Non-Profit Organization Delivers Personalized Skills Training at Scale

Goodwill Industries International Inc. is an American nonprofit 501 organization that provides job training, employment placement services, and other community-based programs. Goodwill works to enhance people’s dignity and quality of life by strengthening their communities, eliminating their barriers to opportunity, and helping them reach their full potential through learning and the power of work. 

Every day, more than 350 people find a job with Goodwill’s help. In 2022, Goodwill served over 2.1 million individuals worldwide and helped more than 128,998 people train for careers in industries such as banking, IT, and health care, to name a few, and get the supportive training they needed to be successful. These include English language training, additional education, cybersecurity, DEI, safety and compliance, specific skills training, and beyond.

The Goodwill enterprise is a network of more than 150 community-based, autonomous organizations in the United States and Canada with a presence in 12 other countries. To meet the needs of communities, each local Goodwill organization designs its own programs and services to help people find work near where they live. The organizations in the network are individual and sustainable social enterprises that create job training programs, employment placement, and other community-based programs. 

To support the mission, the Learning and Development department at The Goodwill Academy wanted to create a strong LMS that centralizes learning. This will help all organizations in the network to have easy access to the amazing Goodwill resources and use them at the local, community level. 

Further, the current platform was a mixed bag of Goodwill information—news, pictures, storyboards, learning content, success stories, and more. The L&D department wanted a platform exclusive to training that could effectively meet the learning needs of organizations in the network. 

Additionally, the new L&D platform needed to be scalable and score high on user experience. It needs to help simplify processes and maintenance for the administrators. 

“We would like the LMS to not only support on-demand learning but also be a supplement platform to access content, learning events and opportunities, and broaden the user base.” Jessica Wabier, Manager, Learning Delivery.

ELB Learning proposed a combination of learning tools that will address Goodwill’s specific challenges and needs. The tools implemented are:

• Rockstar Learning Platform (RLP)
• Lectora, an eLearning course authoring tool
• ReviewLink
• Asset Library

The tools within the Rockstar Learning Platform help create hierarchies and learning paths and organize learning resources. Through the platform, Goodwill can segment content based on cohort, and keep it exclusive, if needed.

The prompts for administrators about validity and version control help the L&D team to stay current and relevant. Admins now view critical metrics and analytics of usage, engagement, and performance with interactivities by learners in an instant.

“The reporting feature is robust and is certainly the highlight of using RLP. It gives deep insights into a learner’s progress for the local Goodwill administrators and helps us at the Academy to identify popular courses, learning modes, preferences, and guide us in delivering better learning experiences.” 

- Valeria Ocaña-Ogushi, Learning Technology and Innovation Manager. 

With RLP, the entire length and breadth of learning content is now accessible and scalable. The intuitive interface and experience appeal to all demography of users at Goodwill, frontline employees, and leaders alike. 

The Rockstar Learning Platform helped:

• Enhanced Goodwill’s mission by providing scalable, personalized, and effective methods to equip individuals with skills for challenges, professional growth, and employment.
• Created flexible, accessible, and engaging learning for organizations while aligning with community service and personal growth.
• Data-driven decisions helped improve training, drive employee development, and expand community reach. 

“The user-friendly feature attracts all stakeholders—learners and administrators. RLP has simplified the delivery and accessibility of learning resources across all organizations in the network, while relying on them to assist local communities. Additionally, the biggest win is being able to successfully foster a culture of learning. This has had a direct impact on performance and business outcomes.” - Valeria Ocaña-Ogushi, Learning Technology and Innovation Manager. 

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The Road Ahead

With the ease of delivering training continuously and consistently across organizations, and the improved motivation of learners to receive more training, Goodwill is on the path of exploring how games and virtual reality can be easily included in their learning strategy. The Training Arcade and CenarioVR are the tools in consideration.  

‍“ELB Learning continues to support us with maintenance of the learning platform, troubleshooting, and embracing best practices. This helps Goodwill to remain steadfast in our mission to deliver skills training at scale.” Valeria Ocaña-Ogushi, Learning Technology and Innovation Manager.