The Brown Museum: Rebuilding a finance function from the ground up

The Context: An Institution Ready to Grow — With an Outdated Finance Function

For more than 70 years, the Cici & Hyatt Brown Museum of Art, Science, & History — "the Brown" — has served as a cultural cornerstone in Daytona Beach. The museum has undergone many transformations over the decades, from major renovations to ambitious curatorial expansions.

As it's grown, so too have its financial operations. Like many nonprofits, the Brown operates with diverse and often unpredictable revenue streams — admissions, memberships, donations, grants, special events, and endowment funding, each with its own reporting requirements and restrictions. Add in program costs, future planning, and board oversight, and the financial picture quickly becomes even more complex, requiring well-designed systems that give leadership a clear understanding of the numbers in real-time.

Tabitha Schmidt joined the Brown in 2022 as CEO and realized immediately that, before they could execute on an ambitious growth phase, their financial infrastructure required a complete overhaul. The legacy systems it had been using weren't suitable for its board and internal teams, who needed clear, timely financial visibility in order to usher the institution into its next chapter.

Here, you'll learn how our financial consultancy services helped this ever-evolving nonprofit transform their finance function from the ground up.

The Challenge: A Finance Department Built for Compliance, Not Decision-Making

When Tabitha stepped in as CEO of The Brown, she was faced with a familiar scenario: the museum's finance department was exacting in its accounting standards, but the financial data produced by the accounting team was of little use to leadership.

In a previous role as CEO of Kansas City's renowned Powell Gardens, Tabitha had faced the same fundamental problem — outdated software left leadership without much actionable information on which to base critical decisions. Their accounting systems were focused on historical data and didn't answer the types of "what-if" questions that their board and leadership teams had.

With both Powell Gardens and the Brown, the pain points were strikingly similar:

• Outdated, siloed software that limited visibility
• Manual, time-intensive processes
• No infrastructure for forward-looking decision-making
• Little transparency into the true financial picture
• Charts of accounts and policies that didn't support modern reporting

The Brown needed modern systems that supported their financial strategy from the ground up. With a solid foundation of clean, usable data, Tabitha knew they'd be well-equipped to sustain the Brown through its seventh decade and beyond.

The Solution: Modern Systems, Built to Last

Just as she had with Powell Gardens, Tabitha brought in EBCFO Services as a partner to modernize the Brown's financial infrastructure.

We started with a full assessment of their existing accounting operations to identify what needed to be done. When it became clear that their current systems required starting over from scratch, we began the rebuilding process. In practice, this included:

• Data cleanup: Resolved years of inconsistent and duplicate records to establish a clean baseline.
• Chart of accounts: Standardized and simplified the structure to support modern reporting.
• System migration: Mapped and migrated historical data into Sage Intacct.
• Workflow modernization: Eliminated manual workarounds and spreadsheet dependencies.
• Custom dashboards: Built workflows and dashboards around the Brown's specific goals and KPIs.
• Board-ready reporting: Designed reports leadership and the board could understand at a glance.

With the new system in place, we turned our attention to sustainability. This meant ensuring new standards and workflows were codified into clear, easy-to-follow documentation so that the function could withstand turnover. We also worked closely with Tabitha and the rest of the team to help them take full ownership of the function before the handoff.

The Results: Clean Data, Strategic Clarity — and a Foundation for a $200 Million Project

With clean data flowing into clear, real-time reports tailored to the Brown's key stakeholders, its leaders gained the visibility they needed to make faster, more confident decisions. That confidence, in turn, created the conditions for something much bigger: a $200 million capital and endowment expansion, and the ability to attract a full-time CFO to lead it.

• Invoice processing time reduced from 2 hours to under 20 minutes
• Board and leadership reports automated and generated in minutes instead of days
• Real-time visibility into cash flow, budgets, and key performance indicators
• 100% of core workflows documented and standardized for continuity
• New CFO attracted and retained

Takeaway

The Brown's transformation shows what's possible when accounting data becomes an asset rather than a bottleneck. With well-designed financial systems, the team reduced manual work, improved visibility, attracted top-tier leadership, and positioned the organization for a major expansion — all without adding unnecessary overhead.

If your organization is outgrowing its systems or struggling to get clear answers from your numbers, it may be time to rebuild your foundation. Let's talk about what that could look like for you.