Many nonprofit organizations develop budgets based on traditional methods utilized by accountants and finance managers. This is good for external reporting but less useful for internal decision-making about organizational priorities and alignment to the budget. Activity Based Costing (ABC) is an approach that makes transparent all the activities of the organization and their associated costs which provides useful information to management. This session introduces the concept of ABC accounting, benefits and showcases real-world examples.
Educational Objectives and/or Takeaways
Lance Lewis is the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of the California Medical Association (CMA), representing more than 43,000 members. As COO, he oversees the Departments of Executive Management, Physician Governance, Finance and Administration, Human Resources, Information Technology and Facilities Management. With more than 20 years of experience, Lewis has distinguished himself as a chief executive with expertise in strategy execution and cultivator of talent, systems, and processes that support a high-performance culture. During his tenure as COO, Lewis has transformed the budgeting process from a traditional accounting method to an activity-based costing model, orchestrated the sale of a subsidiary creating a perpetual endowment for CMA, restructured/eliminated long-term debt, and implemented a new interoperable Association Management System connecting CMA to 42 component medical organizations and related subsidiaries. Lewis earned his MBA from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. In 2017, he was named CFO of the Year by the Sacramento Business Journal.