Центр государственных исследований NIU десятилетиями сотрудничает со студентами-бухгалтерами для поддержки некоммерческих организаций

For nearly ten years, NIU’s Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) has hired a graduate accounting student each year to work with the Association Management team and their nonprofit client, the American Planning Association-Illinois Chapter (APA-IL), as well as to assist other nonprofit associations. The collaboration has been a win-win, helping students experience accounting from the client perspective while providing high-quality bookkeeping and financial review to associations of public service professionals. Maddison Gentry, who worked as a CGS graduate assistant for the 2025-26 school year, says her CGS experience helped her understand the daily complexities of bookkeeping from the client’s perspective. Gentry earned her undergraduate degree in accounting from NIU after attending her local community college. She completed her master’s degree in accounting in May 2026 and is currently studying for her Certified Public Accountant exam. In 2027 Gentry will begin working as an auditor for the accounting firm where she interned earlier in her schooling. “One thing we talk a lot about in audit classes is understanding the client and understanding their controls and processes,” Gentry says. “I feel like working with CGS, I learned what is meant by that. Being on the client side, I can see where all our transactions are processed, how we record things and how we handle cash disbursements, for example. It was great to see the complexities of those processes day-to-day. It turns out, it’s more complex than you might expect!” Gentry says she enjoyed the learning process of working with many different payment processing platforms, which is now common across businesses and nonprofit organizations. “I was surprised by how many different platforms a business can use to process transactions,” she says. “Sometimes, a single transaction will go through two different payment processing companies! It was a bit challenging because, if I was doing month-end procedures, sometimes the transaction would be processed through one of the companies but not the other. Things would get out of balance, and I’d be looking for one number that’s throwing everything off. It can lead you on a goose chase sometimes, but it was fun. I sometimes felt like a detective.” CGS Research Specialist and APA-IL Executive Director Paula Freeze says this meeting of theory and practice was one of the goals of bringing in a graduate assistant bookkeeper. While the student gains experience with the daily realities of accounting at a nonprofit association, the CGS Association Management team benefits from the expertise of the students, who have already completed their undergraduate degrees and accounting internships. The CGS Association Management team provides administrative support, from meeting planning and bookkeeping to governance, for associations that serve professionals in public service and nonprofits. Current clients include the APA-IL and the Illinois City/County Management Association, Illinois Local Government Lawyers, National Association of County Administrators and the Wisconsin City/County Management Association. The Association Management team searches for graduate assistants to work with the team, to provide financial support for their clients and primarily serve as the Financial Administrator with the American Planning Association – Illinois Chapter. Activities include processing checks, making deposits, preparing financials, managing invoices and assisting with administrative work. “Many of the accounting students are at a point where they’ve had an internship, and this complements what they’ve done before because it’s very different,” Freeze says. “Generally, in their internships the students are on the accountant side. With this graduate assistantship, they’re the bookkeeper within the organization, on the other side of the process, from the client perspective, which is a great learning experience.” Freeze says the associations also benefit. “Every year, when a new graduate assistant starts, we get fresh eyes on our books. Each graduate student looks at things a little differently. They’re able to catch any mistakes that a previous GA may have made, simple math errors or not categorizing something correctly.” “The other benefit is that we ask questions of the graduate student: What do you think is the best way of doing this? What is the best policy in this situation?  If they don’t know, they can research and talk with their professors. That helps us develop really good processes and policies for all the associations we work with.” In fact, one of the projects Gentry worked on during her assistantship was an update to the APA-IL’s Fiscal Policy Manual to establish new protocols associated with the combining of financials between the APA-IL and its sections. She says it was a valuable experience to have first-hand experience with fiscal policy, which provides consistency to an organization through any staff or leadership changes. “All businesses have, or should have, a fiscal policy, and it becomes especially important as they’re getting into a financial review or audit. The auditors rely on that and make sure the organization is following it. The fiscal policy is also helpful within the organization. The policy helps keep processes clear and ensures that people are doing things in the same way every year, rather than having a new process with every person.” As she moves on to the next stage of her career, Gentry says she highly recommends other NIU master’s degree students apply for a graduate assistantship. “Not only do you get a partial tuition waiver, which is important, you also get valuable work experience within the university setting that can give you the flexibility to focus on your schoolwork.” Freeze says she and the CGS staff are grateful for the amazing accounting graduate assistants who have worked for them over the years. “We trust their professionalism,” she says. “It’s a testament to the high quality of the undergraduate and graduate accounting programs at NIU, and we’re happy to continue working with their excellent students.”