Launch a learning program, without becoming an ed tech expert.

Good Thinking works with organizations that want to offer education and need help putting it into action.

With my help, you can focus on the decisions that matter and move forward confidently about what to build and how to deliver it, without costly missteps along the way.

Me, Dave Good

Is this you?

  • Choosing to offer a learning program is the first of many decisions. When learning efforts struggle, it’s often not because the idea was bad, but because: 

    • The goals weren’t clear

    • The effort to create and maintain the program was improperly estimated

    • The technology didn’t actually fit the audience or organization

    The difference between success and failure is asking the right questions about what your audience needs, being clearheaded about what your team can support, and choosing a platform that will facilitate both. 

    We’ll work together to shape the right learning experience for your capabilities and audience, and use that to find the perfect Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver it. Then I’ll help develop and configure your product,  and provide documentation and training so that your team can maintain your offering with minimal overhead.

  • There are hundreds of choices you could make around what you offer, and hundreds of LMSs designed to address those choices.  But there are a dozen key decisions you need to make that can reduce the LMS candidates to a handful. 

    I will help you make these decisions and in turn recommend the right LMS. Then I will prototype it so you can see it in action, and be confident you are making the right choice.  All without you or your team spending months trying to understand the industry. Or worse, making the wrong LMS decision and wasting money and time creating a learning offering that doesn’t deliver on your vision.

  • I’m an expert (and admitted geek) around features and configurations, and I excel at pushing learning management systems (LMSs) to their full potential. When an LMS does hit its limits, I can source or build components to extend it. 

    We’ll work together to get clear on where your current setup is coming up short. From there, we will establish whether you need to rethink how your current system is working or transition to a new one. Remember how painful it was to research learning platforms the first time? No need to do it on your own again.

    The end result is a learning offering that delivers on your vision, even if you’ve made some missteps in the past.

About me

Hey there, I’m Dave Good. I help teams reduce risk, choose the right tools, and launch learning offerings that scale. Sometimes by making the right choices upfront, sometimes by fixing what’s already there, and sometimes by building custom solutions.  

My 15 years of managing these projects for a variety of organizations (including IDEO, Weave at the Aspen Institute, and the Constructive Dialogue Instititue - check out my LinkedIn for more) have given me a uniquely comprehensive skillset in learning, design, product, and technology, especially with Learning Management Systems (LMSs). And this expertise isn’t just high level - I am equally comfortable defining strategy and obsessing over getting lesson pages pixel perfect.  

All of this together powers my unique, comprehensive perspective on how to maximize the impact of an online learning program.

My approach

I start with the learning program itself — what you’re trying to teach, who it’s for, and what success actually looks like — before worrying about tools.

The foundation of my approach is a 12-point Learning Blueprint that maps to a set of 5 Learning Archetypes, to guide the right solution. This approach emphasizes:

  • Establishing the learning experience goals first, then choosing tools that support them, rather than starting from feature lists

  • Making pragmatic choices your team can sustain, not systems that look impressive but are hard to run

  • Maximizing what tools do well and avoiding complexity unless there’s a clear payoff

  • Adding small, targeted custom tools only when necessary, to remove real obstacles rather than introduce new ones

  • Designing for long-term operability, not just a successful launch, so your team can run and evolve the program without constant outside help

The goal is to make the structure fade into the background, so your program runs reliably and only demands the level of attention you choose. Over time, I aim to make myself unnecessary.

Windows framing a landscape

Let’s work together in a way that works for you

Person wearing brown shoes and blue jeans standing on an asphalt road, looking down at a directional road sign painted on the ground with arrows pointing straight, left, and right.

    • What it is 

      • A two-week sprint that includes:

        • Conducting a discovery workshop or interviews

        • Creating a learning structure and requirements document (Learning Blueprint)

    • Best for

      • Shaping your high-level ideas into a defined learning program

      • Preparing your team to match your needs to the right LMS

      • Forming a realistic perspective of what it will take to build, launch, and support your program

    • Typical timeline

      • 2 weeks 

    • What you’ll have (Deliverables)

      • A Learning Blueprint defining structure, rigor, audience, and operational constraints

      • Explicit assumptions about staffing, timelines, and ongoing support

    • What this enables (Outcomes)

      • Confidence in researching and evaluating LMS options

      • Clarity on staffing and ownership before building begins

      • A clear starting point for content development or adaptation

    • What it is 

      • A two-week sprint that uses existing requirements to: 

        • Research LMSs to identify and propose 2-3 strong candidates

        • Prototype one finalist to review the learning experience, content creation options, and admin tools

        • Negotiations assistance to determine the right tier of product and get the lowest price possible for it 

        • This sprint assumes a vetted Learning Blueprint or equivalent requirements. If gaps are identified, a short alignment phase may be required before platform research begins

    • Best for

      • Transforming your requirements into confidently choosing a platform that will deliver on them

    • Typical timeline

      • 2 weeks 

    • What you’ll have (Deliverables) 

      • An LMS decision and a prototype that gets you going on building it

    • What this enables (Outcomes) 

      • A confident LMS decision backed by hands-on experience

      • Early familiarity with how the LMS will actually be used by admins and creators

    • What it is 

      • Development of your learning offering, including: 

        • Initial LMS setup and configuration

        • Application of existing Learning Blueprint or LMS requirements

        • Translation of course materials into the LMS

        • Style guide for creating consistency across the experience

        • Playbooks for developing and releasing new content post-engagement

    • What it is not 

      • Subject matter expertise or content development

    • Best for

      • Implementing your requirements and content on your chosen LMS

    • Typical timeline

      • 1-3 months. Heavily dependent on the readiness and quantity of your content.

    • What you’ll have (Deliverables)

      • A supportable, launch-ready learning program

      • Design guidelines and workbooks for maintaining your program

      • An evaluation rubric to assess whether you are achieving your goals

    • What this enables (Outcomes) 

      • Launching your learning program without overloading internal teams

      • A system your team can maintain and extend after launch

    • What it is 

      • A collaborative review of where your current learning program is missing the mark

      • An exploration of whether the existing LMS can be made to work, through a combination of discovering unused features, creatively extending how existing features are used, or adding custom/external tools

    • Best for

      • Deciding whether your current system is capable of delivering what you need, or if it’s time to explore other options

      • Preparing to negotiate with your current system provider around a (perhaps conditional) renewal

    • Typical timeline

      • 2 weeks

    • What you’ll have (Deliverables) 

      • An outline of both the untapped potential in the current LMS and its hard limits, along with a recommendation regarding whether to continue using it or explore making a switch

    • What this enables (Outcomes) 

      • A stay-or-go decision regarding your existing LMS

      • Negotiating renewals or upgrades with your current provider

    • What it is

      • On-call expertise and strategic guidance to pressure-test decisions, identify risks, and support internal teams navigating learning and LMS-related choices.

    • What it is not

      • Hands-on implementation, LMS configuration, or ownership of formal deliverables.

    • Best for

      • Pushing your thinking to the next level

      • Validating (or challenging) your choices

      • Supporting your staff, who may be new to the ed tech industry

    • Typical timeline

      • 3-6 months

    • What this enables (Outcomes)

      • Clearer judgment on high-stakes learning and LMS decisions

      • Fewer second guesses and late-stage reversals or rework

Frequently Asked Questions

  • I’ve identified a few different nonprofit learning program archetypes (my 5 Cs) that are a strong fit for my work:

    • The Chapter Network - National or regional orgs that need consistent training across semi-autonomous affiliates or chapters. Learning is how they replicate culture and practice at scale.

    • The Cohort Educator - Orgs running time-bounded programs - fellows, interns, emerging leaders - who repeat a structured curriculum each cycle but haven't systematized it well.

    • The Constituent Trainer - Orgs that offer training to the people they serve — small business owners, borrowers, community members — as a direct expression of mission or a member benefit.

    • The Capacity Builder - Funders and intermediaries that support grantee or partner orgs through training. Learning is the strategy, not a side activity.

    • The Career Builder - Associations and membership orgs that live in a professional niche and use training as the gateway to credentials or continuing education. Learning is the product.

  • Every engagement is different. Different organizations are at different phases of knowing what they want to offer and how. We’ll work together to define a clear scope and timeline that matches your goals.

  • I can help you find these services. During my fifteen years in online learning, I have built relationships with trusted partners to support clients with any part of the product life cycle, from design to development to launch to scale.

  • My many years in tech and my development background means I can prototype small-scale learning tools and bring in senior developers to set them up for scale.

  • While I am a solo consulting practice, I have an extensive network of partners in the online learning industry who I can bring in to match your needs.

  • Because every engagement is tailored, pricing varies depending on the scope, duration, and level of involvement. I’m happy to provide a proposal once I understand your needs.

  • Yes, in fact it’s better we talk now! There are many strategic decisions that are best made before you have created (or even started) your educational content. Determining the right approach will lead to quality decisions around technology, process, content, and support. Together, these are the difference between a project succeeding or failing.

  • My goal is to set you and your team up to be able to manage your offering effectively without needing outside help, but I’m happy to provide ongoing support when it matches your needs.

  • The AI landscape changes daily, but what doesn’t change is the right way to approach product development: identify a need, generate ideas for addressing it, and choose the right tools for doing so. One example could be helping your staff create and revise content faster. If AI is the right tool for supporting your staff or learners, we’ll work to harness it.

  • Yes. Depending on how your organization is funded, your learning program may need to meet Section 508 and/or ADA requirements, which govern how digital content must work for people with disabilities. These aren't just legal checkboxes, they affect platform selection, how content is structured, and what your team needs to maintain over time.

    I factor accessibility requirements into every phase of my work, from defining requirements to evaluating platforms to reviewing content.

What Clients are Saying

"Dave led our team through a complex LMS transition, where he captured technical requirements, identified relevant options, surfaced tradeoffs, and helped us make a thoughtful decision despite constraints. He then led the process of rebuilding our product on our new LMS in record time and managed our entire platform as a team of one for many months.

Through my years of working with Dave, he has consistently been hardworking, dedicated, and a wonderful colleague."

Caroline Mehl, Executive Director, Constructive Dialogue Institute

“Dave has an incredible ability to help organizations get far more out of the LMS they already have, or to help them identify a new LMS and successfully move over. Instead of defaulting to expensive rebuilds or shiny new platforms, he squeezes every bit of value out of existing systems, especially for teams without massive budgets. 


What sets Dave apart is how he prototypes his way forward. He takes complex, technical decisions and makes them understandable for non-technical stakeholders, then immediately starts building so you can see how it all works in real time. Content goes live quickly, ideas become tangible, and teams have tangible progress to react to instead of hand waving and long meetings.

Dave is deeply hardworking, highly creative, and a joy to collaborate with. He bridges to execution, helping teams move from overwhelm to confidence.”

Suzanne Howard, Partner & IDEO U Founder, IDEO

Ready to connect?

Whether you’re in the early stages of defining your new learning offering, trying to improve your current one, or looking to completely overhaul it, I can support your success. Schedule a free introductory meeting with me and we can discuss your goals and whether I’m a fit for your next step.

Schedule Intro

Not ready to schedule an intro call? Contact me using this form.

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