How ReadyMembership built its client training academy with LearnUpon
When ReadyMembership decided to build a training academy for its clients, the question at the center of that decision was one that associations navigate all the time: how do you make ongoing learning practical for a busy team, and how do you ensure that the platform supporting it works well alongside the systems already managing your membership? We chose LearnUpon to power the ReadyMembership Academy, and the experience of building and running it has informed how we think about the relationship between an AMS and an LMS more broadly.
About the ReadyMembership Academy
As ReadyMembership has grown, so has the range of ways client teams use the platform. New colleagues join mid-way through an implementation and need to get up to speed quickly. Experienced users want to go deeper on features they use regularly, or explore areas they have not yet had reason to use. And clients often want to learn at their own pace, and there is a lot to learn when you move to an all-in-one platform. And as the platform continues to develop through our client-led development process, there is an ongoing need for learning support that keeps pace with what is new. The Academy was built to serve all of those needs: a training resource that extends the support clients receive from the ReadyMembership team, sits alongside formal onboarding rather than replacing it, and can be passed on to new team members as the organization evolves without arranging a session from scratch each time.
Courses are built around the areas of the platform that client teams engage with most, combining short video content, quizzes, and downloadable reference materials in modules designed to be completed in under an hour. Courses are offered at both introductory and advanced levels. A roadmap of 30 courses across 10 platform areas is in development, covering member management, communications, events, payments, and the CMS, among others.
Why we chose LearnUpon
We needed a platform our team could build on with confidence and that our clients could use without friction. LearnUpon is built specifically for the kind of professional learning organizations like ours deliver, and that focus shows in the experience of working with it. The course-building tools are accessible, the output looks polished, and the platform does not ask clients to navigate complexity that has no bearing on what they are trying to do.
The relationship with LearnUpon's team was equally important. Steve Dowle, ReadyMembership's Head of Product, describes what working with them has been like:
We have found LearnUpon a genuinely engaging system, and a lot easier to build on and learn from than we anticipated. Their team treated us like a client from day one: we had our own CSM, regular catch-ups, and they never let us take our foot off the gas. If they offer association clients the same level of support they gave us, I can’t recommend them highly enough.
How the connection works
For ReadyMembership users
Client teams access the Academy directly from within ReadyMembership. Navigating to the help and support hub inside the admin area takes users through to LearnUpon via single sign-on, with no separate login required at any point. The transition between the two platforms is invisible from the user’s perspective, and even returning to a bookmarked LearnUpon URL routes back through ReadyMembership to authenticate before bringing the user straight in.
For your association’s members
For associations with their own learning programs, the integration between ReadyMembership and LearnUpon extends considerably further than single sign-on. ReadyMembership can automatically grant course access in LearnUpon when a member joins, adjust that access as membership grade or status changes, and revoke it when a membership lapses, removing the need to manually manage permissions in the LMS. Course progression data flows back into ReadyMembership and sits alongside the rest of the member record, so that a complete picture of member activity, including their learning history, is visible in one place.
While LearnUpon does have ecommerce capabilities, many learning platforms do not. ReadyMembership’s built-in shop fills that gap for associations looking to sell course access alongside other membership products. Enrollment is triggered automatically on purchase, with no additional administration required.
What it means for your association
For your members
Members experience a single coherent system. A shared login covers both their membership account and their learning, they can see the courses available to them and track their own progress, and their continuing education credits are recorded automatically against their professional record. The learning feels like a natural extension of membership rather than a separate service they have to navigate independently.
For your team
Because course access is managed through ReadyMembership’s membership rules rather than administered manually in the LMS, the process of keeping access current is largely automatic. The same logic extends into member communications: rather than maintaining a separate engagement strategy within the learning platform, personalized learning prompts can be built into the broader membership communications ReadyMembership already supports. A member who enrolled in a course some months ago and has not returned to it can receive a timely reminder in the context of a regular membership touchpoint, alongside other content relevant to their account, rather than a standalone message from a separate system.
The results
Early feedback on the first ReadyMembership Academy courses came from 9 clients across 7 organizations, collected in June 2026.
ReadyMembership and LearnUpon: better together
ReadyMembership manages the membership relationship: the data, the communications, the events, and the commerce. LearnUpon manages the learning experience. The value in connecting them comes not from adding features to either platform, but from ensuring that two of the most consistent activities in a member’s professional life – engaging with their membership body and continuing their professional development – work together rather than running in parallel as separate administrative tasks.
What made LearnUpon the right choice for the ReadyMembership Academy is the same thing that tends to make purpose-built platforms the right choice in general. As Steve Dowle puts it:
From a member's perspective, the goal is simple: their learning should feel like a natural part of their membership, not a separate system they have to remember to log into. When you connect ReadyMembership's membership data to a learning platform that is focused on delivering exactly that kind of professional development, the data starts doing the heavy lifting automatically. That is what you get when both platforms are built by teams who understand what associations actually need from each of them.
If you are considering how to bring learning into your membership platform, or how to make the learning you already offer work harder for members, speak to our team.
