Fast 25: Donovan CPAs and Advisors

Revenue growth FY 2022 to 2024: 91.89%
2024 revenue: $10.41 million

Family business: Donovan CPAs and Advisors traces its beginnings to 1972 when Jeff Donovan’s father bought a small tax practice in Danville and renamed it Robert M. Donovan CPA. About 13 years later, Jeff was a student at Indiana University and trying to choose a major. His father told him, “You don’t have to be an accountant, but you need to have some knowledge of accounting.” But Jeff liked his accounting classes. After graduation, he went to work for the big accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick in Micronesia for four years. He joined his father’s firm in 1994.

New title: In 2011, Jeff became managing partner and served in that role until last year. Now his title is “visionary.” His duties include business valuations, succession strategies and planning, trust and estate work, and M&A growth for the firm—“keeping my ear to the ground for firms that would meld in nicely with our firm.” Part of the firm’s growth has come from mergers and acquisitions, three of which occurred from November 2022
to January 2024. “And we’ve had double-digit organic growth in addition
to that.”

Variety of expertise: Donovan CPAs offers a range of services “because we have a lot of really smart people who work here,” he said. Its specialties include real estate, education—the firm does a lot of work with charter schools—affordable housing, construction, manufacturing and distribution, nonprofits, and individual business income taxes.

Anticipating disruptions: Donovan said he expects major disruptions in accounting caused by private equity acquisitions and artificial intelligence. “I’m not going to say that private equity coming into our profession is a bad thing, but it is causing a lot of consolidation.” As for AI, it’s “going to enable us to work more efficiently, to work more knowledgeably.” He predicted that, in the next 36 months, relatively routine accounting functions such as income taxes, bookkeeping, payroll and auditing will be handled by artificial intelligence.

Two lists: This is Donovan CPAs’ second year on both the IBJ’s Fast 25 and Indiana’s Best Places to Work lists. “Strong growth, by definition, is disruptive,” Donovan said. “It’s all those negative feelings team members feel when you’re growing fast and there’s so much changing. Yet we’re still on both lists. That is the accolade I truly treasure.”•

Check out more of IBJ’s ranking of Indy’s fastest-growing companies.