Implementing Abler Across the North East: Foundation of Light, Newcastle United Foundation & Wallsend Boys Club
Last week, our Implementation team embarked on an ambitious North East tour that perfectly encapsulates Abler's mission – from the Premier League heights of St. James' Park to the Stadium of Light, and onto the grassroots fields of Wallsend Boys Club. Three organisations, one unified goal: improving community impact through technology.
A Busy Week in the North East
The numbers alone tell a powerful story. Over the course of an intensive 3 days, our team trained more than 100 staff members across three diverse organisations. From Foundation of Light's extensive Wearside programs, to Newcastle United Foundation's 50+ staff managing thousands of participants weekly, to Wallsend Boys Club, the grassroots powerhouse that developed Alan Shearer, Peter Beardsley, and Michael Carrick.
This wasn't just about implementing software. It was about proving that whether you're a Premier League foundation or a volunteer-run grassroots club, you deserve the same world-class technology to power your community impact.
Stadium of Light: Thursday's Implementation
Thursday at the Stadium of Light kicked off our North East tour in impressive fashion. Foundation of Light staff brought incredible enthusiasm for digital transformation, recognising immediately how Abler could improve their operations across Sunderland and South Tyneside.
Their diverse portfolio, from early years development to adult mental health programs, required sophisticated data management and participant tracking. Just like what would happen at Newcastle the following day, the breakthrough moments came when administrators saw Abler's unified dashboard and its ability to track staff time across multiple programs, transforming how they would handle salary processing and impact reporting.
St. James' Park: Friday Morning Training
Friday morning at Newcastle United Foundation followed the same successful formula we'd established at Sunderland. In the Sir Bobby Robson Suite, 50 staff members gathered for comprehensive training sessions structured identically to Thursday's approach. The same defining moment occurred during the finance session when administrators saw Abler's unified dashboard displaying exactly how coaches spend their time across different programs and divisions. For an organisation running hundreds of sessions weekly across education, health, sports participation, and employability programs, this represented a shift in operational efficiency.
The Tyne-Wear rivalry may divide the cities, but when it comes to community impact, both foundations share the same challenges and ambitions. The cross-city implementations actually sparked an unexpected benefit: both foundations identified opportunities for best practice sharing, particularly around impact measurement and reporting to funders.
Wallsend Boys Club: Supporting Grassroots Football
Friday afternoon brought perhaps the most inspiring stop. After completing the Newcastle United Foundation training, part of our team headed to Wallsend Boys Club. This grassroots institution has produced more professional footballers than almost any other youth club in England, yet they've achieved this with traditional, paper-based systems and volunteer dedication. But Wallsend's impact goes far beyond the famous names and they're one of the largest grassroots clubs in the country. Their volunteers provide not just football coaching but mentorship, structure, and opportunity to children from all backgrounds across North Tyneside.
Implementing Abler at Wallsend proved that our platform scales both up and down. While they may not need the complex multi-division dashboards of the larger foundations, Wallsend's coaches and administrators were thrilled with features like:
- Simple session scheduling and attendance tracking
- Automated parent communications
- Player development tracking from under-7s through to their senior teams
- Streamlined volunteer coordination
Three Organisations, One Platform
Our implementation team's approach reflected each organisation's unique needs:
- Foundation of Light & Newcastle United Foundation: Both Premier League foundations received the same comprehensive training structure - two specialists handled coach training (60 minutes) while our CFO led intensive finance sessions (90 minutes) and another expert managed admin teams (90 minutes)
- Wallsend (Friday afternoon): A more intimate, hands-on approach with volunteer coaches and administrators, ensuring the technology enhanced rather than complicated their grassroots operations
Andy Foster from Newcastle United Foundation captured the broader significance: "Partnering with Abler allows us to bring all of our systems into one place, freeing up time, improving communication, and giving us better insight into the difference we're making."
This sentiment echoed across all three organisations, regardless of size or Premier League affiliation.
September Launch
As summer programs pilot the system, the real transformation arrives this September. All three organisations will move their registrations to Abler, marking a new era for community sports in the North East.
From Newcastle United Foundation's thousands of weekly participants to Foundation of Light's comprehensive Wearside programs to Wallsend's next generation of football stars, the North East is proving that digital transformation in community sports isn't about size, it's about ambition.
