What is the best way to get the most from a small training budget?

ASTD Nebraska Director of Membership Pati Carr, who also participates in our mentoring program, has a solution:
 
“My company's training department consists of myself and my boss with one part-time individual who works about 10 hours a week. As you can imagine, we have virtually no budget for training.  We have developed all of our own programs for internal employees and have done so one area at a time. We then have used the framework to develop the other areas. Much of our training consists of PowerPoint presentations and discussions, and we have created resources that can be used electronically (to save paper) when they get back to their desk. The intranet site we use is free-of-charge, the electronic resources use no paper, and we utilize a free of charge online tool for pre-tests and post-tests called classmarker.com. Even if you have a large budget, my advice is to realize that the best things in life can be free (or virtually free); you just need to seek them out and see how they can work for you. For my company, less truly is more, and we take advantage of it every chance we get.”
 
To gather answers to your strategic questions and further develop your personal growth, join the ASTD Mentoring Program.