Educational content can be a powerful tool for nonprofits looking to attract and retain supporters.
For nonprofit associations, educational programs help members further their careers, improve their skills, and earn credentials. For nonprofits that happen to offer educational content as part of their engagement strategies, these offerings provide both first-time and long-term donors with new opportunities to learn more about and become further invested in your cause.
However, getting started with engaging educational content is far more complex than simply recording a few videos or creating basic quizzes. Instead, nonprofits will need the right learning management system (LMS) to deliver content, an understanding of what resources their members are interested in, and strategies for encouraging members to continue interacting with those educational materials.
To help your nonprofit create successful educational offerings, we’ll explore three elements for designing content that your members will be excited to engage with.
Tailored Content
Members will engage with content that aligns with their interests and goals. For associations, many members join specifically to access course offerings relevant to their professional needs. For other nonprofits, courses are an opportunity to connect with your members, educate them, and help them improve their skills.
When selecting course topics, try these approaches:
- Consider member needs. What topics do members need to learn about? These may be courses related to a specific profession, skillset, or credential. For example, an association for nurses may regularly provide new courses on the latest medical practices to help members maintain their skills. If you are unsure what types of courses your members would appreciate having access to, survey them. While you may not be able to create a course based on every suggestion, gathering feedback can help you understand the majority of your members’ needs.
- Create a course catalog. Each of your members has their own interests, and they should be able to easily browse all of your offerings to find educational programs that are relevant to them. Your LMS should include features for displaying and filtering course content. For example, you might let members organize courses by topic, format, cost, or any other pertinent factors.
- Make education tracking simple. For professional associations, course and education credit tracking is essential. Help members stay engaged by making it easy for them to see where they are in their learning journey and what content they should tackle next. Your LMS should provide member self-service and tracking tools that let them take charge of their own progress.
When designing courses, let your nonprofit’s mission guide you.
For associations, this may be to offer accessible professional development opportunities, while nonprofits may use their mission to choose educational topics, such as an organization dedicated to community advancement offering financial literacy and workforce development courses.
Interactivity
The least engaging education programs feature videos that learners passively watch before answering a few simple questions. These types of courses require little interaction from the learner, often leading members to zone out, skip videos, or generally feel like they’re getting minimal value from your program.
Avoid this by following proven educational principles. For example, you have course instructors follow Merrill’s Principles of Instruction, which provide guidance for how to structure educational content on specific problems relevant to the learner. These principles include:
- Task/Problem-Centered: Learning starts with a real-world problem.
- Activation: New information is directly connected to learners’ existing knowledge and past experiences.
- Demonstration: The instruction demonstrates how to solve the problem using concrete examples.
- Application: Learners practice their new skills and receive feedback.
- Integration: Learners adapt their new skills to their everyday lives.
The key to these principles is practice and connection. A few ways you can incorporate Merrill’s Principles of Instruction and encourage engagement with your educational programs in general include:
A Range of Activities
While recorded lectures can be useful for providing knowledge, this type of resource alone leads to a passive viewing experience. Instead, ensure learners have opportunities for demonstration and application by leveraging a wide variety of activities.
For example, in addition to a spoken lecture, you might have a video that provides a physical demonstration of a specific skill set, shows off a role-playing scenario, or works through a diagram that breaks down the lesson into detail.
Outside of videos, experiment with quizzes, matching activities, short-answer responses that will be reviewed by an instructor, and other activities that encourage learners to apply what they have learned.
Attention Checks
Attention checks are periodic pop-ups that occur during courses to ensure learners are paying attention to the course materials rather than simply clicking through them. Often, these attention checks must be passed before learners are allowed to move on to the next set of content.
Attention checks are often basic questions to confirm engagement, rather than asking learners to prove their skills. For example, you might ask several true or false questions or provide multiple-choice questions that ask learners to define specific terms.
Interactive Video Content
Interactive video content is the next step beyond attention checks, asking learners to stay continually engaged throughout the entire viewing process. These include polls and quizzes embedded directly into videos.
Along with encouraging engagement, these tools also allow your organization to see how learners are interacting with your content. For example, if there’s a specific question that the majority of learners get wrong, you may need to reassess your materials related to that topic or consider how you can rephrase the question.
Community
Members are more likely to continue engaging with your educational offerings if they feel supported by your community. Creating a community allows your supporters to make friends, get their questions answered, and feel like they are a part of something greater, increasing the likelihood that they will engage with your nonprofit long-term.
When it comes to educational content, strive to create a sense of community for both live and asynchronous programs with these strategies:
Live Classes
Bring your community together online with live classes. These opportunities let your members engage with your educational content and community simultaneously, increasing their investment in your organization.
Keep online classes engaging by prioritizing:
- Direct instructor feedback. Rather than leveraging video instruction, have instructors speak directly to learners, pose questions to the group, and provide direct feedback on their assignments during class time. This high level of interactivity prompts engagement and causes members to feel like they’re getting more out of your educational program.
- Group discussions. Encourage members to discuss the material with one another to answer questions, pose new ideas, and engage more deeply with the content. For large classes, create online breakout rooms that let members speak with one another in a small group setting.
- Peer feedback. Consider having fellow learners review and comment on each other’s work. For example, you might have members submit their thoughts on assigned material before a group meeting and assign another member of the class to comment on their post.
The promise of live classes can encourage a wide range of supporters to get more involved in your nonprofit. For example, you might offer educational content as a bonus to mid-level donors, encouraging supporters to give more and feel a sense of community with others who give to your organization.
Asynchronous
Asynchronous learning can be highly effective for independent learners who prefer to go at their own pace. For example, a working professional may only have twenty minutes every night for a course, while another member may want to take their time with each course and move more slowly than the average learner.
However, this independence also means that learners are operating alone, which can lead to a sense of isolation. TopClass’s guide to asynchronous online courses suggests a few ways to help even these learners achieve a sense of community:
- Forums. Discussion forums let members ask questions, share insights, and report progress, no matter where they are in their learning journey. Members who recently completed the same course may be able to offer advice, while new members can ask questions about where to get started. Depending on the number of courses your nonprofit offers, consider setting up forums for each educational program so members have focused spaces to discuss your content.
- Learning cohorts. Rather than having asynchronous members navigate your offerings in isolation, assign them a learning group or buddy of other members taking the course at the same time. These groups can help members motivate each other, work through difficult problems, and hold each other accountable to see the course through to completion.
- Optional meetings. Plan optional meetings that let asynchronous learners meet up with one another or a course instructor. These might be topic-based discussions, an AMA with a subject matter expert, or interactive watch parties where learners can engage with video lessons as a group thanks to a live chat.
For asynchronous learners, let them choose to engage with your community when they’d like. Some members may jump at the chance to interact with others, whereas some may prefer a solo educational experience. Essentially, make group activities optional but accessible to accommodate all learners.
Nonprofits approach educational content differently than other types of organizations. With limited resources and a mission-oriented approach to member engagement, nonprofits can connect with their supporters by creating high-value, tailored offerings that prioritize the member experience.
Rather than mass-producing educational content, consider exactly what types of educational content your members need, how you can make that content stand out in members’ minds, and how you can rally your entire supporter base behind your new educational offerings.
