The winner of the 2021 UK Strategy Challenge, one of six teams to compete, supported City Year UK and presented a roadmap tailored to meet the organization’s specific issues. To do so, the team carefully analyzed the charity’s business model and financials to determine how and if the nonprofit should proceed with expansion.
Coming up with an answer wasn’t easy. Over nine weeks, Morgan Stanley’s City Year UK team worked hard to perfect its proposal. Alina Porter, a Vice President in Investment Banking who was a part of the team and who has an accounting, auditing and business strategy background, says, “It was an intensive process, and we had to do it all virtually [due to the pandemic]. Some wise advice I was given beforehand was: Do not underestimate the time you need to give and the complexity of the brief you need to deliver. In the end, it was very rewarding. It’s a great feeling to know you’ve helped a charity to create tangible, long-term impact.”
For Vishnu Sakthivel, an Executive Director in Institutional Equities, the rewards came from leveraging his talents in a different way. “To use the skills that I have developed during my time at Morgan Stanley to help a nonprofit was an entirely new experience, but I found it to be incredibly fulfilling. You have the sole aim of trying to really get to the root of a problem that is holding back an organization doing amazing work for the community.”
In the case of City Year UK, the team concluded that it should proceed cautiously in any efforts to grow and scale its model. Sakthivel says, “We discovered that it would be most prudent to not expand the City Year UK program immediately. Instead, we helped set the organization up with a plan to make improvements to their operating model in order to enable an expansion in the future.”
Kevin Munday found the advice incredibly valuable. “The [Morgan Stanley team] came together to lend pro bono expertise that our charity would not otherwise have been able to access. The quality of people who volunteered for the challenge is so high that we ended up with a plan that is much more impressive than any one person could create.”
This year’s participating employees and charity partners also earned kudos from Morgan Stanley leadership. “We are extremely proud of the Morgan Stanley volunteers who worked so passionately to support these remarkable organizations, many of whom have been working on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Clare Woodman, Head of Morgan Stanley in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “With a health and economic crisis generating increasing demand for their services, charities are experiencing greater challenges than ever before. We hope the strategic recommendations provided by the Morgan Stanley employees will help City Year UK and the other participating nonprofits continue their important work and reach even more communities.”
Munday has no doubt that will be the case. “The practical materials and tools the Morgan Stanley team have developed will help us achieve our ambition to have an even greater impact on educational inequality.”
Source: morganstanley.com
