TL: DR: Exactly what the title says - make it easier for your certificants to recertify!
I've written often about the importance of certification maintenance - for example, here's a post I wrote on certifications and renewal requirements last year, which was itself an update to a post from 2017. In a nutshell, I believe that certifications need some sort of regular renewal requirement, to help ensure that certificants stay abreast of changes to the discipline, related technologies, etc. Some organizations require certificants to take the assessment/exam again, others require or allow them to submit continuing education units (CEUs), and some offer the choice.
When it comes to submitting CEUs, most certifying bodies don't really care where they come from, just that they be applicable and relevant and meet any other requirements such as minimum duration. That said, every once in a while an association will attempt to limit CEUs to just their content, often justifying it because it's unique in some way. This is almost always a ploy to make more money, either directly or indirectly; if you sat in on such a discussion, you'll invariably hear a variation on, "Why would we send people to competitors' websites by accepting their content for CEUs?" I submit that if you look at a certification's recertification requirements and they only accept their own content, it's not a certification that will offer value or long-term relevance and you should look elsewhere.
Similarly, some certifying bodies offer more credit for their own content, or less credit for someone else's, of similar length, depth, and quality. Again, this is an indicator of a certification that will not remain relevant for long. The overwhelmingly standard approach, at least in the information management industry, is 1 hour of education = 1 point towards the renewal requirements. There are some other nuances, but that's the basic approach. Most certs require 20 points per year of the renewal cycle. So if you look at the points awarded for an event, and they are different depending on the source - for example, your conference awards 3 points per 1-hour session - look for a more relevant and viable certification.
If you want your certificants to use your events for CEUs, make it easy for them to do so. Several years ago, AIIM added a note to every landing page that says, "This webinar is approved for X.X hours of CIP Maintenance Credits." Simple. And AIIM doesn't require credits in each domain or in different types of content delivery.
ARMA, on the other hand, does require credits in a variety of areas for its Information Governance Professional (IGP) certification, to wit:
- Information Management (15 hours required)
- Information Security (4 hours required)
- Privacy (4 hours required)
- Risk Management (4 hours required)
- Legal (4 hours required)
- Technology (4 hours required)
- Business (4 hours required)
- Ethics (2 hours required)
- General (19 hours required)
ARMA does have a list of webinars on their website, but you have to click each individual one to see a) what (one) domain it applies to and b) how many CEUs it's worth. Some of them also cover more than one category; for example, a recent webinar called "Data Retention: The Blind Spot in Your Privacy Program" is listed as 1 CEU in the Risk topic but it would likely apply to the Privacy topic, and perhaps the Technology topic as well. ARMA used to have lists of webinars applicable to each of the 8 specialty topics above, but at some point that was removed from the website. I'd love to see them bring that back.
I'd also love to see a certifying that "gets it" start listing other organizations' relevant webinars and events for which CEUs would be granted. I don't expect them to go out, check everyone's websites, and update them, but if a certifying body offers review and preapproval of a third party event, I think that event should be listed on their website. I think all of our IG/IM/RM-y associations and certifying bodies are missing a trick by not curating that type of content - heck, I'd be willing to pay for a centralized source that I could use for my privacy certs, and my IG cert, and my RM cert, etc.
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