Partner
etrainu
Online learning, coach and official accreditation, and child-safe training for sport, built in Brisbane and used by Rugby Australia, Football Australia, Hockey Australia, and Surf Life Saving Australia.
About etrainu
etrainu is a Brisbane education technology company with a one-line mission: building exceptional communities through education. It says it has delivered courses since 2007 to more than two million learners, and it now runs teams in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, led by CEO Paul Hoon. The business has two halves that work together: a learning management system it builds and owns, and a library of more than a thousand courses written with subject experts and produced by its in-house studio. Sport is one of its main sectors, alongside disability support, aged care, early childhood, and corporate training.
For sport, the pitch is simple: sport runs on people, and coaches, officials, volunteers, and parents all need training before they step on the field. etrainu’s sports platform lets a national or state body brand its own learning hub, deliver its coaching and officiating courses, and see who has completed what across every region. Its Qualifications feature builds a sport’s accreditation rules into the system — prerequisites, CPD and CEU points, renewal cycles, and evidence uploads — so a coach keeps a licence current through short development activities instead of redoing the same course every few years. Playlists assign the right courses automatically by role or start date, an Assess app lets assessors mark practical skills on the field without paper forms, and every learner keeps their certificates in a Skills Passport. The LMS can also hold evidence such as Working with Children Checks and licences, with reminders before they expire. etrainu connects to the membership platforms sports already use, including single sign-on with Sport80 and synced training records with RevSport.
Its sports customers are some of the biggest bodies in Australian sport. Rugby Australia’s Rugby Xplorer runs on etrainu for more than 24,000 coaches and match officials; about 1,600 of its roughly 1,800 match officials engaged with the platform in the first few months. Football Australia moved its learning and qualification systems into one Football Australia Learning Centre, where a coach can see the pathway from a Coles MiniRoos licence to a professional licence. Hockey Australia’s HockeyEd went from about 700 accreditation completions in 2016 to nearly 2,500 in 2023. Touch Football Australia’s The Nest, Surf Life Saving Australia’s learning platform, Basketball Australia, Gymnastics Australia, Pickleball Australia, and Australian Oztag’s referee hub also run on etrainu. In the United States, the U.S. Center for SafeSport appointed etrainu after a global tender to deliver its safeguarding education across the Olympic and Paralympic movement.
Not every course needs a national body behind it. etrainu sells individual courses that a club can buy for its own people. Club in a Box is governance training for presidents, treasurers, and secretaries, with modules such as Running Effective Meetings, Recruiting Volunteers, Risk Management for Sports Clubs, and a treasurer’s playbook. An Introduction to Child Safe Standards, built with Growing Futures, is a one-hour course for volunteers who work around children, mapped to the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and the Victorian, NSW, and Tasmanian standards. Officiating Fundamentals, built with Officiating Collective, is a short course for first-time and returning officials.
The partnership
etrainu trains and accredits people. TidyHQ runs the club those people belong to. A coach does their accreditation, their CPD, and their child-safe course in etrainu, usually inside a learning hub run by their sport’s national or state body, and the certificate lives in their Skills Passport. The club still has to know who its coaches, team managers, and volunteers are, which roles they hold this season, how to reach them, and whether the committee has the paperwork it needs. TidyHQ is built for that: contacts with roles and custom fields, locked fields for checked details such as a Working with Children Check number, documents attached to a person’s record, volunteer tasks, committee meetings, and member communications. There is no native connector between the two today, and most clubs don’t need one: the sport keeps the training record, and the club keeps its own people and its own data.
- TidyHQ points sporting bodies and clubs that need online courses, coach and official accreditation, or child-safe training to etrainu. TidyHQ does not build a learning management system or run accreditation; etrainu does.
- Clubs whose coaches and officials train in etrainu run the club itself in TidyHQ: coaches, volunteers, and members in one contact list, documents attached to each person’s record, volunteer tasks, and committee meetings and AGMs.
- Mutual customers are supported on both sides: etrainu for courses, qualifications, and training records; TidyHQ for the club’s members, money, and committee work.
Where etrainu ends and TidyHQ starts
Coach licences before the first training session
A junior football club needs every coach on a current licence before the season starts. The coaches do their courses in the Football Australia Learning Centre, where they can see what they have finished and what comes next. The club’s coaching coordinator keeps the coach list in TidyHQ: each coach saved as a contact with a coach role and a custom field for licence level, so the committee can filter for anyone still missing one and email them before round one.
Child-safe training and the Working with Children register
A netball club in Victoria adopts the Child Safe Standards. Team managers and volunteers who work with juniors complete etrainu’s one-hour Introduction to Child Safe Standards. The club’s own register lives in TidyHQ: the Working with Children Check number goes in a custom field that is locked once the committee has checked it, and a copy of the card is attached to that person’s record. TidyHQ keeps the record; the check itself is still done with your state’s screening agency.
A new committee after the AGM
The AGM elects a new president, secretary, and treasurer, and none of them has done the job before. Each one works through the relevant modules in etrainu’s Club in a Box — the role of the president, running effective meetings, the treasurer’s playbook. The club’s actual meetings, minutes, and action items are in TidyHQ Meetings, and the books are in TidyHQ Finances, so the new committee learns the job in one place and does it in the other.
Referee accreditation without the paper forms
Australian Oztag replaced paper assessments with The Hub, built on etrainu, where more than 3,000 referees do Level 1 and Level 2 online and get assessed on the field through the Assess app. A local association still has to find enough referees for Saturday. It keeps its referee list in TidyHQ, emails the call-out through TidyHQ Communications, and thanks the regulars at the end-of-season night it runs through TidyHQ Events.
A state body asks every club for its child-safe officer
A state body wants each affiliated club to name a child-safe officer and confirm their training. The training sits in the state’s etrainu hub, with dashboards showing who has completed it. The confirmation is a compliance question, and TidyConnect collects it as a project: each club answers, uploads what is asked for, and the state body sees only what the club accepts into that project, not the club’s members, finances, or emails.
Common questions
etrainu is a Brisbane education technology company that runs a learning management system and a library of more than a thousand online courses. It serves sport, disability support, aged care, early childhood, and corporate teams, with offices in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. In sport, it runs the online learning and accreditation hubs for bodies such as Rugby Australia, Football Australia, Hockey Australia, and Surf Life Saving Australia. Its website is etrainu.com.
Yes. etrainu’s Qualifications feature lets a sporting body build its accreditation pathways into the system, including prerequisites, CPD or CEU points, renewal cycles, and evidence uploads, and its Assess app records practical assessments on the field. The accreditation itself belongs to the sport: Rugby Australia, Football Australia, and Australian Oztag each run their own coach or referee pathways on etrainu.
Yes. etrainu sells An Introduction to Child Safe Standards, a one-hour course built with Growing Futures and mapped to the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and the Victorian, NSW, and Tasmanian standards, plus Protecting Children and Young Adults, built with Act for Kids. In the United States, etrainu delivers the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s safeguarding education across the Olympic and Paralympic movement.
They do different jobs, so many clubs use both. etrainu trains and accredits people: courses, qualifications, CPD, and certificates, usually through a hub run by the sport’s national or state body. TidyHQ runs the club: members and renewals, coaches and volunteers and their roles, events, payments, emails, committee meetings, and finances. TidyHQ does not build online courses or run accreditation.
No, there is no native connector between etrainu and TidyHQ today. etrainu connects to the membership platforms that sporting bodies run, such as Sport80 and RevSport. A club that wants to move data between etrainu and TidyHQ can use TidyHQ’s CSV contact import or its REST API and webhooks.
Yes, as part of each person’s record. A club can store a Working with Children Check number or a coaching licence level in a custom field, lock that field once the committee has checked it so the member cannot change it, attach a copy of the card or certificate to the person’s profile, and filter contacts by that field. TidyHQ does not run the check with state screening agencies and does not deliver training; that is the job of the screening agency and a learning platform such as etrainu.
etrainu’s published case studies and announcements include Rugby Australia, Football Australia, Hockey Australia, Touch Football Australia, Surf Life Saving Australia, Basketball Australia, Gymnastics Australia, Pickleball Australia, and Australian Oztag. In the United States they include US Youth Soccer and the U.S. Center for SafeSport.
No. A TidyHQ account belongs to the club. Your sporting body sees the training records it holds in its own learning platform, but it cannot see your club’s TidyHQ members, finances, communications, events, or documents. If a peak body uses TidyConnect to collect compliance information, it sees only what your club explicitly accepts into that project.
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