Groundwork UK – Enabling a Fair & Green Future Through Smarter Systems

Green background with a white triangle containing the words "Groundwork" in bold white letters along the sloped side of the triangle.

Groundwork Trust, a not-for-profit organisation, is the national anchor of a vibrant federation of independent Trusts delivering environmental, social and economic programmes across communities throughout the UK. Their work ranges from green-space creation, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency projects to employment and skills support, youth engagement, community wellbeing programmes, and support for households in hardship. 

Groundwork’s mission is simple yet ambitious: “to create a fair and green future where people, places and nature thrive”. They combine grassroots, community-led delivery with national-level coordination to tackle inequality, climate and nature crises, and social disadvantage, delivering social, economic and environmental impact in equal measure. To deliver on that mission at scale, they need strong IT systems behind the scenes: robust governance, transparent finances, efficient grant management, and meaningful impact reporting. 

This case study explores how ACS-APT empowered Groundwork Trusts to better deliver its mission through integrated systems, advanced reporting tools, and streamlined grant-management workflows. The result: sharper financial oversight, reduced administrative burden, and stronger evidence of impact, enabling Groundwork Trusts to channel more of its resources into communities, not paperwork. 

Business Challenges.

Despite decades of experience and a deep community presence, Groundwork Trusts, like many federated, charity-based organisations, face structural and financial pressures behind the scenes. At Groundwork Trust, different systems support different operations, such as fundraising, project management, accounting, HR, and Payroll. Each system worked independently, without integrating to enable seamless, efficient data flow and timely reporting. This created significant manual work and delays in feeding data into the accounting system, as well as in tracking project progress. This delayed financial reporting and project progress tracking, with little visibility into ongoing projects and their status. In addition, tracking donations, grants, and funding received, and managing restricted funds, was challenging. This involved additional manual work of preparing and keeping Excel sheet data feeds and reports

Key challenges included: 

  • Fragmented and manual financial system 

  • Disconnected and basic project accounting  

  • Manual data imports and Excel-based data manipulation 

  • Unable to track grants and restricted funding allocations resulting in a high administrative burden in grant and funding management 

  • Limited or no workflow automation resulting in too much manual paperwork  

  • Inconsistent and unreliable data 

  • Difficulty demonstrating project progress and funds allocated to projects and utilisation 

  • Growing financial pressure from rising costs and increased demand  

These issues made it difficult to maintain accuracy at scale and placed unnecessary pressure on finance and operational teams. 

ACS-APT Solutions:

Integrated and automated workflow-based systems, timely and accurate data, timely project reporting and Stronger Financial reporting and Controls. 

ACS-APT worked closely with Groundwork Trust to deliver a solution that integrated legacy systems with automated workflows, improving data accuracy, efficiency, and confidence in financial information while aligning with the organisation’s mission and operational realities, and managing projects more efficiently.  

The web-based Project Information Management System (PIMS) implemented at Groundwork Trust is the main front-end system used to set up and manage projects, with online tracking and project resource management driven by automated workflows and integration with the Sage 200 ERP System. The funding platform and grant data integration also automate data imports and posting to fund types set up in the system, making fund management, allocations, and reporting more efficient and timely.

  • Timely project setup and management with online activity booking and real-time data transfer to the Sage200 ERP System, project status tracking with dashboard-based intuitive analytics and reporting. 

  • Project resource management, including timesheets, employee expense tracking, and timely online approval.

  • Automated funding and grant data imports and allocation with enhanced reporting.

  • Automated Tracking and Validation - Automation was introduced to ensure financial adjustments were consistently recorded, traceable, and validated. Built-in checks reduced the likelihood of errors and strengthened data integrity. 

  • Improved Visibility and Confidence in Reporting - By reducing manual intervention and improving accuracy, finance teams gained greater confidence in the reliability of their data, supporting clearer internal reporting and stronger external accountability. 

This targeted approach addressed immediate operational pain points while also laying the groundwork for wider financial consolidation, advanced reporting, and future scalability across the Groundwork Trusts. 

Most importantly, these improvements ensured that the integrated legacy and financial systems support Groundwork Trust’s ability to deliver social and environmental outcomes more efficiently.  

Conclusion.

For a not-for-profit organisation like Groundwork Trust, where social justice, environmental sustainability, and community resilience are the guiding lights, operational clarity and financial efficiency are not optional extras. They are critical enablers of impact. 

By modernising their systems with ACS-APT, Groundwork Trust can move from reacting to complexity to proactively managing growth, ensuring that their work creates a truly fair and green future, at scale.