About Us
Our founder, Erin Louis, has over 18 years of experience providing accounting, tax, operations and consulting support to individuals, small businesses and non profits. More than just providing transactional services, we are a partner. We provide standard tax preparation services and our unique non-profit consulting services help organizations extend their in-house so they can focus on their mission, business, community and family. We take pride in friendly and personable service. If you are our client, we actually care about you. If you don’t want to be cared about by us, you can’t be our client. Read more about our values.
Erin Louis, CPA, President and Founder
My work has always centered on noticing what’s missing and building solutions that communities actually need. At the start of my career, when a 2010 court case created unprecedented tax rules for same-sex married couples, I saw traditional accounting firms ignore the people most affected, and how that dismissiveness left even seasoned CPAs without the technical or cultural competency to support an entire community. When CPAs with decades more experience started asking me for help, the pattern of systemic neglect was undeniable, and it ultimately inspired me to found Advocate Accounting in 2013.
Over the years, that same gap-closing approach has shaped the business’s direction, leading to a strong focus on community-based service and advocacy organizations. We’ve become well-known for our deep knowledge and experience with affiliated 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations with political and advocacy activity.
Eighteen years into my career, I am still driven by the same commitment to close gaps and make complex systems easier for the people who rely on them.
Erin was raised in the San Francisco Bay area on the ancestral lands of the Muwekma Ohlone People. Today she lives and works on the ancestral lands of the Nisqually, Squaxin and Cowlitz People near the present-day towns of Olympia, Tenino and Dupont.