The main benefits of membership at your association are most likely tied to professional development, such as networking opportunities and continuing-education courses. In recent years, we’ve seen the latter take the limelight as ongoing learning became crucial for career success.

Continuing-education trends have shifted to focus on skills-based training, encouraging members to carefully craft resumes targeted to their personal career goals. As this shift occurs, it’s important to align your association’s professional development opportunities with it and incorporate skills training. One way you can do this is by creating microcredentials.

In this article, we’ll discuss what microcredentials are, the benefits of creating these resources for your association, and next steps that you can take to begin incorporating them into your professional development offerings.

Defining Microcredentials

Skyepack’s guide to microcredentials defines these courses as “short, stackable courses that learners—whether students, employees, or organization members—take to develop specific skills in their field.”

Long-form, comprehensive certification or licensure courses that associations typically offer test members on a wide breadth of topics and are sometimes used to help applicants remain eligible to practice in the field. In contrast, microcredentials are hyper-focused on a specific skill that is generally not required but often sought out by learners who want to advance their professional goals. Additionally, these courses are completed independently on the learner’s own timeline.

Because you can package and sell microcredentials to both members and nonmembers, they represent an additional nondues revenue source to supplement your existing offerings.

Here are two examples of microcredentials in practice: the National Education Association’s microcredentials cover skills such as classroom management and integrating arts into a classroom, while one of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses’ microcredentials focuses specifically on COVID-19 pulmonary and ventilator care.

Benefits of Microcredentials

Your association benefits in a number of ways when it comes to incorporating microcredentials into your professional development offerings, including:

• Increased nondues revenue. Statistics show that, due to COVID-19, many associations have had trouble reaching their fundraising and other revenue targets. Because you can package and sell microcredentials to both members and nonmembers, they represent an additional nondues revenue source to supplement your existing offerings.
• Elevated member satisfaction. For your members, upskilling is key whether they’re on the job hunt or simply looking to remain competitive in their current roles. This is because many industries are undergoing rapid development, and the skills that were essential even two years ago may be outdated compared to those now required to be successful. By offering microcredentials that target the updated skills that members need to be successful, you can clearly demonstrate the value of continued engagement with your association.
• Additional new member recruiting opportunities. Microcredentials can also be used as a tool to show the value of membership to prospects. For example, you can offer microcredentials to nonmembers at an increased price compared to members. For nonmembers completing a number of these credentials, the value of investing in membership to access the full breadth of your association’s offerings will be clear.

Next Steps for Using Microcredentials

Consider partnering with an instructional design firm that specializes in microcredentials to build your offerings. This will ensure that your internal team has a repeatable foundation to continue creating these courses going forward.

Plus, this partner can use rapid instructional development processes to bring your courses to life. This means that even if your team has a limited capacity as you begin wading into the world of microcredentials, you can still develop courses that provide value to members.

Since microcredentials are likely to stick around for the foreseeable future, taking these steps now will set your team up for success when creating them going forward.