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Learning Management System (LMS) for Associations & Nonprofits
Elevate is a Learning Management System tailor-made for nonprofits and associations. Inspire your learners to begin or continue their education journeys with curriculum development, certifications, integration with AMS, knowledge sharing, social learning, on-demand and live events, while monetizing and growing your content library.
ELEVATE PROUDLY SERVES
Features
Drive Engagement and Collaboration with Elevate
Create a Center for Knowledge
From recordings to resources, Elevate unifies learning into a single hub for collaboration and engagement.
Monetize Your Learning Portfolio
Your content is a value-add to your learners and Elevate integrates monetization opportunities into our LMS. Our e-commerce system gives you the flexibility to decide how to monetize your content.
Measure and Track Results
From live webinars to on-demand courses, use dashboards and reports to track progress, measure engagement, spot growth areas, and celebrate success.
Stimulate Knowledge Sharing
Elevate ensures that whether learning happens live or on-demand, its never a solitary endeavor.
Drive Loyalty and Retention
Provide value to your members through content and continuing education opportunities, certifications to drive loyalty and keep members returning.
Discover how Elevate transforms your educational content.
Our Power Users
Professional Development &
Continuing Education Managers
Continuing Education Managers
Provide your organization with the capacity to facilitate seamless learning experiences and support ongoing skill development.
Association Leadership
Rely on an LMS that prioritizes the ability to effectively deliver and manage learning content to association members.
Learners
Leverage an LMS designed to provide convenient, accessible, customizable, and effective learning experiences that supports your learner’s personal and professional growth.
LMS for Nonprofits & Associations FAQs
Your nonprofit or association wants to provide learning materials to members, staff, or volunteers. But what’s the best way to create and distribute continuing education and training resources? A learning management system (LMS) can help.
What is an LMS?
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a type of software that delivers learning materials in a digital format. It offers a base server and user interface that keeps everything organized in a step-by-step learning format where users can work through materials, track their progress, and more. This system supports educational programs that help learners expand their knowledge efficiently.
This learning format is especially convenient for professionals continuing to grow their careers and for organizations that want to expand their capabilities.
What Is a Learning Management System for Associations?
A learning management system (LMS) for associations is software that’s designed to create, manage, and deliver online learning materials.
LMSs built for associations often work well for continuing education courses and offering professional training resources. Each course can add value to being a member of your association while helping professionals gain skills that benefit their careers.
It’s beneficial to use an LMS designed specifically for associations since it’s more likely to integrate with the software you already use (such as your AMS), offer tailored options for professional continuing education, and help monetize courses so you can generate additional non-dues revenue.
Why do Nonprofits and Associations need an LMS?
An LMS for nonprofits and associations provides a centralized place for all relevant learning materials. In addition to serving as a cost-effective training method, an LMS also makes training accessible to users in multiple locations, provides scalability as organizations grow, and allows data tracking and analysis. This robust platform ensures that training is streamlined and easily accessible.
Benefits of an Association LMS & Nonprofit LMS
Many association members are looking for education that will benefit their professional capabilities and careers. An LMS offers associations the opportunity to provide continuing education while fostering community engagement. Some of the key benefits include:
- Increased Member Engagement: How do you keep members engaged outside of association events and activities? Offering new and interesting training modules through an LMS portal is a great option. Plus, it can be a great place to communicate with members or allow for social learning and knowledge sharing amongst the group.
- Monetization: Many associations look for ways to monetize outside of membership fees. An LMS makes it easy to offer paid courses and efficiently distribute course materials to members who sign up. When learners receive significant value that benefits their career, they’ll be happy they signed up and are part of the association.
- Association Management System (AMS) Integration: Having programs that integrate provides a smoother and more well-rounded experience for your team and your association’s members. An LMS built for associations—Elevate by Cadmium—can integrate with your association management system (AMS) to help you organize communication, events, and activities alongside learning options.
Nonprofits often need affordable training and education solutions, and there aren’t always enough staff members to go around to train new volunteers or educate donors and members. The right LMS mitigates those challenges by providing a centralized and accessible learning resource. Some key benefits include:
- Scalability and Accessibility: As your nonprofit grows, your LMS can grow with it and be accessible to everyone through a convenient online learning portal. That way, whether you expand to new locations or are growing your volunteer base for a new initiative, you can easily add more training and education to your LMS and make it available to everyone.
- Affordability: Hiring staff members to train every new volunteer or employee can be a big constraint on nonprofit budgets. Providing online training through an LMS is typically a much more affordable approach, enabling you to stretch your budget further while getting volunteers educated with the right skills and ready to step in as soon as possible.
Spread Your Message: Members and donors will want to learn about your cause. An LMS provides a resource you can pack with all the essential details and knowledge you’ve gained from research and community involvement. It can also help you show why your mission is important—and how others can contribute.
How much does an LMS for Associations cost?
Pricing for LMSs can vary quite a bit depending on the option you choose. On the low end, you might see some basic options range from $300 to $1,000+ per year. Mid-size to large-scale association LMSs can range from $5,000 to $25,000+ per year.
You also need to consider pricing models when calculating costs. Some common pricing options are:
- Monthly fee: You pay a set price per month.
- Flat fee: You pay a flat price for continuous access to the software.
- Activity-based: You pay based on how much you use the software, such as how many courses you create or how many members you add.
Each pricing option comes with its pros and cons. The most important thing to remember is that you should invest in software that has the features you need and that can scale with your organization. It’s a hassle to start with a basic option and then realize it doesn’t offer all the features you need as you grow.
Plus, it can offer a great return on investment (ROI) when it can help you continuously monetize with new course sales and add value for association members worldwide.
What is the most commonly used LMS?
The most commonly used LMS is a cloud-based SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) LMS. It makes everything accessible via a web-based portal. Using an LMS makes it easier for your team to upload and manage content while providing an intuitive training process for new users to log in and access materials from anywhere. Elevate by Cadmium is cloud-based and a popular LMS choice for associations and nonprofits.
Some other key features that make this the best LMS for most organizations include:
- Updates and Support: When an LMS is web-based, it makes it easy for the company behind it to provide continuous updates that improve its functionality. Plus, they can provide support if issues like bugs or errors pop up.
- Intuitive Interface: This option provides a good balance of customizability to make the software fit your organization’s needs while still being easy to use. That way, you can plug and play without a big learning curve to create educational courses and manage new users as they sign up.
- You Don’t Have to Host Servers: Cloud-based solutions are ideal because their operation requires fewer in-house resources. The servers are managed by the company offering the LMS, so all you have to do is log in and use the software.
The main alternative would be hosting the content on internal servers, which can prove to be cumbersome and costly and require more technical expertise, also making the software harder to distribute to users.
What are some free LMS options for Nonprofits & Associations?
When you have a tight budget, it’s common to want to look for a free LMS for nonprofits and associations. While this can help you get initial certification programs off the ground, it’ll often have several limitations that can affect your success, especially as your organization grows. Common limitations of free LMSs are:
- Limited Customizability: The LMS is an extension of your nonprofit’s image, so making it feel tailored to you is important. Unfortunately, free LMS offerings usually have very limited features and functionality, which can make it hard to customize—limiting your ability to provide more interactive learning experiences that align with your priorities.
- Limited Number of Courses: A free LMS will typically only give you limited storage space on their servers. This limits how many courses you can upload and manage at once, which becomes more of a constraint as you use it longer—or as your nonprofit’s needs grow.
- Limited Number of Users: Free LMSs may also cap the number of users you can have to sign up for your portal, access provided materials, or take your created courses. This again provides limitations that become more pressing as you may look to scale and grow your organization’s reach.
- Limited Support and Updates: With a free LMS, you won’t receive as much support from the company behind the platform, whether you have questions about getting started or if any bugs or errors occur. Updates to improve the software will also be less frequent.
Given all these limitations, free LMSs aren’t always the best choice for nonprofits and associations, and it's worth opting for a paid solution with more capabilities for long-term success when possible. Even if you were to start with a free option, it could be a hassle to transfer the courses you already created to a new LMS later on. Therefore, the best LMS for nonprofits or associations will be something that balances the right features with affordability.
What features should Associations look for in an LMS?
To help with the LMS selection process, here’s a quick checklist of key factors to consider:
- Features: First and foremost, evaluate the features of each LMS to determine which feature set aligns best with your organization's objectives. Consider common features that nonprofits and associations look for, which include communication and community management tools, social sharing, course search and navigation capabilities, and support for live events.
- Integrations: Most associations and nonprofits will benefit from an LMS that easily integrates with other software like AMS, event management, and e-commerce platforms or systems.
- Analytics and Data Tracking: Analytics will help you understand how your courses perform to improve what you offer. For example, if users are highly engaged with a certain type of continuing education course, you might decide to make courses in the future that are similar.
- Support and Troubleshooting: The company offering the LMS should provide support whether you need help getting set up or run into technical difficulties along the way.
When you want an LMS that checks each of these boxes for your association or nonprofit, Elevate is a great place to start. It’s a scalable and easy-to-use software that can help you build a complete course library, track credits, review analytics, and engage association members at each stage of their educational journeys. Request a demo to learn more about why learning management systems by Cadmium are a top choice for associations and nonprofits.
Can an LMS integrate with our Association Management System?
Our LMSs at Cadmium can integrate with your association management system (AMS). Integrating your AMS with your LMS is a great idea to ensure a unified experience with consistent branding and reporting across platforms. It can help you centralize data, provide a smooth member experience, and ensure credits track properly.
When you use our LMSs at Cadmium, our team can help walk you through the process to ensure you integrate your AMS successfully.
How long does it take to implement an LMS?
Implementing an LMS into your association can take anywhere from a few weeks to over a year, depending on the complexity of the courses you’re creating. In general, the initial setup is usually easy and will take a couple of weeks to a month at most to add your team and get familiar with the software.
Then, it just depends on how long it takes you to plan, film, write, edit, and add content for your courses. Short and simple courses may take a few weeks to a month to create, while longer and more complex courses could take several months to a year or more to finish. Fortunately, when you use a platform that’s easy to customize and use, it can help make the process more efficient.
How to maximize the impact of an LMS for Nonprofits and Associations
An LMS is highly beneficial for organizations offering continuing education or nonprofit education and training.
When you choose an option with the features outlined in this article—such as being tailored to the needs of associations and nonprofits, well-rounded support, integration with other tools, and analytics and data tracking—you’ll have everything you need to maximize the impact of your LMS and the learning resources you offer.
Enhance Your Organization’s Learning System With Elevate from Cadmium
Elevate by Cadmium is an LMS that is tailored to the needs of nonprofits and associations. It gives you everything you need for learners to begin or continue their educational journey with curriculum development, social learning, integration with an AMS, and on-demand and live events, all in one easy-to-use platform that helps you monetize and grow your content library. Click here to learn more
Can we monetize educational content with an LMS?
Yes, you can monetize educational content with an LMS. Offering online training and continuing education courses is a common way for associations to generate non-dues revenue and boost member engagement.
Using an LMS makes it easier to monetize by:
- Offering an accessible system that association members worldwide can sign up for
- Integrating with popular payment processors like Stripe and PayPal
- Allowing you to add courses to different membership options
What types of content can we deliver through an LMS?
Our LMSs at Cadmium provide a wide range of multimedia support so you can upload many types of content for engaging learning. Common types of content that associations can deliver through an LMS are:
- Text-based documents and articles
- Slide-based presentations
- Images and graphics
- Training videos and lectures
- Audio podcasts and lectures
- Interactive and gamified content, such as quizzes and simulations
- Social learning, discussions, and user-generated content
- Live webinars and classes
Each of these types of content can help you provide training that’s effective for different types of learners and make your courses more engaging.
How do LMS platforms support continuing education and certifications?
LMSs support continuing education and professional certifications by providing an accessible step-by-step process for learning. Having courses available online makes it much easier for professionals with busy schedules to continue to learn and gain new skills. All they have to do is log in when they have time and pick up where they left off.
Additionally, having automated credit tracking, reporting, and certification management features can make managing continuing education easier. It helps professionals feel confident that they can continue to stay up to date and keep making progress in their careers.
Will our members find the LMS easy to use?
Elevate is designed to feel accessible and easy to use for the average association member taking a course. It’ll allow your members to sign up and immediately start learning. The software makes it easy to see where to go to find lessons and follow along as courses progress.
You’ll also get great communication and tracking features so learners can reach out if they get stuck, or you can identify where they stopped engaging with a course and ask if they need help with anything.