e-learning first for Big Lottery Fund

A first-ever implementation of e-learning at the Big Lottery Fund is helping Grants Officers handle the workload in funding for community regeneration schemes... 

The Big Lottery Fund is the joint operating name of the New Opportunities Fund and the National Lottery Charities Board (which made grants under the name of the Community Fund). The Big Lottery Fund, launched on June 1st 2004, is distributing half of all National Lottery good cause funding across the UK.

The Fund is building on the experience and best practice of the merged bodies to simplify funding in those areas where they overlap and to ensure Lottery funding provides the best possible value for money. 

To date, the two merged Funds have committed more than £5 billion to initiatives with national, regional and local partners from the public, voluntary, charity and private sectors, with a particular focus on disadvantage.

The Fund distributes 50% of Lottery good causes funding, equating with an average of £650 million a year until 2009. 

Regenerate and revitalise

In addition to funding for charities, the voluntary sector, and health, education and the environment, it is also taking on the Millennium Commission's funding of community transformation, from smaller grants at local level through to big capital projects, intended to communities. 

Grant applications from the local community for the building, alteration or refurbishment of permanent and temporary properties are received and assessed by a team of 200 Grants Officers located around the UK. 

The Officers review applications and ensure that all relevant supporting information has been supplied and make a recommendation as to whether a grant should be made.

Officers are required to have a high degree of technical and procedural knowledge necessary to ensure that an application has been correctly submitted in order to make a recommendation. 

Historically, attending intensive face-to-face two-day training courses provided them with this knowledge. However, much of the real learning was found to be taking place 'on the job' as existing training methods struggled to deliver a technically complex and somewhat 'dry' subject matter. 

There were also inefficiencies in providing training to a geographically diverse target audience and therein difficulties in ensuring the provision of a consistent training message.

A new approach to training

The Big Lottery Fund's Head of Learning & Development, Leonie Lupton approached AdVal Learning Solutions to provide an e-learning Property Training Programme that could deliver much of this technical and procedural knowledge as part of a new approach to training called the Grants Training Pathway.

The overall aim of the programme was to provide technical and procedural knowledge to Grants Officers as well as an ongoing knowledge resource during their day to day work.

The expected outcomes were that, on completion of the training programme, Grants Officers would be able to:

· Explain the documents and information needed pre award and why
· Describe what information should be contained within these pre award documents
· Identify any anomalies in cost, design and other information
· Evaluate the key documents for first stage assessment
· Describe the building process/stages and be able to identify unexpected events
· Explain what documents and information are needed post award and why
· Describe what information should be contained within these post award documents

Says Leonie Lupton: 

"The programme would enable individual learners to access learning as and when required, both as part of initial training - rather than waiting for face to face training events to be scheduled - and also as an ongoing resource to access in the office when receiving and assessing applications. 

"We additionally expected it to enable new Grants Officers to acquire required competencies more efficiently than the previous training programme had allowed," she adds.

Expected outcomes

At an organisational level the Fund expected the programme to:

· Reduce the costs of providing initial training compared to the existing face to face training provision
· Provide a more effective learning resource that would bring a technically complex yet "dry" subject to life
· Provide an ongoing knowledge resource that staff can refer to during their day to day activities
· Ensure a consistent approach is taken to the delivery of training despite the geographical separation of team members
· Demonstrate the benefits that e-learning could provide to the organisation, as part of a blended solution, across wider subject areas and target audiences

That the Property Training programme has achieved its objectives is measured in the fact that it forms an integrated part of the Grants Training Pathway, where all of the technical and procedural knowledge required to assess property grants is now delivered via e-learning. 

Since the programme was designed to support the competencies defined for Grants Officers, Big Lottery Fund decided to assess the effectiveness of the programme at an individual level through their performance appraisal system. 

"The programme directly supports four specific competencies and since the programme was launched performance markings for those individuals who have completed the programme have showed positive signs of improvement," says Leonie.

It has also been a success at an organisational level. Early evidence suggests that, through the provision of consistent training, regional variations in percentages of successful grant approvals have been reduced.

"As well as forming an integrated part of the Grants Training Pathway it has now been determined that e-learning will be implemented on a wider basis across other subject areas and business requirements," says Leonie.

Savings made

As a result of e-learning, the Fund estimates its saving in actual travel and subsistence costs alone is £200 per Grant Officer. This constitutes a saving of £40,000 across the initial target audience, and does not take into account the savings associated with no longer having to remove Officers from the workplace. 

Big Lottery Fund is an example of a public sector organisation employing all the best business principles that have made so many private sector contemporaries a success according to Adval Learning's 
Programme Director, Peter Bonfield. 

"In devising the Grants Training Pathway, the Fund looked beyond reproducing existing training delivery methods and sought best practice through correctly-implemented e-learning to bring real efficiencies and improvements in individual and business performance," he says.

"The Fund recognised that e-learning was never going to be a universal panacea and the decision to focus the e-learning content on the technical and knowledge aspects of their training requirement was an incisive one." 

Thanks to the Property Training Programme, the Big Lottery Fund is now providing an integrated and structured development and training programme which is cheaper, faster and better than that which was in place before it. 

"Learners enjoy the varied nature of the programme and have adapted well to using it as an ongoing knowledge resource," says Leonie Lupton. 

"The programme has had a positive effect on the organisation and further e-learning initiatives are being planned for implementation within the organisation." 

Ends

Issued April 2005 on behalf of Adval Learning Solutions by Bob Little Press & PR (BLP&PR) 

Media contact: Peter Muir BLP & PR tel 01296 715228 email blp&pr@pmpr.co.uk 

Sales contact Oliver Wright AdVal tel 01296 388100 email oliverw@adval.co.uk