Money Ready hosts first Innovation Challenge

A first of its kind

The Innovation Challenge was designed to bring together talented people from across our partner organisations to help us create new financial education content for our secondary school age programmes. Volunteers spent the day creating gamified content for young people, helping to make topics like budgeting, saving, and investing more accessible and engaging.

The teams were also working to address the barriers young people face when it comes to financial knowledge and confidence. Research shows that 47% of young people aged 18-24 have avoided major financial decisions because they don’t know where to start (Money Ready, Cost of not Knowing, 2025).

What was on the agenda?

Sarah Marks, Money Ready’s Schools Programme and Delivery Director, opened the day by inviting volunteers to share their own financial mishaps and bumps in the road — a great icebreaker that fed directly into the work and aligned nicely with our Cost of Not Knowing campaign, addressing the tangible costs lost to the average person through financial confusion.

Teams used these icebreaker stories to build a cast of fictional suspect characters for a whodunnit stolen money game, ‘Who stole the missing millions?’

• Adam, an IT officer with a sports gambling debt 
• Daisy, a dinner lady caught up in a romance scam 
• Ricardo Rocket, an F1 driver and charity ambassador living beyond his means 

What volunteers told us

When gathering feedback from participants at the end of the day, responses pointed to the same theme: volunteers valued the opportunity to do something creative with a tangible purpose behind it — content that will directly support young people’s financial confidence.

Participants told us that they enjoyed the hands-on approach to the day, and being able to work together towards a shared goal. It was also great to hear that the volunteers found the experience especially rewarding knowing the output could make a tangible difference to young people’s financial wellbeing.

Thank you

A big thank you to everyone who took part in the pilot and to Quilter and the Quilter Foundation for hosting such a special day.  

None of this would have been possible without the enthusiasm, talent and commitment of everyone who took part, as well as the teams and Money Ready staff behind the scenes who made the day run so smoothly. 

We had some amazing ideas put forward from the volunteers and look forward to developing the ideas generated from the day with our Programme & Delivery teams!