How Are Nonprofits Using myTrailhead?
If you’re a Salesforce admin like me, you’ve also probably relied on Trailhead to develop your skills and learn over the years. Trailhead is an incredible, free learning platform provided directly by Salesforce to help everyone from end-users to developers better understand the software. In fact, it’s up there on our list of the best resources to turn to for Salesforce help.
Best of all, it’s kind of fun. Salesforce has gamified the learning process. There’s a sort of National Parks, outdoor scouts theme to the experience. Lessons are grouped into modules you can earn badges for completing. There are trails to getting you through a certain topic (like fundraising with NPSP). You can customize your own Trailmixes of different learning modules to share with others. And as you accumulate points you can reach different user ranks, from Scout all the way through Ranger.
And sure, Trailhead has some great, non-Salesforce related trails, like this one about inclusive marketing. But what if your organization wants to offer training that’s specific to your organization and its needs beyond Salesforce? That’s where myTrailhead comes in.
What Is myTrailhead?
myTrailhead allows organizations to leverage Salesforce’s learning platform and their own training materials to make it their own.
With myTrailhead, you can upload your own content and create your own badges right on the Trailhead platform. You make Trailhead your own, customizing it to meet the needs and brand of your organization. You can then use it to train staff and volunteers and support their learning and growth as they work with your organization.
For example, a nonprofit that organizes afterschool programs all over the country might use myTrailhead to offer training and on-going education to its after-school program volunteers. Another organization might employ myTrailhead to on-board and train its internal staff.
Like I said, the platform is gamified to make learning fun, but those same features demonstrate each user’s dedication to learning and development.
Who Benefits From myTrailhead?
So, who should consider adopting myTrailhead? There are two main things to keep in mind:
- myTrailhead isn’t free.
- The power of myTrailhead exists in the content your organization already owns.
First, there is a cost associated with myTrailhead. Trailhead — the platform you can use to learn how to use Salesforce — is free for anyone to everyone (you don’t even need a Salesforce license). myTrailhead — the learning platform that’s completely customizable for the needs of your organization — is not free. Like most Salesforce products, you’ll need to buy a license for each user. So you need to think about how many potential users you’d have in your company and about how important investment in training and learning is for your organization.
Second, investing in myTrailhead is only worth it if you have a lot of training and knowledge already documented that you can leverage myTrailhead to disseminate. myTrailhead helps you gamify your content and share it with your staff. It relies upon you uploading the knowledge you already have or have access to. If you don’t have content to upload, your myTrailhead users won’t have anything to interact with.
How Do I Get Started?
There are basically four steps to setting up myTrailhead:
- Enable myTrailhead and assemble your team.
- Prepare your organization’s training content.
- Publish and organize the content on myTrailhead.
- Configure the platform to drive adoption.
It sounds easy, but it requires a lot of forethought and preparation. Just like when you adopt Salesforce or any new piece of technology, you can’t just set it up and hope people will come. You have to configure it to attract people; you have to build a campaign to encourage use; and you have to get your key stakeholders involved.
That said, you have a few different options for completing those steps.
- Do it all yourself.
- Work with a partner to format and upload the content.
- Work with a partner to format and upload the content as well as build a program to drive adoption of the system at your organization.
Want to learn more? Download our resource guide to setting up myTrailhead.
