Harrington Group Blog

At Harrington Group, Nothing is more important to us than our clients. Each and every one of the organizations that we are lucky enough to serve do something great for their communities and offer a service for the betterment of the people within their network.

We would like to take a minute to say a big welcome to our new clients, REDF (Roberts Enterprise Development Fund), and let you know how excited we are to have you as part of the growing Harrington Group family.

As always, we are honored to be a part of helping you do what you do, and we are proud that you chose us to help you in your journey of activism.

Thank you for all you do! We look forward to moving your business forward with service that will surpass your expectations.

When you are one of the members of a nonprofit, you are throwing everything that you have into your current project and working every day for your cause. Activism is nothing new to you, but those who new to the nonprofit scene may not fully understand just how much weight and importance this one word can have. Activism is at the core of every nonprofit and it is the driving force that results in so many causes reaping the benefits of having advocates who work hard for them.

Activism is defined as “consisting of efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, or environmental change, or stasis.” The fantastic thing about activism is that it can be present in so many forms. Any one person who is so inspired can perform activism on their own in many different ways, as they see fit, in order to show advocacy for the cause that they feel passionately about. You do not have to be the founder of the next major nonprofit to show that you care, that can come later. You can show your dedication and willingness to help a cause that you feel strongly about through reaching out to community leaders, drawing awareness and giving a voice to those that you wish to help.

Your inspiration for activism can come from anywhere, if you leave yourself open to experiencing the world around you with empathy, you will see that there is so much good that you can do for your local and global community. You can make a difference, through your activism, you can set in motion change that has the potential to make lives better and positively impact society as a whole.

If you want to get involved in social change through activism, there are just a few simple steps you need to follow. First, find what motivates you, what are you passionate about? If you are in need of a little inspiration, you can take a walk through your neighborhood, see what you notice around you. Go home and do a search for local charities and nonprofits, while you are at it, do a little research into activism and the different ways you could make a difference. If you want to dig a little deeper and expand your research to the global scale search #Activism and you will find a wealth of inspiration from all over the world, in many shapes and forms.

Once you have a cause, and you know how you think you want to start your work, look into whether or not there is an existing effort for your particular cause, is there an existing organization, local or other that you may be able to donate your time to? If there is, great! Get involved! If there is no existing effort, you will need to start your own, get the word out. Gain the support of your peers and contact the leaders of your community to get them to take notice.

It may seem like a huge task, but just remember, you have to start somewhere. You will make a difference through your activism, you have the potential to set something in motion that will make the world a better place.

We support our clients at Harrington Group, nothing is more important to us than those inspiring organizations that we are lucky enough to work with on a daily basis. That is why when members of our team were nominated to take part in the ALS #icebucketchallenge, we had no choice but to do it and were happy to jump at the chance to cool off, donate money and raise awareness for such a great cause, and of course, support the fundraising efforts of one of our amazing clients.

In case you have somehow missed it, like you don’t have facebook, or your friends suffer from aquaphobia, ALSA.org launched a campaign earlier this year that went viral this summer and has completely taken off like wild fire across the internet and social media using the hashtags #icebucketchallenge, #ALSicebucketchallenge, and #strikeoutals.

In July Matt Lauer took the #ALSicebucketchallenge on air, and since a slew of celebrities have since joined in the fun, everyone from Steven Spielberg and Jennifer Aniston to Eminem and Tina Fey. The “rules” can be found on the ALS website, along with videos of some of the MANY who have participated worldwide. The key components of the challenge being, raise awareness for the cause, dump cold water on head, and donate. Of course liberties have been taken and folks all across the internet have put their creativity to use for a great cause, creating some very clever and entertaining variations on the original challenge.

The success of this viral campaign cannot be ignored. To date, the #icebucketchallenge has raised $79.7 million in donations...and is still going strong! ALS is becoming a household topic of conversation and through the awareness and fundraising this campaign has brought, the global community only stands to benefit in the progress made to fight ALS.

The Harrington Group team likes to jump in and get our hands dirty, or wet, when we can in support of a good cause. So take a minute and enjoy watching some of our team taking the challenge to #strikeoutals. Take a look at these videos on our facebook page of partners Sean Cain and Carlos Davis taking the #ALSicebucketchallenge, and give us a like while you're at it. Afterwards, if you feel so inclined, grab a bucket and join the fun. It feels good to do good!

<BREAKING NEWS>
Ozzie Torres has accepted Sean Cain's nomination to take the #alsicebucketchallenge! Check out the video on our facebook page! Who does he challenge next?

This month the Client Spotlight on Harrington Group’s blog is focusing close to home on HEAR Center in Pasadena, CA. HEAR Center is Pasadena’s leading speech and hearing clinic and the only non-profit of its kind in the San Gabriel Valley.  HEAR Center’s services include Pediatric Speech Therapy and Pediatric and Adult Audiology—including full Audiological testing and Hearing Aid Dispensing.  In addition to their clinical services, HEAR Center conducts over 100 free community screenings each year as well as free follow-up tests for those who are in need.
 
Founded in 1954, HEAR Center was the first organization in the United States to perform infant hearing testing and then provide amplification for those babies diagnosed as deaf or hard of hearing.  Founder Ciwa Griffiths, ED.D was a teacher for the deaf when she developed the Auditory Approach, the main components of therapy being early identification of the hearing problem, treatment with hearing aids, and then the training needed to teach the act of listening and speaking. The main idea behind the Auditory Approach is that if you can identify a child with a hearing loss early in their life and have the chance to treat that loss with a hearing device early on, you increase the chances of that child being able to develop normal speech and language through therapy.
 
Today, HEAR Center’s mission is to help individuals at all stages of life be active participants in the hearing and speaking world.  With an emphasis on providing first-rate care to all, regardless of the ability to pay, they fill a vital role in the Pasadena healthcare community.  Their vision is to be a “Center of Excellence in providing expertise, assistance, compassion, and technology to all those with hearing loss or speech and language impairments as well as those who care for them.”
 
Led by Executive Director (and longtime HEAR Center Audiologist), Ellen Simon, the HEAR Center operates by a list of core values that influence all of their communication and the work they do on a daily basis. “We are committed to meeting the highest levels of service by ensuring we are accountable and responsive to the communities we serve and focused on making a difference;  we foster and honor strong relationships with our partners and affiliates; our choices are driven by continuous improvement and innovation and aims for excellence and integrity; and our practices reflect a commitment to cultural diversity and the knowledge necessary to serve our members with respect and competence,” explains Simon.
 
Community members in need of hearing aid, audiology or speech services not only receive exceptional, state-of-the-art care at HEAR Center, but they also know that the fees for their services in turn help those who are less fortunate and cannot afford the care they need.
 
We are proud at Harrington Group to have the opportunity to serve HEAR Center.

This month, Harrington Group’s Partner Feature is focusing on helping you to get to know our partner Carlos Davis,
CPA. Carlos is a member of the California Society of Certified Public Accountants and the American Institute of Certified  
  Public Accountants (AICPA).

Born into a family of accountants in Lima, Peru, Carlos began his first accounting job
 in high school by performing physical inventories. When Carlos graduated from high school, he did what all young
people do and tried to fight against his family calling to be an accountant. He was accepted and entered the Arts
 Program at the Catholic University in Lima. After two years in the Arts Program Carlos decided he needed to answer his
calling and give into the genetic calling for him to be an accountant. He entered the Universidad San Martin de
Porres’ to focus on becoming an accountant. After his first semester, Carlos began working as a CPA at a firm called
Pizarro, Coloma & Asociados, and thus his auditing career began. Carlos worked as Staff Auditor and Audit
Manager for Comptroller General performing operational and financial audits on government agencies.

In 1999, Carlos joined Harrington Group from his nonprofit, JLV Home Health Care Agencies, where he worked as
an Accounting Manager. During his time at JLV Home Health Care Services, Carlos had the opportunity to see what
 incredible good nonprofits can do for those in need. It was during this time that Carlos truly embraced the
passion for the nonprofit sector and all that can be accomplished through the hard work of those that choose to help.

Carlos’ work at Harrington Group is primarily focused on servicing our clients who are government funded nonprofits.
His clients include mental health service providers, non-public schools, child care agencies residential programs,
vocational training agencies, foster family agencies and legal services corporations. Carlos is bilingual, speaking
both English and Spanish, he particularly enjoys the aspect of the ob where he gets to focus his attention on
communicating with the clients and building relationships with them.

This month, Harrington Group is proud to feature Job M. Quesada in our Partner Profile. Job joined Harrington Group in 1991 after spending some time at Ernst & Young. Job is member of the California Society of Certified Public Accountants (CalCPA) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and acts in an advisory capacity to the Boards of Directors of numerous nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles.

Job credits his large family and strong faith for moulding him into the person that he is today. Job is the eldest of his five brothers and three sisters and never misses an opportunity to spoil his twenty-nine nephews and nieces and twenty-four grand nephews and grand nieces, as he loves to pamper them whenever he has an opportunity to do so.
If you love the Dodgers,The Angels,The Giants, if any one of these great California teams are close to your heart, you and Job M. Quesada have something in common. Job loves all three. Having grown up in Los Angeles, his love for baseball began with the Dodgers, a move to Orange County stirred his love for the Angels, and ample time spent in San Francisco for Harrington Group and it’s clients began an affinity for the Giants. When any of these teams play, Job is never disappointed.

Job has proven to be a dedicated and committed member of the Harrington Group team. With over twenty years of experience in public accounting, tax, audit and pension plan matters, Job has served a wide variety of nonprofit organizations over the course of his career. Some of the clients served by Job and his team have been foster care facilities, legal aid services, and non-public schools, just to name a few, with each, Job has used his years of experience and expertise to rise to the occasion. Job continues to be able to understand the complex issues that arise in the business world when dealing with the finances of the nonprofit world, and continues to go above and beyond to satisfy his clients and meet all of their needs. A perfect example of Job’s dedication to his clients was his willingness to travel to a very unstable Afghanistan, not once but twice in order to work personally with one of his clients in their own business environment. Throughout his trips, when faced with less than stellar circumstances, Job always chose to focus on the positive, a practice he carries through life and his work.

If you love the Dodgers,The Angels,The Giants, if any one of these great California teams are close to your heart, you and Job M. Quesada have something in common. Job loves all three. Having grown up in Los Angeles, his love for baseball began with the Dodgers, a move to Orange County stirred his love for the Angels, and ample time spent in San Francisco for Harrington Group and it’s clients began an affinity for the Giants. When any of these teams play, Job is never disappointed.

This month, Harrington Group’s Client Spotlight is focused on LAUP in Los Angeles. LAUP operates on the principle that if a child has the opportunity to go to a quality preschool then they will be more likely to graduate from high school, need remediation or special education, attend college and obtain higher-wage jobs. Period.

In a nation where everyone is understood to have the same rights and freedoms, there is a great divide created by the opportunities available to those who are privileged and those who go without. It is LAUP’s goal to give those children with less the same head start and early learning opportunities as other children so that they will have the same fighting chance to live out their potential.

“Every year, LAUP helps over 10,000 children from various cultural and socio-economic backgrounds receive an outstanding educational experience focused on knowledge, lifestyle, and health, creating a solid foundation for a child’s growth and development.”



With a commitment to accessibility and affordability, LAUP, provides quality coaching and funding to preschools across Los Angeles County so that parents can enroll their children at little to no cost. LAUP works hard to serve as the model for creating a network of free public preschools that allow every child , regardless of his or her individual economic circumstances, to have the same opportunity to enter kindergarten well prepared.

In addition, LAUP places an importance on physical activity and nutrition through all of its programs. It helps facilities to understand the importance of both in early childhood development and works with preschools to integrate programs to support both physical and nutritional health into their everyday. LAUP realizes that it is one thing to learn these good habits, but the real success comes in maintaining the lifestyle; therefore, LAUP makes it a point to teach and encourage families to make physical activity and good nutrition a part of their daily lives at home.

LAUP also realizes that there is a great need for quality Early Care Education facilitators and educators in order to meet the growing need within the community. LAUP’s response to this growing need is to offer and facilitate the Los Angeles Early Care and Education Workforce Consortium, “with the goal of improving the capacity of the ECE workforce in Los Angeles County.”

Thank you, LAUP, for all that you do to give the youth in Los Angeles County an equal and fighting chance to live out their potential and be everything they are meant to be. At Harrington Group, we are proud to be a part of all the good you do to provide our children a better tomorrow.

This month, Harrington Group is turning their client spotlight North to one of our clients in Oakland, California, BANANAS Incorporated. BANANAS is an organization who provides all families with referrals to child care options including but not limited to licensed child care, personal nannies and babysitters. In the case that the family needs financial assistance to provide the care for their children, BANANAS can help families to find programs that offer subsidized care.

In addition to helping to provide childcare for families, BANANAS offers training and assistance to child care providers.

Founded in 1973, BANANAS began as a playgroup for mothers, a social group of sorts. As women in this group began entering the workforce, a need for quality childcare was born. The group evolved into a resource & referral agency to support working families in their search for quality care.

BANANAS’s mission statement defines their core intentions to help their community: “To ensure that all families in Northern Alameda County – regardless of income – have access to childcare and early childhood education through a range of services tailored to support the individual needs of parents and providers.”



BANANAS has a wide range of services available to families in their community. Child care referrals is only the beginning in a long list of assistance available through BANANAS. Families in crisis and facing emergency situations that affect their need for child care can receive help through BANANAS to be able to find immediate care that they can afford. They also provide parental counseling and help parents and providers by offering a library of educational media; books, videos, pamphlets, etc, for anyone who might want or need them. Families that wish to take advantage of these services can visit the center and participate in their children’s clothing exchange, which is free to anyone in need.

In addition to offering assistance to families, BANANAS works hard to aid in the launching of new child care facilities and to provide ongoing technical assistance to existing child care providers. If you are an already existing provider and you need assistance in training or certification, or wish to hire individuals with the proper credentials, BANANAS can help to facilitate all these needs. Also, if you are an individual who wishes to work in child care, become certified, or find a job in the field, BANANAS can help with this as well. Each service is just a small part in accomplishing the bigger picture, making sure that there is excellent quality care available for families that need it.

Its hard to imagine that there is anything that a family in need might require that BANANAS does not in some way help facilitate. They seem to have thought of everything. We are happy to have BANANAS as a valued client and we are proud of the work they do to help our children to have a better and brighter future. Harrington Group honors you BANANAS and all the good work that you do.

This month, the Blog at Harrington Group is taking time to feature Sean E. Cain in our Partner Profile. Sean joined Harrington Group in 1996, and has since proven invaluable to his clients. Sean is a true believer in Harrington Group’s core values, “knowledge, service, and respect,” and demonstrates his belief in all of his work and with each client.

Sean credits his ambition and drive, his strong work ethic and his love and dedication to his family to his upbringing and life as a child. Sean was raised , along with his three siblings, by a single other. When he was thirteen years old, his family made the cross country move from New Jersey to California. Sean worked hard, putting himself through California State University, upon graduating, he began his work with The United Way in San Bernardino, California and later while at Harrington Group, he earned his CPA license. When Sean was just 33 he was invited into partnership by noneother than Joe Harrington himself.

Sean is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), as well as a proud member of the Pasadena Rotary Club, where he serves on a number of committees and has recently been selected as the incoming treasurer for 2014/2015. His work with the Rotary Club recently found Sean and his wife in Tecate, Mexico where they performed service work, building four homes for four families in need, working with an organization called corazon.org.
When Sean is not busy eagerly satisfying the needs of his clients, Sean spends his time with his wife and his two teenage sons. The family loves adventure and can be found anywhere from camping in the desert to checking out the latest car show.

Sean truly loves that in his work he is able to marry his passion for the business and accounting world with his love for nonprofit organizations and all that they do to serve their communities. He is proud of the work he does to help those who help others in need.




 

At Harrington Group, we have created an environment of professionalism and creativity, a place that is client oriented and where everyone takes pride in their work and discovering what it takes to meet the individual needs of our clients. We didn’t achieve all this over night, our company’s success is the product of the hard work and dedication of our partners. We wanted to take a few minutes and introduce you to the people to whom we owe it all, who keep us motivated.

This month we are focusing our attention on Tonetta L. Conner, CPA, Managing Partner at Harrington Group, CPAs, LLP. Tonetta is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the California Society of Certified Public Accountants (CalCPA). She also holds a Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) designation from the AICPA.

For more than fifteen years Tonetta L. Conner has worked with nonprofits in California through the provision of auditing, accounting, advisory and educational services. Tonetta developed a “thirst” for accounting when she was just fifteen years old. Managing “mock” corporate books in an assignment for her high school accounting course gave her her first taste of what the accounting field had to offer. She knew then that she wanted to do this for a living, help others manage their businesses. This new found passion led her to pursue a degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Accounting from the University of California at Berkeley. Shortly after, she became a certified CPA.

When Tonetta first began her career, she worked at a design-build firm as a controller and later at a Los Angeles based CPA firm as an accountant. In June of 1997, Tonetta began working for Harrington Group. Finally she was in a position to utilize her passion for accounting married with the opportunity to help clients in the nonprofit sector. Tonneta has spent her years at Harrington Group providing tax, accounting, management advisory and audit services to a wide range of nonprofit organizations, this is her area of expertise. Tonetta firmly believes that Harrington Group’s focus is to be a “trusted nonprofit partner,” whether it be for mental health agencies, privately funded community organizations, private or charter schools, or foster care organizations.

Tonetta also has a passion for teaching and public speaking, and has been blessed with the opportunity to share her knowledge through speaking at the California CPA Education Foundation’s Nonprofit Organizations Conference and as a speaker for CompassPoint focusing on nonprofit finance. Tonetta also gets the opportunity to teach and inform through Harrington Group’s series of “NPO Symposiums” which occur quarterly and present the opportunity for her to provide the board members of their clients with pertinent information and training regarding the business and financial management of their organizations.



Tonetta is not only passionate about finance, she has a hunger and passion for adventure and life. She has been called a “daredevil” and “world traveler” by those that know her the best. She loves her family and spending time with them going to events and seeing the world. Perhaps the biggest insight into who Tonetta is and what drives her at the core is her view of the world and main reason for her love of travel - her quest for cultural enlightenment. She best describes her reason for adventure around the world as,“we live in a society made of up people from various backgrounds and cultures. Seeking to know more about other cultures is to embrace that fact.” This broad world view and open mind is why our clients are lucky to have her by their sides, using her accounting, business and global knowledge to help their businesses grow.