For the second year in a row, Artisan Learning is honored to receive an ASAE Power of Associations Award from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). In 2025 Artisan won a silver award for a landmark project in partnership with the American Institute of Steel Construction. This year Artisan is immensely proud to accept a gold award for a collaboration with NIGP: The Institute for Public Procurement.
“ASAE’s Power of Associations Awards recognize the very best of what our community can accomplish. Artisan Learning and NIGP have demonstrated the vision, leadership, and commitment to make a meaningful difference.”
Michelle Mason, FASAE, CAI, AAiP
ASAE President and CEO
The Power of Associations Awards celebrate organizations that bring people together to solve problems, strengthen industries and professions, and improve lives. At a time when many Americans are asking which institutions they can trust, associations continue to demonstrate the value of organizations driven not by profit, but by purpose. Artisan Learning has long partnered with a variety of associations to help advance their missions and extend their impact through custom-designed learning.
The award-winning program, “The Public Procurement Profession Redesigned: Competencies, Credentials, and Real-World Practice” was part of multi-year initiative to rebuild legacy curriculum from the ground up. The result is a competency-based, action-mapped, credential-stacked learning ecosystem built around the situations procurement professionals actually face on the job.
The significance of the effort is underscored by the fact that NIGP’s 20,000 members and the broader community they represent obligate trillions of taxpayer dollars annually. Because many enter the field from non-procurement professions like accounting or operations, they depend heavily on quality professional development, such as this initiative.
What’s more, the audience spans every stage of the procurement career, from new buyers in their first months on the job to seasoned contract specialists, supervisors, directors, and chief procurement officers. The redesigned catalog gives everyone a path that fits their experience and goals rather than a one-size-fits-all introduction.
Reinventing the educational backbone of an entire profession sits well beyond the day-to-day operations of running a large association, which is why NIGP chose to partner with Artisan Learning. Artisan’s charge was simple and direct: design for action. First, Artisan built detailed learner personas to ground the design process in real challenges like time pressure, compliance regulations, and changing technology. The persona for Sonja, a new buyer finding her footing, prompted questions like, “What misconception would Sonja have about the fraud prevention policy?” The persona for Lori, a seasoned contract specialist balancing complex projects, sparked questions like, “What would be difficult about pricing for Lori when taking into account market volatility?”
Artisan used action mapping to help NIGP analyze and organize content chaos, honing in on the actions learners perform at work, such as analyzing bids, managing vendors, or weighing ethical decisions. Multiple groups of subject-matter experts were oriented to the action-mapping process, then Artisan aligned every step with NIGP’s competencies and credentials to show clear career impact.
The measurable outcomes have been substantial:
- The catalog expanded from roughly five foundational courses to more than 30 foundational and 10 advanced courses, plus hundreds of hours of complementary content—structured around 33 competencies organized into seven focus areas.
- Registrations tripled.
- More than 20,000 digital credentials have been awarded over the past three years.
- Post-course surveys showed learners leave motivated to apply skills. In 30-day follow-up surveys, learners reported that they had already begun applying what they learned and that the training improved their work or career growth.
Dr. Todd Slater, Chief Learning Officer for NIGP, reflected on the award-winning collaborative effort. “Artisan Learning was an exceptional partner in a major content redesign initiative. Their expertise significantly elevated our content, and the results clearly reflected the value they brought. They were knowledgeable, professional, and easy to work with, quickly becoming a true extension of our team rather than simply a transactional vendor.”
Beyond the numbers, the initiative repositions public procurement as a profession with a clear development path. The credentialing framework is being aligned with HR systems so that hiring managers can recognize procurement competence on a résumé, and so career growth follows a transparent ladder rather than tenure alone.
We are proud of the work we produced together with Artisan Learning, the impact it has had on our members, and especially proud that our collaboration was recognized with an ASAE Power of Associations Gold Award.
Todd Slater, PhD
NIGP Chief Learning Officer
We’d love to tell you more about this award-winning project and explore how custom-designed learning could work for you.
