Finance

FACULTY: Chris Good

TEAM: Lifu Cao, Tatiana Evans, Bailey Li, Rongbo Zhang

Albany Diocesan Cemeteries (ADC) is a nonprofit operating 23 cemeteries in New York’s Capital Region and Upper Hudson Valley. To ensure long-term sustainability, ADC sought strategies to enhance financial resilience through revenue diversity, partnerships, and community engagement. For ADC to maintain its cemeteries and serve families amid industry challenges, financial stability is critical. The Capstone Team was tasked with identifying opportunities to strengthen ADC’s fiscal health and community ties. They conducted desktop research on industry trends, analyzed ADC’s financial data and internal documents, interviewed staff across departments, and benchmarked practices against peer organizations. The final report provides actionable recommendations to diversify revenue streams, foster partnerships, and boost public engagement, such as expanding memorialization services and creating community outreach programs. These strategies aim to secure ADC’s operational sustainability while deepening its connection to the communities it serves.

FACULTY: Mark Young

TEAM: Karsten Cui, Bingqing Hu, Nyxia Huang, Klara Steupert, Becky Zhao, Jiaxuan Zhou

The Bowery Residents’ Committee (BRC) is a leading New York City nonprofit providing housing and supportive services to individuals and families experiencing homelessness. As a key part of the city’s social safety net, BRC’s financial sustainability is critical to maintaining its mission amid rising costs and low rent collection rates. Financial instability threatens BRC’s ability to serve vulnerable populations effectively. The Capstone team was tasked with identifying strategies to improve rent collection and boost revenue to strengthen BRC’s fiscal health. They analyzed BRC’s financial reports, Yardi database records, staff interviews, and peer organization surveys to understand systemic challenges. The final recommendations propose early intervention protocols for payment issues, a digital rent payment platform with automated invoicing, tailored strategies for high-delinquency properties, and exploring third-party property management partnerships. These solutions aim to enhance BRC’s rent collection processes and long-term financial sustainability while aligning with its mission to support homeless individuals and families.

FACULTY: Gerry Ring

TEAM:  Julie Krupnick, Muze Li, Ella Sun, Zhiwei Wang, Mike Yan, Yuanhao Zhu

Corlears School is an independent early childhood institution in New York City committed to equitable, inquiry-based education for children ages two through ten. This work matters because integrating publicly funded programming like Head Start into Corlears’ tuition-based model could increase socioeconomic diversity and expand access to high-quality early education. The Capstone team was tasked with assessing the feasibility of such integration, including operational, financial, and mission alignment considerations. The team conducted a demographic analysis to evaluate eligibility, researched public funding requirements and foundation grant alternatives, and assessed alignment with Corlears’ curriculum and values. Final recommendations outlined a scalable public/private partnership model balancing benefits like community reach and diversity with regulatory compliance and programmatic fit challenges, guiding Corlears toward equitable, sustainable access solutions.

FACULTY: Chris Good

TEAM:  Ruijie Li, Monica Xu, Yafeng Zhang, Wen Zhong

Guidehouse, a global consulting firm specializing in public sector financial management and process optimization, partnered with the Small Business Administration (SBA) to enhance its 7(a) loan program, which provides critical financing to small businesses for working capital, equipment, and real estate. This work matters because the program’s reliance on manual document validation creates inefficiencies, delays, and errors, undermining timely support for small businesses. The Capstone team was tasked with identifying AI-driven solutions to automate the loan settlement process, reducing manual verification and improving accuracy. The team analyzed SBA’s workflow, reviewed historical loan data, and benchmarked automation tools used in financial document handling to achieve this. Final recommendations included an implementation framework integrating Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) and Automated Quality Control (AQC), detailed in a white paper outlining efficiency gains, risk mitigation strategies, and steps to enhance scalability and compliance—positioning SBA to modernize operations and better serve small businesses.

FACULTY: Chris Good

TEAM:  Patrick Goggins, Nan Jiang, Han Wu, Jiacheng Xu

The Lumina Foundation aims to increase the number of adults with educational credentials beyond high school, including college degrees, certificates, and other industry credentials. Higher education institution (HEI) closures disrupt students’ academic progress and reduce credential attainment rates. To address this, Lumina engaged the Capstone Team to survey risk factors for HEI closures and analyze the regulatory framework for HEI financial monitoring by state. The Capstone Team conducted a state-by-state review of relevant regulatory entities and the scope of their financial monitoring policies. Additionally, the team reviewed nationwide data sets on HEIs in the context of early warning metrics for closures, following a review of academic and professional literature on the subject. Using this research, the team created a report that the Lumina Foundation can provide to internal and external stakeholders. The report details the current regulatory triad of national, state, and accreditation organizations, identifies areas for improvement in financial monitoring frameworks, assesses risk factors for HEI closures, and provides case studies on school closures and regulatory monitoring metrics.

FACULTY: Mark Young

TEAM:  Naysha Diaz, Siyu Huang, Ce Liu, Yue Lu, Xiaoyi Su, Sage Zhang

PSEG Long Island is a regional electric utility serving over 1.1 million customers and supporting New York’s mandate for all school buses to be zero-emission by 2035. The transition to electric school buses (ESBs) faces barriers such as high upfront costs, infrastructure limitations, and regulatory uncertainty, risking delays in meeting statewide climate goals. The Capstone Team analyzed these financial, operational, and policy challenges and developed actionable recommendations to facilitate the transition. The team conducted a policy analysis, stakeholder interviews, a survey of 12 Long Island school districts, and a national peer review, alongside assessing infrastructure needs and comparing costs of diesel versus electric fleets. Their final report quantifies the financial impacts of the transition and proposes strategic recommendations, including funding solutions, infrastructure upgrades, and policy advocacy. These aim to help PSEG Long Island and school districts achieve a cost-effective, equitable electrification process aligned with the 2035 mandate.