The Cici & Hyatt Brown Museum of Art, Science & History

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

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In a previous role as CEO of Kansas City's renowned Powell Gardens, Tabitha had faced the same fundamental problem — outdated software left leadership without much actionable information on which to base critical decisions.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• Outdated, siloed software that limited visibility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

Tabitha knew they needed a complete overhaul. "I needed to modernize the entire finance department — systems, policies, chart of accounts, everything," she shared. "Hiring one person to 'fix it' wasn't going to solve a problem this deep."

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

Just as she had with Powell Gardens, Tabitha brought in EBCFO 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 indeed required starting over from scratch, we began the rebuilding process. In practice, this included:

• Cleaning up years of inconsistent or duplicate records
• Standardizing and simplifying the chart of accounts
• Mapping and migrating historical data into a new accounting platform (Sage Intacct)
• Eliminating manual workarounds and spreadsheet dependencies
• Building customized dashboards and workflows around goals and KPIs
• Designing 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.

Results

With brand new accounting systems in place, the Brown was able to transform the way its financial operations functioned — and in turn, its leadership team. In addition to the newfound clarity into their finances, they were able to attract and retain a full-time CFO to lead the department as the Brown embarked on a major expansion project.

"The Board now has incredible visibility to the numbers, as do I. We are embarking on a $200 million construction and endowment project, and without these changes, there is no way we could do this."

Operational improvements

• 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

Strategic impact

• Established the financial infrastructure needed to support a $200 million capital and endowment initiative
• Delivered real-time, board-ready reporting for clear and consistent oversight
• Enabled leadership to make faster, more confident, data-backed decisions

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.