An Illinois native, Lisa Stevenson moved to Phoenix after college, where she eventually started NPO Accountants, a firm specializing in supporting nonprofit organizations. Now, more than two decades later, she’s moved back to Illinois and merged her firm with another Phoenix-based accounting firm.
The merger of NPO and Four Leaf Financial & Accounting created a new firm — operating under the name Four Leaf Accounting. Four Leaf Accounting is dedicated exclusively to serving nonprofits and provides services such as accounting, bookkeeping, Form 990 preparation, audit preparation, grant reporting and advisory services. Four Leaf operates locally out of an office at Innovate Springfield’s downtown business incubator, although most of its employees work remotely.
Stevenson unintentionally found her way into nonprofit accounting. After finishing graduate school, she was volunteering at a Phoenix nonprofit while job hunting. Two days after she started volunteering, the organization’s vice president called her and offered her a job.
“And I never looked back,” Stevenson said. “I kind of feel like nonprofit chose me, not the other way around.”
Stevenson became the nonprofit’s director of operations, a role in which she wore many hats — one being handling the organization’s accounting. While working at the nonprofit, Stevenson had three children in three years.
“I couldn’t afford daycare because I worked at a nonprofit,” she said. “I realized I love doing bookkeeping for nonprofits, so I started my own firm.”
She said she interviewed at other, established firms before launching NPO in 2014, but she wanted a work/life balance that better accommodated her young family.
“Their idea of flexibility for a working mom was not ideal,” she said. “So that’s how my firm started.”
Stevenson kept NPO focused both on working exclusively with nonprofits and on creating a family friendly, flexible work environment as the firm grew.
“I’ve had the opportunity to create meaningful work opportunities for really smart, driven women,” she said. “I had to create that opportunity for myself, so I wanted to share it with other women.”
While still based in Phoenix, she often rubbed shoulders with Jill Foley, founder of the former Four Leaf Financial & Accounting. Foley’s firm also served nonprofits, and Stevenson sometimes would contract work out to her firm.
“We have always been working in the same space,” Stevenson said. “I always called us friendly competitors.”