Reach the World to Receive Pro Bono Advice from Morgan Stanley’s Strategy Challenge

April 2, 2012 - PRLog -- NEW YORK, April 2, 2012 – Morgan Stanley  announced today that Reach the World, along with 14 other nonprofit organizations, will participate in the fourth annual Strategy Challenge, a signature skills-based volunteering program providing nonprofits with pro bono strategic consulting.  

Each nonprofit will work with a team of Morgan Stanley employees for eight weeks.  The teams will advise the nonprofits on issues relating to their business models and growth strategies, in order to help the nonprofits fulfill their missions in more effective and efficient ways.  The employees will use their professional skills and expertise to develop recommendations for the nonprofits.

The nonprofits work on causes ranging from youth development and microfinance to arts and culture and are based in San Francisco, Chicago and New York.

Said Joan Steinberg, Head of Morgan Stanley Community Affairs and President of the Morgan Stanley Foundation: "Through the Morgan Stanley Strategy Challenge, charities across the country are getting specific advice and tools to help them address their scalability and growth potential in order to serve more people.  The Strategy Challenge, now in its fourth year, recognizes that nonprofits are critical to the health and vibrancy of the communities in which we live and work. Over the next eight weeks, our employees will be working intensively to develop targeted recommendations for their nonprofit partners, and we wish them success."

Since establishing the Strategy Challenge in 2009, Morgan Stanley has delivered 14,500 hours of pro bono services to 36 nonprofits, worth approximately $2.2 million, according to standards developed by the Taproot Foundation.  The Strategy Challenge is a joint effort between Morgan Stanley’s offices of Community Affairs and Global Sustainable Finance.  

“The Morgan Stanley Strategy Challenge serves multiple bottom lines: helping nonprofits address their most pressing business issues; empowering employees to help their communities; and providing employees with unique opportunities to grow professionally,” said Audrey Choi, Head of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley. “By giving employees the opportunity to volunteer their most valuable professional skills to serve the community, Morgan Stanley puts sustainability into action.”

The Morgan Stanley volunteers will present their recommendations for the nonprofits at a competition in June before experts from the private and nonprofit sectors.  Chairman and CEO James Gorman will present awards to the top three teams.  

Morgan Stanley is a leading global financial services firm providing a wide range of investment banking, securities, investment management and wealth management services.  The Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions and individuals from more than 1,300 offices in 43 countries. For further information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com.

Reach the World is a global education organization with a fourteen-year history of providing global education and mentoring to disadvantaged youth. RTW will work with the Morgan Stanley consultants to develop a business plan for adding high-school programming to its successful elementary and middle school programs.

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Reach the World's mission is to build a pipeline of globally-competent students and educators who will succeed in and steward the 21st Century global community. RTW provides global education and mentoring for elementary and middle school students.