6 Ways Learning Management Systems Can Benefit Charities And Non-Profits
Learning and Development can be a real challenge for charities and not-for-profit organisations. Face-to-face training can be costly, and the last thing you want is for your people to have to drop everything to travel to training interventions.
We have implemented learning solutions for a number of charities and non-profit organisations, including The Salvation Army, UNICEF and Princess Alice Hospice collaborating with small and large charities since 2004.
Over the past 15 years, we’ve seen how the implementation of a Learning Management System (LMS) can reduce the burden on Learning and Development teams, moving from the face-to-face training model to one of blended learning that reduces costs and increases consistency.
Benefits Of An LMS For Charities And Non-Profit Organisations
Learning and Development teams need to make a good case for the value of implementing a Learning Management System. Let’s take a look at how an LMS can offer value for money and improve the way you train your people.
1. Costs
- We can’t get away from it: money matters, especially in the charity and non-profit sectors.
- Face-to-face training, travel and tight schedules all make it hard for traditional training models to be cost-effective for organisations where budgets must be spent wisely.
- Putting your training content online means your team can carry out their learning at a time that suits them, giving them space to do their core work without interruption.
- With content accessible at any time of day or night around the world and a reduced financial outlay compared with traditional learning, it's no surprise that an open-source LMS is often the best choice for charities and not-for-profits with limited resources.
2. Accessibility
- With a range of people on your team, it’s important to have a training system that’s both user-friendly and accessible to all, no matter their age, location, equipment or skills.
- Your LMS will support users at all stages in their career – from volunteers in their first job through to experienced members. Learners can set their own pace, ensuring that the material is fully understood by 100% of your team.
3. Availability
- Cost-effective open-source platforms are created in such a way that the source code is available to everyone for free.
- There’s proactive development with open-source systems because a large group of dedicated developers is constantly looking at and improving the code.
- Because there’s no proprietary code to worry about, support can come from in-house teams or external suppliers. So, you don’t need to fret if you don’t have the technical expertise to get up and running.
4. Consistency
- With teams spread across countries or even on different continents, it's natural that traditional training may lead to regional variations in practice.
- A centralised training platform means you can be sure your people on the ground receive a consistent and reliable learning experience. No more 'we don't do it that way here' conversations.
- And say goodbye to any old content disrupting new programmes, an LMS allows new material to reach everyone from day one. We always recommend an LMS with good language support, that way you’ll also be able to deliver content to all regions without delay.
5. Mobile Ready
- What good is a digital learning strategy if learners still need to be tied to a desk in order to access training on a desktop computer? A mobile optimised LMS allows your staff and volunteers to access training content from anywhere, on any device.
- Moodle, in particular, supports offline access to your training content, meaning that your people can access the information they need even when they don’t have a mobile signal or Wi-Fi connection. Everything is stored on the device and then synced automatically when a connection is detected.
- Access can be granted on phones and tablets, so you can lower costs by allowing volunteers to use their own equipment to learn from home or when away from your offices.
6. Compliance And Audit
- Compliance and auditing matters just as much to charities and non-profits as it does to other organisations. It's important to be able to show that you're investing in the efficient training of your people.
- An LMS can track course-completion rates and give your Learning and Development team the evidence they need to show that people in the organisation are gaining the competencies to help them be more effective in their roles.
- Automated tracking and recurring training mean less admin and the knowledge that anyone who needs training, is receiving it.
- Audits become easier as you'll have a comprehensive overview of training completed in your organisation.