Your charity probably knows something no training company does. A safer-sleep course from the people who research it. Safeguarding written by people who handle the cases. Disability awareness from the people your service supports.
Other organisations want that training. Councils, schools, NHS trusts, housing associations and businesses all have learning management systems (LMSs) that need content. Selling them your course can turn the training you already run into income.
The question that stops most charities is practical: how do you get your course into someone else's LMS, and keep control of it once it's there?
Three ways to deliver your course to other organisations
1. Learners log in to your platform
You host the course on your own LMS or website and sell access. Each buyer's staff create accounts on your site.
This is where many charities start, because the course is often already there. The catch is that most organisations want completions recorded in their own LMS, next to the rest of their mandatory training. Asking their staff to sign up somewhere else is a hard sell for a training manager who reports on compliance.
2. You send them a SCORM package
You package the course as SCORM, the standard format almost every LMS accepts, and send the file. They upload it, assign it, and completions show up in their reports.
This is what buyers ask for. The downside is that once the file is theirs, you lose control:
- You can't see how many people take it, so per-learner pricing relies on trust.
- When you update the content, every buyer has an old copy until you send a new file and they re-upload it.
- Nothing stops the file being shared.
For a one-off sale to a trusted partner, that may be fine.
3. You send a dispatch package that stays on your server
A dispatch package is a small SCORM file that behaves like the real course in the buyer's LMS but loads the content from your server. Rustici's SCORM Cloud Dispatch is the best-known service for this. I built SCORMBridge as a lighter alternative for course owners who sell the same course to many organisations: it gives each organisation its own licence and shows you launches and completions.
The buyer gets what they want: it uploads like any SCORM course and records completions in their LMS. You get what you need:
- You can count learners per buyer and invoice accordingly.
- You can switch off access when a licence ends.
- You update the course once, and every buyer gets the new version straight away.
It costs more to set up than sending a file, and dispatch services charge a platform fee. But if you plan to sell to more than a handful of organisations, it's usually the option that scales.
How to price it
Most charities pick one of two models:
- Annual licence per organisation. One price for unlimited learners, sometimes tiered by headcount. Easy to invoice, easy for buyers to budget for, and it suits public-sector purchase orders.
- Per-learner licence. Fairer when buyers range from a ten-person charity to a large trust, but you need a way to count learners (option 3 above).
Whichever you pick, publish a starting price. Training managers shortlist suppliers whose prices they can see.
Start small
The biggest risk isn't the technology. It's spending a lot on a selling platform before you know anyone will buy.
A charity I spoke to this year had a respected course and real interest from other organisations, but a platform-plus-conversion budget was more than it could commit to with demand still unproven. That is a sensible call, not a failure. A phased approach would have suited it better:
- Test demand first. Ask two or three organisations that already know your work whether they would pay, and roughly how much.
- Convert the course to SCORM once. You need a SCORM version for every option above, so this is never wasted.
- Sell the first licences as plain SCORM packages to those trusted buyers, with a simple licence agreement.
- Move to dispatch when you have enough buyers that counting learners and pushing updates by hand gets painful.
Before you sell: two checks
- Charity law and tax. Selling training is usually fine if it furthers your charitable purposes, but check with your accountant whether the income should go through a trading subsidiary.
- Accessibility. Public-sector buyers will ask whether the course meets WCAG 2.1 AA. Build it in from the start; retrofitting is much more expensive.
Getting help
I convert charity training into SCORM courses that work in other organisations' LMSs, and registered charities get 20% off. If you're weighing up whether to sell your course, tell me what it covers or see e-learning for charities.