5 Reasons Nonprofits Should Encourage Virtual Training

It may not be the most significant impact that the great pandemic of 2020 had on nonprofits, but it certainly could be the most lasting: how nonprofits educate and train their workforce.

It’s a major challenge, magnified by the wide variety of nonprofit work and the unique characteristics that separate charitable organizations from typical for-profit businesses.

Like any organization, they have leadership. They have accounting. They have marketing. While fee-for-service revenue generation is akin to business sales, nonprofits also employ people to generate income from charitable giving and government grants. Then, revenue from third-party payors also requires dedicated staff, such as financial aid officers or specialists who make sure the nonprofit gets what’s due from medical insurance companies.

At the core of all these roles are the talented professionals who deliver the organization’s critical service: such as your social workers, medical professionals, instructors, foresters, and so many more. And we can’t forget the volunteers, either. The ability to employ nonpaid workers to carry out mission-critical services is a unique strength of the nonprofit sector. Their education and training are just as important as anybody on the payroll!

It sounds almost cliché to say “now, more than ever before” for anything involving nonprofits. But now, more than ever before, budgets are tight. Now, more than ever before, nonprofit services are stretched. Both are true as revenue falls, expenses rise, and demand skyrockets for some, and collapses for others.

So, yes, that means that now, more than ever before, nonprofits need to embrace virtual training. Here are five key reasons why.

1. Virtual training is more affordable.

The most obvious reason to opt for virtual training strategies is that it costs significantly less than an in-person training experience. As seminars converted to webinars, costs have come down, in part because content can be recorded to live an extended life. It’s like syndicating television reruns—content providers can find new generations of viewers for timeless content. But it’s more than that.

Free professional development resources also come from nonprofit vendors (like software companies and consultants) who see content creation as great marketing. Why? At least two reasons: traditional sponsorship opportunities have either gone away or decreased in size, and they’re finding that producing and sharing solid content builds brand loyalty.

To be clear, these aren’t infomercials. While most carry the branding of the hosting vendor and may mention their product, a large number of vendors offer programming that has nothing to do with their discipline. In other words, it’s not unusual to see a charitable gift processing computer software vendor run a webinar on nonprofit events, or grant-writing, or social media marketing. For them, this is long-term brand awareness that gets them a seat at the table when it’s time to buy their product. For you, it’s a fantastic source of free educational content that you can leverage to train your team.

But besides the direct cost savings, there’s less expenses required in terms of transportation, meals, and hotels when it comes to online training—even if you give the trainee time off from work to attend the virtual event.

2. Virtual training lowers your risk.

A lot of nonprofits are required to provide professional development to certain staff—usually the core service delivery staff who are licensed in their professions. For example, if the work requires a licensed social worker, then the individual needs to take specific continuing education courses to maintain their credentials.

Not doing so puts the nonprofit at risk—from losing the legal right to provide their services, from clients who have a reasonable expectation of high-quality and appropriate offerings, and from insurance companies who can deny claims for services rendered by non-licensed professionals. By providing easy and effective virtual training opportunities, you can decrease your liability while increasing employee performance.

3. Virtual training retains talent.

Being encouraged to grow in one’s profession is a great morale booster that adds to staff retention. In an environment where budgets at their thinnest, offering meaningful professional development opportunities to keep your staff in place is extremely difficult. It’s no surprise that staff would leave to look for positions where they can grow.

Virtual training does a great job addressing this problem. Using websites with free and low-cost on-demand virtual training resources like Nonprofit.Courses, it’s possible to structure growth opportunities from a variety of content providers at different lengths and difficulties, in just about any nonprofit subject. When you promote these offerings to your staff members, they’ll be more engaged with their role as they grow professionally.

4. Virtual training retains information.

One of the important advances in education that is nearly exclusive to virtual training is known as microlearning. The concept is simple: human learning occurs like a funnel. There is an optimum amount of information that any of us can take in over a specific period of time. Pour in too much, and like water into a funnel, it spills over the top and never makes it in.

Due to a combination of logistics and tradition, most live seminars, and many webinars that emulate them, tend to last about an hour. The problem is that an hour is too long.

Think of your average television comedy. Thirty minutes of programming actually contains about 23 minutes of content, broken up into at least two or three several-minute commercial breaks. It’s the same with learning. Fifteen to twenty minutes is about as much as you can take in before you need a break to process what you learned.

The good news is that a lot of professional development content providers are creating short, focused content in the form of virtual training resources—which is exactly what the brain needs.

5. Virtual training is convenient for learners.

Do you have a cell phone? What about a tablet? A few minutes between calls at your desk? How about while you’re stuck in traffic, over lunch, cooking supper, or waiting to pick up your kids at school? All are perfect for virtual professional development.

Virtual learning can take place just about any time, any place, and on almost any device you have—increasing both convenience and productivity. It’s perfect for “interstitial time,” where you’re just waiting for other things to happen, or when there’s too little time to start a project, but too much time to sit idle.

This is especially helpful for overscheduled nonprofit workers and volunteers. After all, your nonpaid workers need effective training, too—but often, they can’t devote work time to getting it. Being able to sit at home and watch a training video on your mission or learn about a program before they walk into a board meeting gets them more engaged without having to actually be at your site.

Live training is notoriously difficult to schedule with volunteers and staff alike. Virtual training is a great help. Staff is taken “offline” for less time, and it saves the trainee from inconvenient travel. Pre-recorded, on-demand virtual training also allows for greater schedule flexibility for already over-scheduled personnel.

With the confluence of people being more and more engaged with technology, and the technology being more widely available than ever, there’s never been a better time for virtual professional development. With all the advantages noted here (and more!), online education and training are here to stay. Good luck!