Will elearning increase revenue for your nonprofit organization?
With government or philanthropic funding, organizations develop research-based elearning courses to mobilize knowledge and support skills development for their stakeholders, often addressing a historically unmet need – such as culturally-relevant mental health training – or an emerging need – such as transferable skills to target job loss due to automation. These kinds of elearning programs involve developing new and customized content to serve the intended learner profile. The development process requires conducting community-based research to ensure that the elearning program reflects the real needs of stakeholder-learners.
Research-based programs have product-market fit potential because they are based on two-layers of demand research – research conducted by the funding body and the research conducted by the organization receiving the funding. As well, after the programs are implemented or launched they are closely monitored and evaluated. Therefore, organizations have data on how they might improve a program in order to make it as market-ready as possible. For these reasons, there is a potential opportunity to leverage the elearning, or a version of it, to generate revenue for your organization.
Going to market with an elearning course, however, requires more than putting up a paywall. You’ll need to make the case for redirecting some organizational resources to prepare for launch and for the ongoing support a new revenue stream may need. You can make the case (or not) by conducting a feasibility study.
The elearning feasibility study can report the following:
The market needs and opportunities
Operational capacity to pursue the opportunities (internal and external)
Recommended income generating models
Financial potential and viability of proposed directions and models
Identification of potential partners
Legal considerations, including regulations, nonprofit status, and IP
Within your study, you can also conduct the necessary research to address concerns. Here are a few of the fair concerns that we have come across:
The funding agreement prohibits revenue-generation
We hear this concern from non-profits often and it is a very valid one. Many funding agreements with the Government of Canada, for example, will contain a clause regarding whether the outputs can be sold or be the source of revenue. It is important to be aware of this at the point of grant submission. Try to get in touch with the grant coordinator to ask about this at the outset (ideally) or after the fact. Find out if the content developed can be recycled. Can the research conducted inform the development of more than one output? Can these outputs be simultaneously developed?
The course content is too niche
The strength of research-based programs is indeed that they are designed for a specific stakeholder-learner. That said, we often underestimate how many more learners a program can serve as-is or with some minor tweaks and changes. With small changes to case study examples or by adding a translation, the content may be able to reach similar audiences in a different geographic location, for example.
We don’t have the capacity to make this product market-ready
Not all nonprofits have learning design or instructional design capacity in-house. That’s because it’s not necessarily a constant capacity that is needed within the organization. As a result, the initial elearning program may have been developed without professional expertise or these resources may no longer be at your disposal. A low-cost strategy may be to have elearning experts evaluate your existing elearning course and provide you with specific feedback. You can also conduct your own review. A simple approach would be to focus on these core elearning areas: content quality, format compliance, accessibility, learning data and effectiveness.
We don’t have the capacity to market this product
As a nonprofit there are several marketing models to consider in order to off-set capacity with partnerships. There are many types of marketing partnership models to choose from: content marketing, co-branding, distribution partnerships, affiliate marketing, sponsorship, licensing, and white labeling to name a few. Good partnerships, based on shared values, can extend reach, footprint, and help to build the organization’s brand all at the same time. Consider what type of partnership can help you organization go-to-market.
This feasibility study should reveal the risks and opportunities in making your elearning product for sale. This may be the first of several more steps in going-to-market or it could be the end of the road for this project. Either way, your answer will be based on evidence and can be helpful in informing your strategic direction for future projects with respect to revenue generating potential.
