Charity Learning Consortium

The Charity Learning Consortium is a UK membership organization that gives charities and nonprofits an eLearning course library, a learning management system and ongoing support as one package. It is built for L&D and HR teams in the third sector who need to train staff and volunteers on compliance topics, induction and professional development without a corporate budget. The homepage says it is trusted by over 400 charities across the UK, cites 20+ years of experience, and lists 500+ topics. The company behind it, CL Consortium Ltd, lists its address in Stroud, in the UK.

Membership is the product. Rather than licensing software and buying content separately, a charity joins the Consortium and gets courses, videos, an LMS, a membership manager, technical support and access to events in one subscription. The site frames this as a way to keep staff compliant, support professional development and cut training costs with one central platform.

The course library

The courseware page describes a library of 500 online training courses for charities, covering staff, volunteers and managers. The Consortium says it has teamed up with a range of content providers to assemble it, and the pricing page adds unlimited viewing of 1500+ videos on top of the courses.

The topic list is broad and practical. Health and safety covers fire safety, manual handling, display screen equipment and food hygiene. The GDPR set includes data breaches and handling, the Freedom of Information Act and GDPR itself. Safeguarding covers adults and children, Prevent and types of abuse. There are volunteering courses (volunteer induction, retaining volunteers, essential skills for volunteer managers), health and social care courses including the Care Certificate, MCA DoLS, infection control and basic life support, and trustee and governance courses such as becoming a trustee, trustees' responsibilities and liabilities, and the trustee board. Leadership and management, mentoring and coaching, personal development, mental health and wellbeing (including resilience, mindfulness and menopause awareness), policy and legislation (fraud awareness, sexual harassment) and fundraising round out the catalog. Each topic area ends with "and many more", and the full course list is sent on request.

Part of the library is the Consortium's own Charity Essentials range. The site says every module in it is tailored to the charity sector and is "practical and jargon-free", and argues that most learning is written for the corporate world, leaving charities to adapt it themselves.

The LMS

The LMS page describes a learning management system built for charities and nonprofits, set up for each member by the Consortium's tech team. A charity sends its logo, colors, content and requests, an onboarding specialist works with it from the start, and the team builds a branded platform. Members get personal training sessions on the features, and the Consortium helps plan an engagement strategy for launch.

Content can come from three places: the pre-loaded library of over 500 modules, the charity's own uploaded courses, and embedded videos, documents and other media. On top of that, admins can add interactive quizzes, surveys and assignments, downloadable PDFs and workbooks, learning pathways by role or department, and certificates and digital badges.

Branding covers the logo, brand colors and imagery, banners and homepage content. Admins can create custom learner groups and permissions. For getting people in, the LMS offers bulk learner upload, single sign-on (SSO) integration and custom welcome messages and learner dashboards, and learning pathways assign the right training to each group.

Reporting is where the compliance use case sits. The page lists real-time dashboards of learner activity and progress, course completion tracking with automated reports, deadline management for compliance, and automatic certificates and badges. A newer Team Insights tool highlights where learners need support. To keep training going after the first round, the LMS sends automated notifications for deadlines and renewals, manages annual refreshers, collects learner feedback, and includes a session booking tool for live or face-to-face learning.

Plans and pricing

The pricing page explains the model rather than listing prices. The Consortium bases quotes mainly on how many employees an organization has, and with the standard package it says "we'll match the number of volunteers for free". That matters for charities whose volunteers far outnumber paid staff. Prices are configured after a short form, and someone from the membership team follows up.

Two membership packages are described:

• Charity package for under 100 users: unlimited access to 500+ eLearning courses, unlimited viewing of 1500+ videos, access to a CLC LMS, a dedicated membership manager, technical support and complimentary events.
• Standard charity package for over 100 users: the same course and video access, plus a personalized LMS branded to the organization with the ability to upload bespoke content, the newest upgrades, and an invitation to the annual conference and awards.

Charities that already run an LMS can take a content only package with 500+ topics to host on their own platform, including titles such as GDPR, safeguarding and the Care Certificate. Optional extras come through partners: discounted bespoke course development with Little Man Project, a Coaching Culture library for coaching skills, and Clear Lessons Video, whose videos the page says are free to nonprofits, with a paid branded option for embedding them in an LMS.

Support and community

Every member gets a dedicated membership manager for account management, L&D strategy, engagement and benchmarking. Benchmarking runs on the Charity Learning Index, a self-assessment tool that measures learning maturity across engagement, leadership, content strategy and digital capability, and returns a report with recommendations. A helpdesk handles day-to-day LMS questions and maintains a library of solution articles. Extra resources include the Little Books series of short guides, articles, case studies, eBooks and L&D reports.

The community is a large part of the offer. The support page describes over 1,000 L&D professionals sharing ideas at regular virtual and in-person networking events and in a 24/7 WhatsApp group, and the homepage mentions quarterly events. The support page says 97% of members would recommend the Consortium to other L&D professionals in the third sector. A Royal Parks testimonial reads "The helpdesk is very good and very fast. Easy functionality with the site to set things up and use. Jamie is a great teacher!" Case studies on the site come from members including Royal Voluntary Service, Shaw Trust, Warwick Students' Union, Prostate Cancer UK, the Forward Trust and The Children's Society.

The site also lists the Consortium as a Certified B Corporation, and runs the Charity Mentoring Network, a community platform connecting charities, staff and volunteers to share mentors.

Who it suits

The Consortium fits UK charities of most sizes that need compliance and induction training for staff and volunteers. A small charity with no LMS gets a ready platform, a content library and a person to call. A larger charity with over 100 users gets a branded LMS with its own content alongside the library, SSO and role-based pathways. Organizations with a big volunteer base get the most from the volunteer matching in the standard package. Charities already on another LMS can buy the content only.

The catalog is written for the UK sector, with topics such as Prevent, the Care Certificate and UK trustee duties, so nonprofits elsewhere will find less of it relevant. Commercial companies are not the audience. And because prices are quoted per organization, a charity has to fill in the form to learn what membership costs.