Business Partnerships with Groundwork

As well as our range of environmental services, Groundwork can support your business to achieve your wider ESG and CSR goals.

Our 40 years of experience suggests that the best way to change places and lives for the better is for the public sector, private sector and local organisations work together in partnership.

Below are a few different ways you can partner with Groundwork. For more information please contact our Partnerships Team at Groundwork UK, who are keen to speak to you about how we can work together.

---

Corporate Volunteering

Groundwork’s volunteering opportunities give you a way to bring you teams together, build the skills of your workforce and make a real tangible difference to communities at the same time. Our expert teams connect your staff with real life community projects that provide the perfect challenge for teams and also create long-term links helping people and places benefit from the skills of your employees.

We’ve helped companies get involved in creating community gardens, transforming neglected green spaces, mentoring young people and more. Feedback from participants has been fantastic, with teams reporting that they love taking time out to give something back.

Environmental Volunteering

We have opportunities for your teams to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in with rewarding outdoor volunteering that supports nature and creates better communities. Teams find the work a rewarding change of pace. Their support can be the key to making a community project a reality, as they can accomplish more in a day than community groups can achieve on their own in months.

Skills based volunteering

Often the skills we use every day in our jobs can be the most valuable thing we can offer to community groups. Charities often have a handful of staff and small budgets, so the knowledge your specialist finance, IT or HR staff have can be a lifeline. Your managers can help young people thrive through coaching and Dragon’s Den style experiences and your phone based staff can help us to research where our help is most needed.

---

The Eco-Challenge

The climate and nature emergency is one of the greatest challenges that humanity has ever faced. We are already seeing the effects today and we need to act now if we wish to protect the biodiversity and climate that supports our civilisation.

The Groundwork Eco-Challenge is an engaging and practical tool to help your staff to start their own sustainability journey, while your support empowers communities to build a greener future and help people out of poverty.

The challenges are accessed via a web app to make the experience accessible to your staff from anywhere. This means that the team-based activities are ideal as a way to reconnect colleagues that are working remotely or from different sites.

The challenges cover a range of topics, such as reducing waste, protecting nature, energy efficiency or climate change. This allows you to select themed challenges to create a programme of activity that reflects your organisation’s goals.

Principles of game design are built into the eco-challenge to make the experience fun and valuable to participants. It also helps to create team bonding as each team vies to be the greenest.

---

Grant Management

Organisations seeking to distribute grant funding need a trusted partner with robust systems and a strong track record of ensuring money gets to where it’s most needed. That’s what we can offer you with our unique perspective that combines on-the-ground knowledge of ‘what works’ with decades of experience of running funding programmes for top brands and government departments. Our tried and tested model involves our Community Enablers reaching out into communities, encouraging applications, guiding groups through the process and helping local decision-making though grant panels and other tools.

Our skilled programme management team can support you and applicants for your funding through all stages of the grants process:

• Scheme design
• Application process
• Shortlisting process
• Local decision-making through grant panels
• Monitoring & programme management
• Knowledge sharing
• Evaluation
• Successor proposals

We are currently delivering more than thirty high quality, large scale grants programmes for partners, including Tesco, One Stop & Comic Relief.

---

Charity of the Year

A charity of the year partnership with Groundwork empowers your staff to change places and lives across the UK. Our holistic mission means that you can achieve multiple benefits that support social and environmental goals or tailored to focus on issues that if specific interest to your teams. We can help you meet your goals, whether you want to help people into employment, tackle the nature and climate emergency, unlock potential in young people, tackle loneliness and improve wellbeing, rebuild community spirit or all of the above.

Our expert teams streamline the process for you, with a packed calendar of fun and inspiring activities that you can tailor to support your needs.

Benefits of a charity of the year partnership with Groundwork:

• Boost staff morale
• Combine fundraising and volunteering
• Make a difference in the communities where your staff and customers live and work
• National reach and local expertise
• Target projects local to your offices that matter to your staff
• Cross-cutting impacts that achieve more than the sum of their parts
• Four decades of partnership experience

---

Bespoke Programmes

Partner with us to unlock your unique strengths to play a positive role within communities. That might be harnessing the skills of your staff, or using your brand to raise the profile of great community projects. Our first step is to sit down with you to design and develop a tailored partnership that meets your needs – and makes you excited about the potential impact!

We’re all about making change on the ground in the places that need it most. That means inspiring young people, transforming green spaces, tackling difficult issues like worklessness, isolation and fuel poverty. There are lots of ways for your business to be involved in coming up with creative solutions.

Many of our partners work with us to build a portfolio of activity that helps them achieve multiple benefits:

• Connect to local communities
• Inspire and motivate your staff
• Increase brand awareness
• Involve your customers – through cause-related marketing, competitions, voting mechanisms and social media campaigns
• Enhance your sustainability credentials
• Leave a lasting and tangible legacy in communities right across the UK

Whether it’s rolling out a customer-led grant programme for Tesco, a multi-media and point of sale campaign for Britvic or helping Facebook to start conversations at RHS Chelsea, we’ve created a partnership for success.

---

Landscape Design

Our Landscape Architects work with business to create spaces which connect employees with nature, increase biodiversity and are resilient to the effects of climate change.

We believe that greenspaces make us healthier and happier. By creating a workplace garden, business owners provide a dedicated space for health and wellbeing, where employees can relax and recharge in nature.

The benefits of redesigning for business go beyond employee wellbeing. Greening your workplace also helps tackle the climate and nature emergencies, an increasing demand from stakeholders.

Groundwork’s Landscape Architects work with businesses,

• Planting trees and plants to improve air quality and increase biodiversity
• Using Sustainable Urban Draining systems in car parks and other hard landscaped areas to alleviate flood risk
• Installing green roofs which help with internal temperature control

---

Business Improvement Districts

Businesses around the country are benefiting from the advantages that being part of a Business Improvement District can bring. We can help business parks, town centre management companies and local authorities implement Business Improvement District (BID) projects in their areas – and we have a strong track record of winning the crucial BID votes.

BIDs are a way for businesses to band together and fund extra services or improvements to their areas, creating safe, clean and vibrant locations in which business can thrive.

The BID projects we have supported have successfully won renewal votes, achieving support of up to 96%.

BID services include:

• BID Feasibility Studies to assess the suitability of your retail area or business park for BID development
• BID Development Programmes to undertake the full development of your BID proposal up to a formal ballot for a BID.
• BID Management Services to support the delivery of your BID over its five year lifespan.

We are currently delivering the following BIDS:

• Wilmslow
• Northwich
• West Chester
• Warrington
• Blackburn
• Winsford
• Burnley
• Gadbrook Park
• Cressex Business Park
• Globe Business Park, Marlow

---

Community Engagement

Our Community Enablers are best placed to ensure the voice of the community is heard when it comes to developments happening within their community.

By building capacity and teaching new skills, we help individuals and the community feel confident to contribute to conversations with developers working in their neighbourhood.

---

Supporting people into Employment

Groundwork provides skills, training and support into employment to those in society who are furthest from the job market including; young people not in employment, education or training (NEET), refugees, care leavers, veterans, people with a criminal record and people recovering from addiction.

We need businesses from a variety of sectors to support course participants with work experience placements, graduate opportunities or by providing site visits or industry insight conversations.

Find out about the needs in your local area by contacting your local Groundwork trust: