On April 14, 2007, Georgetown University student group Hilltop Consultants hosted the third annual Business Strategy Challenge case competition on Georgetown’s campus in Northwest Washington, D.C.

Hilltop Consultants is an undergraduate student-run organization sponsored by the McDonough School of Business that provides consulting services to area nonprofit organizations. It also hosts its annual case competition in which students from schools around the country compete to provide a solution for a business case. After presenting recommendations to a group of judges, each team undergoes a rigorous question-and-answer period in which the judges (many of them consultants themselves) scrutinize the team’s recommendations.

In the 2007 competition, the business case was based on KEYS for the Homeless. Students were to provide strategies for KEYS to expand its capabilities given the constraints faced by small nonprofit organizations. A team from Boston College comprised of Mark Filenbaum, Alexis Lobodocky, Erica Mannherz, and Matthew Ryder won first place and put together an exceptional presentation. Their advice led KEYS to work with Zinda to develop a proprietary, Internet-based management portal to distribute information on donated and needed goods and to automate much of the administrative work necessary to manage the organization.

The case competition was put together by a team of Hilltop Consultants members lead by Matthew Burke, who currently serves on the Board of Directors of KEYS. He is also a Financial Advisor with Smith Barney in Washington, D.C.