In a Time of Budget Cuts, Creativity Is Needed to Train Employees

Like many other charities these days, the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in Norfolk, Va., has been looking for ways to trim costs. And like many other organizations, it has zeroed in on the money it was spending to train its staff members.

“We used to bring in outside trainers and send our staff to outside training courses,” says Tracy Reiman, the group’s executive vice president, “but in addition to being expensive, the training wasn’t tailored to our staff’s needs.”

Instead, the group now assigns staff members to advise their colleagues in such areas as burnishing management skills, dealing with the news media, and raising corporate donations.

The move has not only cut costs, she says, but also increased quality. “The training is exactly what our people need, and we can do it more frequently,” she says.

Pursuing creative ways to provide cost-effective training—rather than simply eliminating professional-development opportunities for employees, as many charities are doing in the recession—can yield significant benefits, say nonprofit managers.

Still Important

The short-term decision to cut training can cause long-term problems, say nonprofit experts.

“In addition to weakening the organization by taking away the opportunity for employees to improve their skills, eliminating employee training sends a message to employees in terms of their future with the organization,” says Sarah Gort, director of operations at the nonprofit consulting firm CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, in San Francisco. “Cutting training makes employees feel that the organization is in such a panic mode—reacting to current economic conditions rather than planning for the future—that they start to wonder about their own job security.”

Also, certain skills are essential to a charity’s survival and especially need to be sharpened in a recession, says Marva Stanford, chief field operations officer at the Arthritis Foundation, in Atlanta. As an example, she points to fund-raising techniques.

“We can’t improve as an organization in terms of delivering services unless we raise more money,” she says.

Despite troubled economic times, some charities still view training as an integral part of their current plans. Here are some ways to provide efficient, high-level employee training without spending a lot:

Provide online training courses. Online training is convenient for employees to use, is more cost-effective than large, face-to-face meetings that require travel and hotel stays, and, if done creatively, can be very effective, experts say.

The American Lung Association provides online courses during its annual national conference, along with additional Webinars on subjects that include fund raising, technology, and project and time management, says Trish Robinson-Shabazz, who served as vice president of human resources for the association’s California organization until late last year (she’s now director of the volunteer center for the United Way of Chittenden County, in South Burlington, Vt.)

“Employees can stay in their offices and build training into their daily schedule,” she says. “Also, when we offer a Webinar to our staff, we record it so if someone can’t view it the first time, they can watch it when they can fit it into their day.”

Last year, the Lung Association changed its annual in-person conference to an online format. The organization saved “a few hundred thousand dollars” by going virtual, says Chris Pletcher, executive director of the Congress of Lung Association Staff, in Washington, and attendance tripled that of the most recent face-to-face conference.

Still, there is a downside, Ms. Pletcher acknowledges: “The virtual conference doesn’t allow much relationship-building with colleagues or networking among peers.”

Emphasize regional training. Instead of expensive national training sessions held annually at a single location, more national charities are offering smaller, regional training courses to provide cost-effective instruction that meets employees’ specific needs.

At the Make-a-Wish Foundation, in Phoenix, “a number of our chapter CEO’s and COO’s provide training and developmental courses for their staffs at the local level,” says Kurt Kroemer, chief operating officer at the national charity. “In addition to being cost-effective,” he says, “providing training courses taught by our executives lets our chapters address issues that are specific to their regions.”

Focus training on only the most-essential skills. When training budgets are tight, charities must carefully and strategically choose the types of instruction they offer—and to which employees they offer it.

Ms. Robinson says that the Lung Association focuses on leadership training; it emphasizes such skills training at its national conference and includes information about leadership in its employee newsletter and on its internal Web site. The Web site also features leadership-training videos, downloaded free from YouTube.

Ask volunteers to provide training. Arthritis Foundation affiliates, for instance, are making an increased effort to connect with local human-resource executives to make training presentations to staff members and volunteers, says Ms. Stanford. Other resources, she says, might include college faculty members and retired nonprofit executives.

Ms. Robinson-Shabazz says that the American Lung Association encourages staff members in offices around the country to connect with local corporations to ask for help in educating the charity’s workers in business skills.

“We’ve had executives at private-sector companies visit us to give training in marketing, communications, and finance,” she says.

Enhance in-house training materials. Use PowerPoint presentations to their full potential, suggests Maurizio Morselli, national director for organizational development and training at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, in New York. PowerPoint can include audio, video, and animation and creating such training materials in-house saves money, he says, noting that his assistant was trained in the software and has thus far passed on her knowledge to nearly 50 other employees.

Some workers, he says, have created self-guided training modules with voice-over narration, and the charity has compiled a library of such lessons for the entire staff.

Find free or low-cost online training courses. Reach out to other organizations to get online educational materials, suggests David Dannenberg, learning manager at the Nature Conservancy, in Arlington, Va. The charity is a member of the nonprofit alliance Learning for International Nongovernmental Organizations, or Lingos, which provides affordable educational resources for charities.

“Since the courses are online, our employees can conveniently participate in training sessions from universities such as Harvard and Cornell, and it costs us practically nothing,” says Mr. Dannenberg.

Collaborate with other nonprofit groups. “When agencies team up, instead of one organization contributing all of the time and resources to a training project, a number of agencies work together to share knowledge, materials, and staff time,” says Mr. Dannenberg. “In addition to conserving the resources of each agency, the end result is often much better because more people contribute ideas to the project.”

His environmental group is joining forces with other charities to create new, cost-effective ways to train employees. It began last year with an online training course on climate change, which was developed in partnership with five other conservation groups and is featured on a new Web site operated by the Nature Conservancy (go to: http://www.conservationtraining.org). More courses are planned, he says.

The organization sees producing inexpensive training as an opportunity to build staff members’ skills, he says, and to stretch the group’s creativity as well as its resources: “We’re taking this as a challenge to ourselves to deliver more, to educate our staff on better and newer ways to do things, so they’re better able to fulfill the mission of our organization.“

Tips for Training Workers Inexpensively

• Provide online training courses or use free or low-cost existing courses.
• Focus training on only the most essential skills.
• Ask volunteers to provide instruction.
• Enhance in-house training materials.