Five New England CPA societies have approved a merger that will create a 14,500-member regional organization, a move leaders say will strengthen advocacy efforts and help address workforce challenges facing the accounting profession.
Effective July 1, the CPA societies of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont will combine to form the New England Society of CPAs. The organization will maintain staff across the five states while continuing state-specific advocacy and local member engagement through regional leadership structures.
The merger creates one of the largest CPA society organizations in the country. Leaders said the combined organization will provide expanded learning opportunities and increased resources for accounting and finance professionals while increasing the profession’s ability to attract future CPAs.
“This is a member-first opportunity to build on the strengths of each of our state societies and create a more impactful organization for the profession across New England,” Zach Donah, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Society of CPAs, said in a statement. Donah will serve as president and CEO of the new organization.
The merger also aims to strengthen the profession’s talent pipeline. Leaders said combining resources across five states will allow the organization to expand outreach efforts to students and future CPAs while increasing awareness of accounting career opportunities throughout the region.
Could more state societies follow?
While merger leaders emphasized things like workforce development and member advocacy, the move also prompted questions about whether additional state societies could pursue similar combinations. Speaking on a June 1 episode of The Accounting Podcast, co-host David Leary suggested the merger could represent more than a regional consolidation.
“It’s kind of crazy,” Leary said. “They’ve combined together like a Voltron ring,” referring to a gag item from the film “Deadpool.”
Leary pointed to the disparity in membership size among the participating societies. Massachusetts accounts for roughly 11,500 of the new organization’s expected 14,500 members, while Vermont has approximately 800 members and Maine roughly 1,000.
Still, he said the economics behind the merger are understandable as smaller professional organizations face increasing pressure to justify membership and maintain resources. “It makes sense for the small states,” Leary said. “How do you have an executive team? How do you employ the people that need to work at these state societies with that few members?”
Leary argued that state societies face many of the same pressures affecting the broader accounting profession, including membership growth challenges and changing expectations around member value.
“What is the value of joining your state society?” he said. “It used to be getting CPE, but now you can get CPE anywhere.” The larger question, he said, is whether the New England merger could become a blueprint for other regions.
“Are we going to come down to four über-societies?” he asked.
While acknowledging the question is speculative, Leary suggested that a handful of larger regional organizations could eventually carry greater weight in national discussions involving CPA mobility and licensure reform.
“If you see a couple other of these mergers happen and you have four or five large organizations now, they have a lot more power with NASBA and the AICPA,” Leary said. “We could be seeing a power shift of who’s in control here.”
A profession already moving toward greater coordination
The New England merger comes after several years of increasing coordination among state CPA societies, particularly around efforts to reform CPA licensure requirements and improve interstate mobility.
In an April 2025 interview with CFO.com, New York State Society of CPAs CEO Calvin Harris Jr., whose organization is one of the largest with 21,000 members, said “states talk more than people realize” and described state societies as being in “constant contact” as they worked through proposals related to CPA licensure reform.
That cooperation became increasingly visible during the profession’s debate over the 150-hour rule. Over the past two years, dozens of [state CPA societies] have worked together on legislation and regulatory changes designed to preserve the traditional 150-hour pathway while adding alternative routes intended to improve access to the profession and address talent shortages.
During a 2025 webinar on CPA licensure reform, accounting leaders noted that more than 30 states had already been actively working together on alternative licensing pathways and mobility changes.
The push for mobility reform has also encouraged states to think beyond traditional geographic boundaries. During the same webinar, Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs CEO Jen Cryder, whose organization is of similar size to the NYCPA, described proposed mobility changes as a shift away from a “state-level concept” toward an “individual mobility track.”
Those developments mirror one of the central arguments made by supporters of the New England merger. In announcing the combination, leaders repeatedly cited the need for greater scale and stronger advocacy, in addition to a desire for increased influence as firms and professionals navigate changes in areas like technology and workforce development.
Whether the New England Society of CPAs becomes a model for future consolidation remains unclear. For now, the merger represents one of the most significant combinations of state CPA societies in recent years and offers an early test of whether greater scale can help the profession address workforce challenges while also strengthening its voice on issues affecting its accountants and finance leaders.
