Accounting for Government & Not-For-Profit Organizations

Final year Master of Accountancy students will utilize their knowledge and skills to address business challenges related to not-for-profit and governmental accounting. The scope of these projects can be tailored to fit the needs of community partners. Students in this course have both a strong academic background and come with industry experience.

Please note: This course recruits multiple Not-for-Profit and Government Organizations who will have a dedicated team working with them on their needs.

You will be a good fit for this project if you need assistance with any of the following:

• Funding problems, and how to address them
• Capital structure (fees, funding, donations)
• Cost and fee structure
• Fiscal sustainability
• Accounting systems review
• Pandemic recovery related challenges (i.e.: revenue challenges, fee/funding challenges)

As this is a final year course for our Master of Accounting students, other areas of business could be integrated to find a fulsome solution.

MBA students will work with you to better understand and utilize your data to improve your services offered. Students in this course gain an understanding of advanced business analytics while utilizing descriptive and predictive modelling techniques and will use current data mining software to apply such techniques. The scope of this project can be tailored to fit the needs of community partners. An ideal partner would have access to between 1,500 to 10,000 text based entries in a dataset for students to work with. This is not required, but will enhance the project greatly.

You will be a good fit for this project if you need assistance with any of the following:

• Analyzing restaurant reviews to better understand customers and their needs
• Identifying potential donors to organization to solicit new/returning dollars more efficiently
• Taking employee/member survey results to the next level by finding patterns in responses
• Developing a predictive model to retain/attract clients/employees/donors

Fourth year and MBA students will work with Community Partners to address their business strategy needs. Strategic Planning projects are beneficial for your organization if you are looking into expansion, growth, or you are at a crossroads that impacts the future of your business/organization.

This project is a fit for your organization if the following topics are of interest:

• •  Understanding an organization’s relative position in each industry through the assessment of:
    • • Relevant external factors and trends, including political, social, legal, and environmental trends
      • Existing and emerging competitive forces in the industry, including, other similar organizations, suppliers, and buyers
• Identifying opportunities for growth and expansion including:
  • New social and geographical market segments
  • Innovations or additions to existing service/product portfolio
  • Strategic partnerships (incl. mergers and acquisitions)
• Determining relevant structural aspects that will help with the execution of a proposed strategic plan:
  • Top management and leadership changes
  • Allocating resources and capabilities
• Pivoting strategic plans in the face of disruptive events:
  • Revising your vision and long-term goals
  • Developing scenarios of the future
  • Implementing social and environmental goals

Interested Community Partners will be asked to complete an additional information survey regarding your organization to determine fit and eligibility. The survey will be sent after you submit the form below.

Second-year/MBA students in an Organizational Behaviour course will work throughout the semester to provide recommendations that align with their course content to support the Community Partner’s needs. Course content will be aligned with identified needs, so please indicate areas of greatest need from the list below:

• Motivation strategies for staff.
• Adapting to change – transitioning back to the office, changes in the org, coming back into different roles.
• Internal community strategies.
• Addressing burnout in your organization – ways to improve and alleviate.
• Managing change with your organization (leadership or reporting structure).
• Workplace culture & environment.
• Workplace stress – strategies for improving.

Marketing Plans

Second year students will be working with your business to create a one-year marketing plan. students will review current marketing activities and provide feedback and recommendations using concepts from the course.

This project is a fit for your organization if you are in need of the following:

• SWOT Analysis.
• PEST Analysis.
• Competitive Analysis.
• Environmental Scan.
• New customer segmentation and analysis.
• New marketing strategies for a product or service.

Consumer Behaviour

Fourth-year & MBA students will be working with your not-for-profit, small for-profit, or wine industry business on a consumer behaviour project. Teams of students (4-5) will work with a community partner to analyze a problem or challenge that the organization is experiencing with their clients/consumers and provide recommendations to improve their customers’ experience. Project examples include:

• An organization may be experiencing a drop-off in attendance at its major fundraising event and wants to understand the reasons why and how to address the decline.
• A business might find customers only walk through the front half of the store and not to the back half, and want to know why.
• A business has brick & mortar and online sales lines and wants to better understand why customers favour one over the other.
• A business/organization may have a product/service that does not seem to be meeting its potential and wants to know why more customers/ clients aren’t buying or participating.
• A business may want to improve customer experience in their shop/service centre, and a team could pose as “secret shoppers” to observe and then make recommendations.

This capstone project pairs Year 4 students with community & industry partners seeking data-informed solutions to real-world challenges. The project takes place over 2 semesters, for a total of 8 months. The scope of the project will be co-developed with a supervising faculty member and the partner organization and may include objectives such as finding a data-driven solution for operational workflows, providing a predictive solution for key metrics, identifying risk patterns, or developing interactive decision-support tools for reporting, and other related challenges with similar scope.

You might be a fit for this project if you have need for:

Data Cleaning

If you have a large dataset, but it needs to be cleaned, structured, and prepared to be utilized for analytics, this would be a great stream for you. Many organizations collect a large amount of data, but it is inconsistent or incomplete. Our students will apply their learnings throughout their program to clean & prepare your data for future use.

Data Reporting

If you have a dataset that is ready for further processing, but lack the expertise to develop tools to report on the data, students can apply their learning to develop PowerBI or Excel dashboards. These powerful tools can help you visualize your data, see trends, and grow your understanding of what is happening in your data.

Data Modeling & Prediction

If you have a good dataset and you want to use past data to provide predictive analytics, students can apply their learning to develop a predictive model based on your data.

Deliverables

Semester 1:

• Project Charter: Clear articulation of the problem, goals, data requirements, and roles.
• Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA): Initial insights, data quality assessment, and identification of relevant features.
• Technical Proposal: Preliminary methodology for analysis or modelling, including potential tools, algorithms, and metrics.
• Progress Presentation: Mid-term update to academic and partner audiences.

Semester 2:

• Model/Tool Development: Implementation of analytical models, dashboards, or automation workflows.
• Validation & Impact Assessment: Performance evaluation using appropriate business or operational metrics; discussion of practical implications.
• Documentation & User Guide: Final technical documentation and, where applicable, user instructions.
• Final Presentation & Submission: A comprehensive project report and presentation to stakeholders.

Student Expectations

The capstone emphasizes applied, experiential learning, preparing students for professional roles in data science and analytics. Students are expected to:

• Complete the full analytics lifecycle: data acquisition, cleaning, modeling, interpretation, and communication.
• Leverage domain-specific knowledge based on their concentration:
  • Computational Data Sciences: emphasis on scalable computation, automation, advanced analytics.
  • Financial Analytics: focus on economic impact, financial modeling, and risk-based decision-making.
• Collaborate effectively across disciplinary boundaries and with external stakeholders.
• Address ethical, legal, and practical considerations in real-world data work.

The project provides students with a culminating opportunity to integrate academic learning into a practical, high-impact environment while delivering value to a partner organization.