Macquarie volunteers go toe-to-toe to devise strategic solutions
As part of our skills-based volunteering offer, BIG Alliance recently moderated a pro bono consulting sprint (half day session) with two teams of volunteers from Macquarie Group’s Commodities and Global Markets team where they were given just a few hours to come up with the best solutions possible to a challenge set by Choices London CIC, our participating community partner.
Choices London CIC came to the session looking for support with new ideas and strategies to diversify and grow their income, with the ultimate goal of funding an enhanced housing support offering.
Questions the two teams had to tackle included:
How can Choices utilise or adapt their existing services to generate additional and/or sizeable income?
Where are the untapped opportunities to generate new income streams?
Is there a major shift Choices should make to expose a whole host of new opportunities?
The volunteers rose to the challenge fantastically well, ensuring always that they considered Choices’ history, overall purpose, restraints and ambitions. This allowed the volunteers to present Sheri, Director and Founder of Choices, with two well-considered roadmaps to follow in pursuit of the organisation’s objectives. Responding to what the volunteers proposed, Sheri said:
“Thanks to all of the volunteers for dedicating your time to Choices, even just for the afternoon. With so much to do to support our beneficiaries I simply don’t have the time to think about loads of new ideas or things to pursue and some of your ideas I haven’t considered before. Others I have, but that’s great too as it tells me they might be worth pursuing!”
Both teams shared their appreciation for Sheri’s honesty in setting out the organisation’s challenges and openness to new ideas, with one of the volunteers saying:
“You are truly incredible and we’re in awe of what you’re trying to do with Choices. But you’re not superwoman and we were really happy to be able to propose some ideas for you which might give you just a bit more time and focus”
Finally, reflecting on the success of the session, Louis Pegg from Macquarie who led the coordination internally offered the following:
“The BIG Alliance team was crucial to the success of the session. In the preparation, Tom and the team guided us in the best way to structure the session, based on their experience of hosting similar events. They also helped us select a suitable community partner where we could best leverage our skills and have the most impact, as well as providing important materials to help our volunteers prepare. Finally, during the session itself Tom managed the volunteers and community partner perfectly.”
BIG Alliance will now be following up with Choices London CIC to see what they were able to implement from the volunteers’ ideas in 2021 and share our findings with Macquarie.
If you would like to test the strategic thinking and team-work of your established leaders or emerging talent contact tom.browne@thebigalliance.org.uk
