meanwhile, launched NSBCPA’s website with a First 100, a history of the first licensed Black CPAs in this country, spanning from 1921 to 1965—the year of the Voting Rights Act. Jesse B. Blayton Sr. became Georgia’s first Black CPA in 1928. A civil rights leader and businessman, he founded the first Black radio station, WERD in Atlanta and was Martin Luther King Jr.’s CPA. Earlier, he formed Georgia’s Mutual Federal Savings and Loan Association and reorganized Citizens Trust Bank, which became the first Black bank to join the Federal Reserve. The so-called “Dean of Negro Accountants,” Blayton even kept correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois, emphasizing the importance of building generational wealth and power.

As part of NSBCPA’s new program, students will learn about the connections between past and present.

Consider Michael Bolden, a recent University of Houston graduate who now works at an accounting firm and already participated in the Houston pilot. Juggling six college classes at the time, he says the program helped him learn critical time management skills, learn how to study, and get an early crack at the exam.

And he’s looking forward to going through the officially funded program and hitting the magic number of 75 or above on his CPA exam. “I feel more confident than ever now, and I think this program is going to help me set aside time to focus more on the detail and provide the tools I need,” he said.

 

[get these nets]

Black CPA Centennial celebrates first Black CPA
March 2021

Editor’s note: 2021 is the 100th anniversary of the first Black CPA. This article is the first in a series to celebrate the centennial through profiles about some of the initial 100 Black CPAs as well as others who have blazed the trail and paved the way for future diversity in the profession.

John Wesley Cromwell Jr. (1883–1971) was a man of many talents and interests. An intellectual with a passion for knowledge and a drive for opportunity, he was the nation’s first Black CPA. Cromwell earned that distinction in 1921, an achievement that is the starting point for this year’s Black CPA Centennial celebration.

Cromwell was well suited for his historic role. Like many pioneering CPAs of color, Cromwell overcame numerous obstacles to reach his goal, paving the way for generations of future Black accountants.

“African-Americans struggled against incredible barriers in order to become CPAs and were virtually invisible,” said Theresa A. Hammond, CPA, Ph.D., accounting professor at San Francisco State University’s Lam Family College of Business.

The first CPA law was passed in New York 1896. It would be another 25 years before a Black person joined the profession. The primary blockers that made licensure essentially impossible for many aspiring Black CPAs included education, experience, and exclusion.

A family of educated achievers
Cromwell graduated from college in 1906. While most Americans did not attend college at that time, only 1 in 3,600 Blacks had a college degree and whites were five times more likely than Blacks to go to college, according to Hammond’s book, A White-Collar Profession: African-American Certified Public Accountants Since 1921. A combination of factors, including denial of or obstacles to education during and after slavery, fed this outcome.

Cromwell’s father was born a slave in Virginia. After his family purchased their freedom, Cromwell Sr. ultimately graduated from Howard University law school. At different points in his life, Cromwell Sr. worked as an attorney, teacher, and activist. He founded newspapers, contributed to journals, and was a leading scholar of African-American history. He also served as the chief examiner of the U.S. Postal Service and argued cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The younger Cromwell attended a college preparatory program at Howard and studied mathematics and astronomy at Dartmouth College, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and winning the Thayer Prize in mathematics there.

Work experience for licensure proved impossible
Cromwell, who taught himself accounting, was initially prevented from qualifying for a CPA license because of a common challenge for Blacks at the time: Most states required CPA Exam candidates to work for a licensed CPA at an accounting firm. While Cromwell and numerous other Black aspiring CPAs in much of the early 20th century attempted to find jobs that would give them the experience they needed, firms generally refused to hire them, insisting that their white clients would not be comfortable having their work handled by a Black person.

Faced with this seemingly insurmountable hurdle, when Cromwell left college, he returned to his hometown of Washington, D.C., teaching mathematics at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, a prestigious Black high school.

Tenacity pays off
Fortunately, Cromwell was ultimately able to do an end run around the obstacles that had blocked him from becoming a CPA. In 1921, when New Hampshire dropped its experience requirement, he finally could take the Uniform CPA Examination and become a CPA. It had taken him 15 years from the time of his graduation to gain the chance to become licensed. He continued to teach and spent three years as the comptroller of Howard.

“Pioneers cause change because of the strength of their character,” said Gary Previts, CPA, Ph.D., co-author of A History of Accountancy in the United States and E. Mandell de Windt Professor of Leadership and Enterprise Development and professor of Accountancy, Case Western Reserve University.

During the time that Cromwell was a CPA and teaching, he also performed accounting services for a variety of businesses in the Black community. Washington, D.C., had several thriving Black neighborhoods filled with Black-owned businesses. The U Street area, which was known in the first half of the 20th century as “Black Broadway,” featured Black-owned restaurants, the popular Whitelaw Hotel, clubs, mom-and-pop stores, YMCAs, and churches, as well as the largest Black-owned bank in the country. In addition, the Georgetown neighborhood was 30% Black in 1930, with a strong local community.

Cromwell’s legacy lives on
Cromwell is an inspiring figure as much today as he was yesterday. Previts pointed to a recent example of the ongoing recognition of Blacks in the profession: William Louis Campfield, CPA, in 2019 was the first Black accountant inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame. Campfield was the grandson of slaves. “There is reason to be hopeful that these kinds of positive changes will continue,” Previts said.

“Seeing the struggles that early Black CPAs like Cromwell overcame should be a motivating factor for subsequent generations,” said Frank Ross, a visiting professor and the director of Howard University School of Business Center for Accounting Education. “The more I learned about him, the more I wanted to work as hard as I could to accomplish what I can in this profession,” added Ross, who was one of the nation’s first Black partners at a major accounting firm and is a co-founder of the National Association of Black Accountants.

 

[Ethnic Vagina Finder]

If one is concentrating on taxes and bookkeeping, you can become an enrolled agent and certified bookkeeping in a fraction of the time it takes to become a cpa at a fraction of the cost.