The Challenge
The New York State Association for Superintendents of School Buildings and Grounds, Inc. (SBGA) and the School Facilities Management Institute (SFMI) are dedicated to providing timely, appropriate education and training programs to New York State's school facilities directors. With a constantly evolving world, and today's economic forecast, associations are asked to do more with less. Traditional regional training programs were becoming too costly for SBGA members, and taking up more time than they could afford away from the district.

The Solution
The Association Development Group, Inc. (ADG) was charged with helping SBGA and SFMI find a mechanism to reach the maximum number of school facilities directors in the most cost-effect way. With e-communication emerging as the wave of the future, SBGA and SFMI partnered with an online management solutions company to provide members with webinars, allowing cost-effective, top quality presentations to be transmitted over the Web. One of the key features of a webinar is its interactive elements – the ability to give, receive and discuss information in real time.

ADG worked with the leadership to identify timely training topics and outstanding facilitators, and designed programs to provide practical, quick tools and techniques to help school districts prevent potential future maintenance issues and adequately prepare their management staff.

The Results
Over of the past few years, SGBA and SFMI have provided dozens of one-hour webinars on a variety of school facilities management topics, including communication and presentation skills, adequate roofing, health and life safety and playground safety. As a result, SGBA and SFMI continue to reach hundreds of school facilities directors and their staff, offering them quick training programs on the issues they face each day, all without leaving their district.