As SI Grows On Long Island, Serving the Community Comes First
Accounting firm Cerini & Associates started small. But like other members of SI’s fast-expanding Long Island chapter, it’s now making a big impact.
Ken Cerini: “This is the community we live in. We want to support those organizations that support us.”
You might think that working in your garage in the dead of a northeast winter would be cold. Ken Cerini says it was, but that it was nothing compared to how hot the garage got in the summertime.
“We had no air conditioning,” he laughs, thinking back on the launch of his accounting practice — inside the detached garage of his Long Island home — in the 1990s. “We only had a fan.”
While its beginnings were humble, today Cerini & Associates is thriving, with some 90 employees and hundreds of clients, mostly in the nonprofit sector, throughout the New York metro area.
The firm is also one of the recent additions to the Satell Institute’s fast-growing Long Island chapter, joining a dozen other businesses that have become SI members.
What links those firms together is the same thing that binds all Satell Institute members: A fierce passion for making their local community stronger.
The Route to Success
Cerini’s decision to open his own accounting firm 30 years ago was the kind of giant leap that all entrepreneurs take — a bet on yourself that doesn’t come without risk. In Cerini’s case, it meant leaving behind a career at Ernst & Young and doing whatever was necessary to support his young family as he got his own business off the ground. As he remembers, “I took on a route delivering newspapers while I was trying to build the practice.”
But the bet has paid off. Not only does Cerini & Associates now have more than 300 nonprofit organizations as clients, but it’s become a valuable resource for the nonprofit community generally.
“I make myself available to any nonprofit organization that wants to reach out and ask questions,” Cerini says. “I’ve had phone calls where I don’t even know who I spoke to. We went over stuff, they said thank you, and I never spoke to them again. But I gave them advice.”
Cerini & Associates has also built a robust education platform, providing research on the nonprofit sector and doing board training sessions. “Education is a super-important part of who we are,” he says. “We believe that education helps to strengthen organizations. And so the more education we can provide, the better.”
A Practice With Purpose
Cerini & Associates has also made Corporate Social Responsibility a key part of its own culture. Several years ago the firm entered into a partnership with Book Fairies, a Long Island organization that distributes books to kids and adults who might not otherwise have access to them.
Not only do the firm’s employees volunteer with the program, but Cerini & Associates has built support for Book Fairies into its own business model: for every hour the firm bills, it assists Book Fairies in distributing a book to a child that does not have access to age-appropriate books. Since the start of the relationship, Cerini & Associates has helped to put more than 300,000 books in the hands of children.
The firm also shines a light on the nonprofit sector through the Imagine Awards, which Cerini describes as “like the Academy Awards of the nonprofit sector.” Nonprofit organizations in New York and on Long Island apply in six different categories; after interviews and judging, the winners each receive a $5,000 grant.
But the impact isn’t just financial. The awards are a way to highlight the extraordinary work that nonprofits do while also giving them a venue to learn from and even collaborate with one another.
And, as with all CSR initiatives, the awards help Cerini & Associates as a business, boosting their name and building connections.
Keeping Long Island Strong
Support for the nonprofit sector is strong on Long Island, as can be seen from the rapid growth of SI’s Long Island chapter.
M&T Bank was the first to join the Satell Institute last year, but since then a dozen more companies have also become members, including Allied Jet LLC, ECentral Medical Management, OG Multiservices, John McGowan & Sons, KGG Enterprises, Vanguard Benefits, Vantage Realty Partners, All Boro Inc., and Costello’s ACE Hardware.
The members are supporting an array of nonprofits that boost life on Long Island, from Island Harvest and Baby Essentials of Long Island to Old Westbury College Foundation.
As Cerini says, it’s all about community. “This is the community we live in. This is a community that’s been good to us, so we want to support those organizations that support us.”
It’s the perfect representation of SI’s motto: “Community is EVERY leader’s business.”
