Help! We’ve got no training budget…
Need neurodiversity training in 2025, but the budget won’t stretch to it? Here’s five creative ways to get your team the training they need.
So here’s a question we get asked a lot here at Free2BMe HQ.
“We’re a small charity and our staff are nearly all volunteers. We really need to upskill our team, but we don’t have a training budget. What can you do to help us?”
Hey there, small charity CEOs and service managers.
We see you, and we know how hard you work to keep things running on a shoestring. It’s tough out there, and your volunteers are working their behinds off and you want to reward them somehow.
We have no funding to offer our neurodiversity training free of charge. However - we can share with you a few creative ways to ensure you can get the CPD you need for your team without giving your trustees and accountants a headache.
1) Team up with other local services
If you’re a small organisation, you could approach other small charities and services in your area to see if you could pool your resources and fund the training between you. It also means staff get to meet, network and share good practice with colleagues from other settings, which can help bring fresh ideas and new energy. We can facilitate in person training for groups of up to 30 people, so it’s possible for more than two smaller organisations to team up. Although understandably managers often feel reluctant to ask, we do often find that keen staff and volunteers are willing to contribute to the cost of good quality CPD as well if they feel that the training is going to make a significant difference to their work.
2) Open the course up to local independent practitioners
If you’re able to host the course yourselves and you have spare spaces, why not market your spare places to local private practitioners? You could use a platform like Eventbrite, or create an event on Facebook, to take bookings and promote the course locally through community notice boards and private therapy centres as well as social media. Free2BMe can help you by providing a course description for your posters/flyers and we can promote it on our social media channels as well.
3) Apply for grant funding
There may be grant funding available that you can apply for to help upskill your team. Here is a list of UK funders which award grants to charities and non profits in the mental health and wellbeing sector.
4) Reduce costs by training remotely
There’s definitely been more appetite since Covid restrictions became a distant memory for old fashioned in person training. However, taking your training online will reduce costs, because we won’t have to factor in the cost and time of travel or accommodation. Your team can attend from the comfort of home and without the time and expense of a commute, which for many makes training more accessible, especially if it’s outside of core working hours. Most of our courses can be delivered online (with the exception of the Creative Working with Neurodivergent clients course) and we always make sure we have plenty of time for experiential activities, interaction and discussion, however our training is delivered.
5) Book your small team on an open access course
If you have a small team of 6 people or less, it may be more cost effective to book on to one of our open access online courses as a group. You might not get that whole team together bonding experience, but you will get to meet and interact with new people, hear different perspectives and experiences, and raise awareness of your service in the wider professional community.
