How Admirato Made Faith-Driven Learning Accessible Globally

Meet Admirato

Founded on the Latin word meaning “wonder,” Admirato is a US-based digital learning company that creates and distributes high-quality theological education for students of all ages. 

Rooted in a mission to foster connection and make faith-based learning more accessible to all, their engaging online courses—featuring renowned educators —are designed to engage students and spark meaningful reflection in classrooms, churches, and homes.

A Mission-Driven Theology Academy Built for Modern Learners

The Admirato team originally launched their online courses on Udemy, focusing on direct-to-learner access. But after seeing a surge of interest in their courses from churches, dioceses, and nonprofit groups who needed a more structured, trackable group experience, what began as a direct-to-learner offering quickly evolved. 

“In March 2020, we thought: the world’s shutting down… let’s just put one of our Small Group Editions (bundles) for free… And we had 40,000 people sign up.”

— Rebecca Bowling, Vice President of Operations at Admirato

The Admirato team made a strategic shift to serve groups and organizations at scale.

As part of ongoing growth efforts, they began looking for a platform powerful enough to host their material and offer a premium learning experience to their clients.

“We started on Udemy intending to serve individuals, but were getting contacted by a lot of different groups… The Udemy platform just wasn’t very conducive for the group experience.”

— Rebecca Bowling, Vice President of Operations at Admirato

They chose Thinkific Plus for many reasons, including its robust group management tools like bulk enrollment, advanced analytics, and self-managed access for facilitators. Now, they’re serving entire classrooms, churches, organizations, and institutions with a platform designed for growth and increasing their impact in the process. 

Serving Groups at Scale

To meet the needs of their learners, the Admirato team transitioned to Thinkific Plus and began developing curriculum specifically designed for group and organizational use. Thinkific’s tools allowed them to manage enrollments, support facilitators, and gather insights on learner progress at the group level.

“Groups need more backend access—to be able to track which of their group members actually signed up and how far they went into it.” 

— Rebecca Bowling, Vice President of Operations at Admirato

The Admirato team needed the flexibility to:

• Serve diverse organizations with a flexible, group-ready curriculum
• Enable facilitators and administrators to monitor activity and engagement
• Provide training for leaders running group learning sessions
• Create multilingual versions of core programs
• Streamline content distribution and licensing for institutions

Building a Flexible Platform Built for Growth

Admirato used Thinkific Plus to build a B2B-ready delivery system. Instead of creating content only for individuals, they designed bundled offerings that included facilitator guides, leader training, and course-level customization for organizational use.

“We transitioned into more targeted and bespoke group curriculum and selling to groups. — Ryan Liguori, Content Developer at Admirato 

Thinkific’s B2B Selling Suite enabled their customers to self-enroll large groups of learners, while also giving group leaders visibility into learner progress. With advanced analytics and flexible enrollment settings, Admirato’s team could now serve entire schools or parishes without creating extensive manual workflows.

They also developed new resources and adapted their existing curriculum to support lay leaders—a large portion of whom were volunteers. By building leadership support into the course experience they were able to serve a larger audience.

“We tried to be very conscious in redeveloping for group curriculum—adding an element of leader training so we’re equipping those who are in charge of leading group learning sessions.”

— Ryan Liguori, Content Developer at Admirato 

“We wanted to make sure we were equipping those people to lead a group discussion about what they were learning in the videos.”

— Rebecca Bowling, Vice President of Operations at Admirato

Making Impact 

With these changes, Admirato’s team was able to: 

• Build dedicated offerings for schools, non-profits, and dioceses
• Reach over 20,000 learners with a free curriculum upon initial launch 
• Incorporate bundled curriculum models for group delivery
• Use Thinkific’s B2B features to enable scalable facilitator-led learning experiences

Admirato’s Tips for Success

1. Design for the group, not just the learner:
   Organizational customers have different needs. Build a curriculum with flexibility for leaders.
   
2. Invest in facilitator support:
   Equip group leaders with resources so they can confidently lead discussions.
   
3. Make tracking transparent:
   Institutions want clear insights into learner engagement. Use platform tools like advanced analytics to make that easy.
   
4. Start simple, grow with purpose:
   Not every feature needs to be perfect at the start—focus on what helps your audience first.

Conclusion

Building Community Through Learning

For Admirato, education isn’t just about knowledge—it’s about connection. By providing education from individual access to institution-wide partnerships, they’ve expanded their impact dramatically. With the support of Thinkific Plus, they now offer meaningful, facilitator-ready learning to schools and communities across North America.

Their journey is a powerful example of how a mission-driven organization can scale education by thinking beyond the individual—and leaning into the power of group learning.

Visit admirato.org to learn more.