Winners! Our Team Won the Morgan Stanley Strategy Challenge 2021

Back in March, we announced that we were taking part in the Morgan Stanley Strategy Challenge 2021. This is the seventh Morgan Stanley UK Strategy Challenge in London, delivered in partnership with Pilotlight. During the programme, Morgan Stanley employees would provide strategic pro-bono advice to non-profits who are tackling a key strategic challenge. Since its inception, the UK Strategy Challenge has delivered over 24,000 hours of service to 35 charities. The project would culminate in a final presentation in front of a judging panel – and we were very excited to get started with our team.

Nine weeks later, on 13th May 2021, it was time for that final presentation. Our team had been tasked with creating a growth strategy for CYUK, and we and our Morgan Stanley team were more than up to the challenge.

The result was the development of a sustainable business model to increase the number of City Year Mentors and fund new programme delivery for pupils – and any opportunities or challenges that may arise from that.

Our Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Munday, writes: “We are delighted to have been a part of the Morgan Stanley Strategy Challenge 2021. The findings and recommendations from our team are incredibly strong and demonstrate the amount of time and dedicated research they undertook. It shows that they really understood City Year UK and our programme and they put great thought into their recommendations.”

We were the last of six presentations, with Barnardo’s, Helpforce, NHS Charities Together, Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Children’s Charity and The Felix Project presenting their projects ahead of us in a virtual event. The judging panel from Morgan Stanley and Pilotlight then considered all the projects, before making the announcement that we had been waiting for.

We knew that there would only be one winner…and we were delighted to find out that it was our team!

Kevin continues, “We are particularly pleased with the practical materials and tools they have developed, which will help us achieve our ambition to have an even greater impact on educational inequality. The team has been an absolute pleasure to work with and we are so pleased to have been part of this experience with them.”

We are hugely grateful to have been part of the Morgan Stanley Strategy Challenge – our team have been fantastic and have provided us with some really strong strategies on how we can continue to expand our offering to young changemakers in the UK, and the schools they serve in. Winning the challenge opens up some really exciting opportunities for us, and we can’t wait to take more steps following the Morgan Stanley team’s recommendations, to help continue the growth of CYUK.

About Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is a leading global financial services firm providing investment
banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services. With offices in more than 41 countries, the Firm’s employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions and individuals. For more information about Morgan Stanley, please visit morganstanley.com.

About Pilotlight
Pilotlight is an award-winning social enterprise that connects Pilotlighters (its business members) with charitable organisations to unlock solutions that help charities thrive. Since 2003 Pilotlight has worked with more than 2,000 Pilotlighters who have used their time and skills to support and guide nearly 1,000 charities and social enterprises in the UK, all tackling social disadvantage. For more information about Pilotlight, please visit pilotlight.org.uk.