12 Feb 2024 | 4 mins

Are you passionate about making a difference? Are you concerned about the environment, cost of living or everyone having access to free education? Now think about a change-maker making an impact - what do they look like? Chances are you see someone at a rally, setting up an online petition or convening a meeting.

No doubt, those people are doing some awesome stuff, but not all of us are Greta Thunbergs in the making. You know what though - that’s okay! There are loads of careers out there that make a difference in the causes you care about - and some of them might not be the ones you expect.

For instance, there’s a career out there that gives you the opportunity to change and influence organisations, businesses, not-for-profits and governments from the inside - and it’s called accounting.

On its surface, accounting is about using strategic and analytical skills to support individuals, businesses and organisations to achieve their goals. This often involves understanding how an organisation operates, and how all of its resources work together to get things done in order to make recommendations, suggest improvements and influence decision-making.

How accountants influence for-profit organisations

Just because a company is for-profit, doesn’t mean it can’t make a positive difference in the world. In fact, many companies talk a lot about some of the positive initiatives they’re involved in - things like being carbon neutral, using recycled materials, being powered by renewable energy or simply donating a portion of their profits to a charity. These kinds of initiatives are usually grouped together into something called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

As we discussed before, accountants specialise in helping companies achieve their goals - and areas like CSR and sustainability are no exception.
There are even accountants who choose to focus on measuring and advising on sustainability. They use tools like life-cycle assessments, which is where you take a look at the total financial and environmental cost of a product from gathering the materials all the way to when it’s disposed of. By zooming out and taking a look at what goes into making a product or delivering a service, they can spot places where they could save money, time or resources to reduce their environmental footprint.

It’s a real win-win for the company and the world. I’m sure you’ve bought things from certain businesses because they support a cause that’s important to you, from sustainability to human rights. Great CSR attracts more business, which means more revenue - which then leads to more good being done in the world. Pretty cool, huh?

How accountants can help not-for-profits and charities

For some organisations, making a profit isn’t the goal or purpose at all - but that doesn’t mean that accountants can’t make a difference in this space.
Having a professional accountant in a not-for-profit means you can have someone to help ensure that people’s donations are being used as effectively as possible, and are making the biggest impact they can. This is obviously a great thing for a few reasons.

The first is that accountants can help to make sure the costs of operation are as low as possible by finding opportunities to trim the fat. Keeping costs low is super important for not-for-profits as it helps them to keep the lights on while redirecting extra funds to help their cause. Imagine you’re running a not-for-profit that makes eco-friendly products. By zooming out and taking a big-picture approach, you might figure out that you could save the money you were spending on delivery charges, and spend it on making better products, giving your best staff a raise, or even running an awareness campaign to increase donations! By improving how the organisation works, you can make a real difference to the causes you care about.

Accountants can also help to define and measure success for these organisations. After all, the whole purpose of not-for-profits is to provide some kind of social good - so it would be a pretty big deal to be able to figure out just how much good you’re doing. By using their strategic and analytical skills, accountants could do things like measure environmental impacts from local composting programs, employment outcomes in disadvantaged communities, or changes in government policies.

So if you’re keen to learn more about how thinking differently about money could help you make a difference, make sure you check out our free super-short course ‘Business Class’ - coming soon!