Badge Nation is part of Real Ideas group and is a membership offer that supports organisations to start or improve their implementation of digital badging through scoping, badge writing, quality assurance, and customer support. 

Real Ideas took part in the Plymouth Cities of Learning pilot working with organisations to create and issue digital badges for young people. When the pilot ended, we couldn’t bear to stop badging, and Badge Nation was born. We believe any organisation can produce meaningful recognition through digital badges and it is our mission to support this. 

No, Badge Nation does not own an issuing platform. We provide impartial advice to find the best issuing platform for your organisation’s needs and then support you to use it. 

• Badges recognise accomplishments and achievements that cannot be formally accredited, where experience outside of qualifications is highly valued and often not well documented.
  
• No achievement is too small to be badged! Any accomplishment, however small, can be the start of a journey to a better future.
  
• Badges provide the ultimate tool for providing verified employer references in an emerging freelance workforce.
  
• Badges give earners the power and language to better tell their stories by clearly displaying the activities they have engaged with and transferrable skills gained along the way, in language that employers understand.
  
• Badges support earners to use the experiences, skills, and competencies they have developed by working with your organisation to take positive steps in their own lives.

Depending on your organisation and the activity you deliver, there are several ways that badges can be beneficial: 

Analytics
– View reports of how your badge collection is performing, such as how many badges you have issued, how many have been accepted, shared, etc.

Reporting & Outcome Tracking
– Every organisation has outcomes or markers that can be hard to measure and track. Badges give a quantifiable source of data for ‘soft outcomes’ such as increasing skills or wellbeing. 

Managing Staff & Internal Processes
– Earners don’t just have to be participants on programmes or customers of your activity! Rewarding staff achievements with digital badges makes a great record of the upskilling and progression of staff within the organisation.
– Badges are a brilliant way to reflect staff training, CPD courses and suitability for roles.  

Recruitment
– Recruiting the right people for any organisation requires a lot of time, care and effort. Badges are fantastic for getting a snapshot of a person’s experience and skills, and have the added bonus of showing what organisations have previously worked with them without the laborious requests for references. 

Grants & Funding
– Lots of organisations will utilise grants and funding at some point. Incorporating digital badges into delivery can make applications stand out by increasing the credibility of how you will be tracking, measuring and reporting on specific outcomes, as well as bringing structure to your activity.  

Attitudes & Movements
– Every organisation has key messages and attitudes that they want to develop in others. Digital badges are a brilliant way to recognise and encourage the change you want to see in the world. 

Marketing
– You can get really creative with using badges as a marketing tool!
– Badges are created with your logo and branding, so are very personal to your organisation. Every time someone shares a badge they earned with you, it’s an advert.
– Because of the way badges are linked in-browser, people that click on your badges get a direct snapshot of the activity you deliver and the impact you’re creating.

Badges written by our members and published by us are not formally accredited. What they do offer is a way to recognise skills, achievements, learning, and experience for the amazing things individuals do outside of formal qualifications that might otherwise go unrecorded.

You can write a badge about anything and award it to anyone that has completed the earning criteria – this provides earners with a digital, traceable, and verified record of achievement alongside the credibility of your organisation.

Badge Nation membership supports organisations to write and issue digital badges.

While we do issue some badges for our activities, the majority of badges written and published through us are managed and issued by our member organisations, so we are not able to issue them to you.

If you are here as an individual looking for badges to earn, below are some platforms to try. If you see a badge you want to earn, we recommend you get in touch with the member organisation directly to enquire about earning their badges.

Navigatr
Ages 13+. Search for badges, activities, and badge pathways.
Find the issuer in the “Issued by” section of a badge.

My Skills Pass
Ages 18+. Search for badges, store your badges from multiple issuing platforms, create digital CVs, and network with other users.
Find the issuer under “How to get this badge”