Case Study: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) achieves scalable volunteer training and leadership development with Cornerstone OnDemand

Transforming millions of volunteers into leaders through learning

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is a Geneva‑based humanitarian network with 2,500 staff, operations in 75 countries and more than 16 million volunteers. It struggled to scale learning and development—relying on costly, inconsistent in‑person workshops that reached only a few dozen people at a time and offered limited visibility into volunteers’ skills and deployment readiness.

By partnering with Cornerstone OnDemand to deploy cloud‑based learning and performance tools, the IFRC introduced SaaS across the organization and scaled on‑demand training and succession management. The move cut training costs to about one‑tenth of classroom delivery, accelerated reach fivefold (100,000 users in 2013 and plans to reach millions by 2020), achieved almost a 60% completion rate among volunteers, and improved ability to identify leaders and rapidly deploy qualified teams.

IFRC

Ariel Kestens

Global Head Of Learning And Research