Our Communities
COVID-19 continues to impact all levels of our society, economy and institutions. We at Marshall Wace have always considered the support of the wider community as integral to our culture and this emergency has only increased this desire to help.
Mealforce began with the opening of Marshall Wace’s kitchen to cook 1,000 meals a day for the staff at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital (CWH). Within a short space of time it became apparent that the need was much greater and we set about expanding our capacity to solve this problem. During the lockdown periods, Mealforce provided over 40,000 meals per day, 7 days a week for NHS workers in hospitals across the country.
Similarly, in New York, we collaborated with the local community to provide hot meals for emergency workers at both Elmhurst Hospital in Queens and the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.
Our PPE initiative, Mail Force, was created by a consortium of Marshall Wace, the Daily Mail and Salesforce. It grew from an idea to buy an airfreight load of masks from China into a charity with the goal of tackling the urgent shortage of PPE in the UK.
The demand to be socially responsible comes from within Marshall Wace’s culture. We are more than individual good actors, rather, we are the sum of our parts and attract employees and clients who share the same values.
Our staff organise and participate in charitable endeavours, and the company supports them. Each region has a Charity of the Year programme, where staff nominate charities to receive both financial and strategic support. Individual giving is matched by Marshall Wace, and in the UK staff participate in the Give As You Earn (GAYE) scheme, for which we earned the Payroll Giving Diamond Award in 2021.
Our co-founders – Ian Wace and Paul Marshall – are founding trustees of Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), and have been active board members since its launch in 2002.
ARK is an international charity that exists to give young people – regardless of their background – access to great education and increased opportunity. Starting with just one school, ARK is now a network of 38 schools in the UK and is recognised as one of the highest achieving academy groups in the country.
We also support Minds Matter NYC, a comprehensive and highly successful three-year program that empowers young people from low-income families to achieve college readiness and success.
