Why should my organization have a training pass?

Dariel Dixon

I've been thinking about this for a while? I wanted to know if someone has done the cost-analysis of the training pass. My organization used to have a training pass. I have suggested every organization to get rid of it just due to lack of use. I'm a big fan of training, but I don't believe in spending thousands of dollars that were just wasted. I do need to point out that the money that was used for the training pass was not necessarily reallocated, but just made available on an as-needed basis, so we can still take classes if anyone would like.

So, what I'm curious to those who have a training pass, how many classes did your team take last year or on average? How big is your team? Is it worth it from a cost standpoint versus just paying a la carte? Is anyone besides you taking classes? You can contact your account manager to run a training audit for your site ID. Seeing that really changed my mind. I could see who was taking classes and who was not. I championed taking classes constantly, but I could not make people sign up.

Karen Diener

I have to admit that I don't typically recommend it. I know some people love the training but I have not found it effective for a few reasons:

• It is still too hypothetical and abstract. Of course users need to understand RE's basic functionality, for instance, but that might be a 2 hour class and I can cover it in 30 minutes, one-on-one.
• Some things that I would think are basic enough to cover in the fundamentals classes are not mentioned. I don't recall specifics because it has been 4-5 years, but I do remember being really surprised that wildcards in searches or something along those lines was never mentioned.
• It is inconsistent. I've had staff take the same classes but with different instructors and have very different experiences - one class covered a few topics that the other did not.
• The pace is excruciatingly slow. I've experienced this myself, brushing up on some topics during COVID.
• This is personal, and just a pet peeve of mine, but I feel like the instructors are not conversational. This is a big issue for me - do not read from a script and over-inflect (is that even a word??) to the point where you sound like you are doing a voice-over.

I don't think it is worth the money. I find that I can do training in a much more efficient way - specific to the organization's practices and unique needs, and in probably ⅓ of the time. I KNOW people might disagree and I don't have a problem with that - they are in different situations. I can only speak from my experience and that of my clients that it hasn't been too helpful.

Karen

Leslie Choitz

Funny you should ask. We just decided to drop our training subscription for next year. There are four of us in the development department. We used the pass extensively when we first signed on to NXT three years ago, but in the subsequent years usage has dropped to almost nothing. We calculated that it would be far more efficient both in terms of cost and time to pay for the classes individually. And it frees up that part of the budget for training in other areas.

Dariel Dixon

Leslie Choitz:

Funny you should ask. We just decided to drop our training subscription for next year. There are four of us in the development department. We used the pass extensively when we first signed on to NXT three years ago, but in the subsequent years usage has dropped to almost nothing. We calculated that it would be far more efficient both in terms of cost and time to pay for the classes individually. And it frees up that part of the budget for training in other areas.

EXACTLY THIS!!! I can't like this response even more. I think the smaller the department, the less cost-effective the training pass is. My experience has been exactly this. I think it is good for a year or two, or if the turnover is really bad (then training is the least of the worries). However, I think it is a mistake to just keep it as a line item in the budget if you aren't tracking usage and cost.

Dariel Dixon

Karen Diener:

I have to admit that I don't typically recommend it. I know some people love the training but I have not found it effective for a few reasons:

• It is still too hypothetical and abstract. Of course users need to understand RE's basic functionality, for instance, but that might be a 2 hour class and I can cover it in 30 minutes, one-on-one.
• Some things that I would think are basic enough to cover in the fundamentals classes are not mentioned. I don't recall specifics because it has been 4-5 years, but I do remember being really surprised that wildcards in searches or something along those lines was never mentioned.
• It is inconsistent. I've had staff take the same classes but with different instructors and have very different experiences - one class covered a few topics that the other did not.
• The pace is excruciatingly slow. I've experienced this myself, brushing up on some topics during COVID.
• This is personal, and just a pet peeve of mine, but I feel like the instructors are not conversational. This is a big issue for me - do not read from a script and over-inflect (is that even a word??) to the point where you sound like you are doing a voice-over.

I don't think it is worth the money. I find that I can do training in a much more efficient way - specific to the organization's practices and unique needs, and in probably ⅓ of the time. I KNOW people might disagree and I don't have a problem with that - they are in different situations. I can only speak from my experience and that of my clients that it hasn't been too helpful.

Karen

@Karen Diener - I love this response as well. I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to take the Blackbaud Fundamentals course in person many moons ago. I think the in-person classes are more effective. I think it may be a little unfair to compare in-person individual training to more general group training.

There is a problem with consistency, but I think those issues are somewhat hard to solve. I've had great trainers in courses, and some that were a complete waste of time for me. However, to be fair, individuals taking these courses are at varied stages of mastery, and only a few may be at your level.

To that extent, I wish they would add a higher level to training that would take off the training wheels. That would help. If you are training people around you, you may see limited results from the BB training.

However, I think it's all worth considering for all parties.

Faith Murray

I've found the training to be useful for new staff, and I do think the certifications are worth the small investment of taking them. That being said, there are different mixes of database staff, and not everyone needs the training subscription.

• If you have a self-learner who likes to solve problems, then the Training may not be as useful. A dedicated self-learner can find out everything they need to know by exploring the database and reading up in the Knowledgebase and the Community. I was this type of learner. I passed the Fundamentals and Pro exams exclusively from self-training.
• If you have a small but loyal team, then the Training subscription may not be as useful. The average tenure in my office is about 10 years right now. After the first 2 years, you generally know everything you need to learn, and any extra classes can be taken a la carte.
• If you have unique organizational policies, the Training may not be as helpful. When I put one newbie through the training a couple years ago, she complained that “I have to forget some of the stuff I just learned,” because our organization prefers database view for data entry and gift postings rather than using the NXT features she had covered.

However,

• If you have a large staff of data personnel, Training may save you a lot of headache. My colleague at another org has 20 Development staffers to oversee in the database. Offloading the basic training can be a huge time-saver in this case.
• If you have high turnover, then requiring mandatory Training can save you a lot of cleanup headache in the database. I've seen stats that nonprofit turnover averages about 2.5 years. And I've seen firsthand the woes of poor database habits in data files given me by other organizations. It almost makes me cry!
• If you just got dumped into a new role – you have no mentor and you're the one in sole charge of data operations – thank goodness for Training! You don't have the luxury of taking a year to self-train, make mistakes, and have to correct them when you know better.

So at my org, we kept our Training subscription for the first year of onboarding with NXT, but then after that we discontinued it. I still take a la carte classes as I'm interested - like for Crystal reports or Organizational Best Practices. But I really think it depends on the org and the staffing environment.

Dariel Dixon

I just wanted to push this post up to see if anyone had any other ideas.

JoAnn Strommen

I was just asked by Finance Director if we needed training pass as she's working on contract renewal. Ugh!

We are anticipating at least 3 new staff hires in the next 4 months plus usual turnover (and 1 retirement) for our staff of just over a dozen. Yes, if they do the trainings it will be worth having. If they don't take advantage, it's a loss for us as well. I personally loved having it when I came back to RE after a year out to refresh and learn NXT.

For small to medium orgs it is a hard call especially when with our structure development staff only need minimal knowledge of the software. Most is done for them by other staff. That's one of my challenges is when looking at all the topics in a 3-hour course, only a portion are job relevant for many of our staff.

LOL (I can hear some of you saying 'well they should all know how to…" - yes, maybe but not our structure at this point.)