LEARNING DISABILITIES ASSOCIATION OF NIAGARA REGION

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In order to be able to provide leadership in learning disabilities awareness, advocacy, research, education and services, the Learning Disabilities Association of Niagara Region is on a tight budget. Having access to a free learning platform is immensely helpful.

How we discovered OWL

Our Executive Director discovered OWL and began talking about it. She had heard about the free eLearning platform through the charity grapevine—from another non-profit in Niagara.

How we are using OWL

We started with running our personnel through Ontario-mandated training, and we are now considering ways to utilize more free training as part of the onboarding process with our CRM. We are thrilled with the ease of use, and how OWL essentially onboards our personnel to the platform with an automatic email delivered to their inbox.

Our favourite courses so far are...

So far, we have only used the WHMIS compliance course. We are now looking to add more free training, including various DEI and Accessibility course modules.

What we want other charities to know

OWL has helped us to streamline our onboarding procedures and given us back valuable time and costs that were going into purchasing staff and volunteer training. We can now redirect all of it back into managing our programs and supporting our personnel in other ways.

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Joining OWL has reduced our training costs, which has been highly valuable given that we are operating at a deficit this year.

Madeline Cipriano

Learning Disabilities Association of Niagara Region

By Emma Browne July 8, 2026
Running a nonprofit means wearing a dozen hats at once — board liaison, team manager, grant writer, fundraiser, and more, often all before lunch. That's why we're excited to announce 4 new courses on OWL (Open World Learning) designed specifically for nonprofit and charity professionals who want practical, real-world skills without the fluff. We launch new courses every quarter to best serve our nonprofit champions. If you're interested in our last course drop, you can browse through 13 free nonprofit courses we released in March 2026 . Why These Courses, Why Now Nonprofits are being asked to do more with less — tighter budgets, smaller teams, and higher expectations from donors and boards alike. These four courses were built to address the exact pressure points that come up again and again in the sector: governance, people management, funding, and fundraising. Each course is self-paced, practical, and built by people who understand nonprofit work isn't a scaled-down version of the corporate world — it's its own discipline with its own challenges.
By Emma Browne March 17, 2026
We’re excited to announce a new set of courses on the OWL Learning Platform , designed to support nonprofit professionals, board members, and organizational leaders. These new additions focus on the core skills needed to run, grow, and sustain effective nonprofit organizations. You'll find these courses under the following categories on your dashboard.