How to Add Training Materials to Your Nonprofit Website

One of the challenges for nonprofits with staff and volunteers on varying shift schedules, with different availability, and operating in hybrid environments is ensuring everyone has access to the right training. That’s why many organizations rely on online training to ensure staff and volunteers can learn what they need to complete tasks successfully. 

However, creating digital learning content is just the first step. Your team needs to deliver the training to your staff, volunteers, and, potentially, community members. Hosting training content on your existing website makes it easy to find. Since interest-holders are likely already familiar with your website, this increases ease of access and keeps information centralized. 

In this article, we’ll walk through the process for incorporating training content into your nonprofit’s website.

Intuitive Navigation

Anytime you’re adding content to your website, it’s important to contextualize it within the user journey and plan out how visitors will navigate to the page. According to a nonprofit web design guide from Kanopi Studios, a website development and design agency, “visitors should be able to find what they are looking for in just one or two clicks.”

Keep these navigational tips in mind to achieve this goal:

• Group training materials with other similar content. Placing learning content with other related pages, such as your website’s blog or podcast landing page, makes it easier for users to find the training. Since you don’t want to overwhelm your navigation bar with too many choices, this also helps you limit the number of headings. For instance, you can store all of these pages under the heading “Resources.”
• Map out the journey with breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are visual cues at the top of the page that track the visitor’s journey to the page. Users can retrace their path if necessary and find similar resources.
• Double-check your site map. Your content management system may handle this automatically, but it’s worth confirming that the added training materials are correctly listed in your site map. In addition to helping users find the content you’re looking for, a well-structured site map is also beneficial for search engine optimization.
• Make it searchable. Including a search bar in your site, if you haven’t already, ensures that staff and visitors can quickly find the training content. Even with an intuitive navigation design, enabling a search feature on your site is an additional measure to help your stakeholders find the specific training they’re looking for.

Another consideration for navigation and placement of training materials on your website is whether or not the training will be publicly available. 

If the training is better suited only to employees, it might make sense to restrict it to users with specific permissions, such as staff logins. However, if you’re offering volunteer training or learning for community members, placing the content on your main site would likely be best. Whether you place the training on a page, a microsite, or an integrated learning management system (LMS) with specific access permissions, all the navigational best practices above still apply. 

Strategic Content Delivery

There are a few options for hosting training materials on your website. 

You can upload the materials directly via your site’s content management system. (For instance, if you use Drupal, you can upload learning materials using the digital library feature.) Or, you can use a training platform with website integration, such as Niche Academy. This option allows you to embed training directly on your site while taking advantage of built-in LMS features.

Whichever you choose, keep the following features in mind: 

• Assignments. If you need to assign training modules to specific team members or volunteers and track their completion, you’ll likely want the support of a more sophisticated solution, like integrating with a training system or LMS.
• Ready-made and personalized content. Based on your nonprofit’s situation, you may be creating your own training materials or using ready-made content, so make sure the avenue you choose gives you the freedom to design a training course that will prepare your team.
• Material creation support. If you do choose to go down the self-created route, some systems offer support for video, text, and accessibility practices (like closed captioning) that can smooth out the process.
• Reporting. Access to holistic data can give you a bird’s-eye view of your team's progress and identify skill gaps or learning redundancies.

The content you share with your audience needs to be accessible, engaging, and usable in a digital environment. Choose a solution that makes this easy to accomplish. 

Accessible On-page Design

While adhering to overall web design best practices, such as ensuring cohesive branding and fast page loading, your team can also use training techniques on your site to support users’ learning. A few examples include:

• Leveraging different media types, such as audio recordings, videos, and interactive elements, can help keep your employees engaged.
• Ensuring a mobile-friendly design for learning content so users can easily access and interact with the training materials.
• Using focused content segments can allow users with limited time to self-direct their training.

To truly ensure that all users can capture the benefits of online training (i.e., learning without being in person, which can be limited by time and geography), it’s vital to follow web accessibility guidelines when publishing the training. 

We’ve included a few spot checks below, but the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a great resource for your website team to learn more.

• Apply alternative text (alt text) to visual media, describing the purpose of images for screen readers. Typically, alt text is around 140 characters.
• Include transcripts for audio recordings and enable captioning for videos.
• Ensure sufficient color contrast between foreground and background elements on your page.
• Ensure any hyperlinks within your content are further distinguished by using both color and typeface elements, such as bolding or underlining.
• Make touch targets (like buttons and links) 24px in size or give them sufficient space so users can easily access the intended target.

Designing training pages effectively ensures that the investment you’ve made in creating online learning content and updating your website can be realized by users. 

To continue providing value to your staff and volunteers through this training for years to come, establish a regular maintenance routine for your website, especially your learning pages. Enable software updates for your CMS, monitor engagement metrics, and ensure the learning content keeps pace with the cutting edge of your field.