NORDP (the National Organization of Research Development Professionals, at nordp.org) is the professional association for people who work in research development (RD) — the pre-award, capacity-building side of getting research funded, distinct from the compliance and financial-management work of research administration. Founded in 2010, NORDP exists to advance the practice and profession of research development through an annual conference, regional and affinity-group chapters, mentoring and professional-development programming, and a shared professional identity for a specialty that, before NORDP, had no dedicated organization of its own. This guide explains what NORDP actually is, what it does for its members, how it defines the research development profession, and — because the two are frequently confused — how it differs from NCURA, the much larger and older association for research administrators.
What NORDP is (and what it isn’t)
NORDP is a member-based professional association, not a regulatory body, an accreditation agency, or a government office. Per its own mission statement, NORDP’s purpose is to advance the global capacity for and impact of research by strengthening the practice and profession of research development. In practice that means it functions the way most professional associations do: it convenes practitioners, publishes definitional and how-to resources, runs a large annual conference, supports regional chapters and topical affinity groups, and gives a still-young profession a shared vocabulary and community of practice.
It is not a certifying or credentialing body. Unlike research administration — where the Certified Research Administrator (CRA) credential is a formal, exam-based certification administered through the Research Administrators Certification Council (RACC) — NORDP does not (as of this writing) administer an equivalent certification exam for research development. Its professional-development offerings are training, mentoring, and community resources rather than a credential a member earns and lists after their name. This is a genuine, sourced distinction worth being precise about, since the two fields’ professional-development landscapes get conflated as often as the job titles do.
What research development professionals actually do
NORDP’s own foundational description of the field (from the organization’s What Is Research Development? resource) frames research development around a small set of recurring activities: finding, matching, and helping distribute funding opportunities; providing proposal and award metrics that help an institution understand its own competitiveness; facilitating collaboration between investigators, including across disciplines and institutions; and supporting proposal development directly — through workshops, editing, and coordination of large, center-scale, multi-investigator proposals. All of this sits before an award is made, which is the core reason NORDP frames research development as a pre-award specialty distinct from the post-award compliance and financial-management machinery that research administration covers.
CASRAI’s own Research Development Manager guide covers the day-to-day version of this role in more depth — funding intelligence and prospecting, proposal-development coaching, limited-submission competition management, mock review panels, and institutional capacity-building — and cross-references NORDP as the field’s professional home. This page focuses specifically on NORDP as an organization: what it is, how it’s structured, and how it differs from the adjacent associations research administrators more commonly encounter.
Membership, chapters, and how NORDP is organized
NORDP membership is individual (there is no separate institutional-seat model the way some larger, older associations use), and members join a broader community structured around regional chapters and topical affinity groups rather than a single national body alone. The organization has grown substantially since its 2010 founding, and its membership now includes research development professionals from institutions outside the United States as well, reflecting how the specialty has spread internationally as more institutions formalize a dedicated pre-award development function. NORDP’s flagship member benefit is its annual conference, alongside a mentoring program, webinars and other professional-development programming, and committee/working-group structures that let members shape the field’s own definitional and training resources — a role that, for a young profession without a formal accrediting body, matters more than it would for an established field with a long-settled scope. Because NORDP does not publish a single, formally branded ‘Body of Knowledge’ document the way some more mature professions do, its closest equivalent is this combination of foundational definitional resources, committee-developed training curricula, and the professional-development programming delivered through the annual conference and mentoring program — worth knowing precisely so a reader isn’t led to expect a single reference document that doesn’t (yet) exist in that form.
How NORDP differs from NCURA
This is the distinction that trips up newcomers to research administration and research development alike, because the two associations, and the two job families they represent, sit right next to each other in the funding lifecycle and are often confused on job postings that blend both scopes into one title. The functional split is real:
- NORDP represents research development professionals — strategic, pre-award, capacity-building work: funding intelligence, proposal coaching, limited-submission coordination, mock reviews, and institutional research-capacity building. Its members are typically found in a research development office, often reporting toward a Vice President or Vice Provost for Research.
- NCURA (the National Council of University Research Administrators) represents research administration professionals — the compliance, budgeting, and financial-management machinery around an award across its full lifecycle, from proposal-phase budget building and institutional routing through award negotiation, account setup, indirect-cost recovery, effort reporting, subrecipient monitoring, and closeout. NCURA is also the much larger and older organization, founded in 1959 with thousands of individual members across institutions worldwide, and is closely associated with the CRA credential that NORDP has no direct equivalent to.
See CASRAI’s Pre-Award vs. Post-Award Office Roles guide and What a Research Administrator Does for the fuller research-administration-side picture, and Research Administrator Certification: RACC, NCURA, and SRA International Programs Compared for how NCURA’s certification landscape (and SRA International’s, and RACC’s CRA/CPRA/CFRA credentials) fits together. In short: if the work is about getting a stronger, more competitive proposal in front of a funder, that’s NORDP’s territory; if it’s about managing the compliance and financial obligations of an award once it’s in hand (or being routed for institutional approval), that’s NCURA’s.
Many institutions run these as genuinely separate offices; smaller institutions sometimes fold both functions into one research-administration or faculty-affairs role without a dedicated research-development title at all, which is exactly the scenario where the NORDP/NCURA distinction is most useful to understand — it clarifies which skill set and which professional community a given job description is actually pulling from, even when the title alone doesn’t make that obvious.
Frequently asked questions
Is NORDP the same as NCURA?
No. NORDP represents research development professionals, whose work is concentrated in the pre-award, proposal-strategy side of the funding lifecycle. NCURA represents research administrators, whose work covers the compliance and financial-management machinery around an award across its full lifecycle. The two fields are complementary and frequently work side by side, but they are distinct professional communities with separate associations.
Does NORDP offer a certification, the way RACC offers the CRA credential?
No. NORDP is a professional association — conferences, chapters, mentoring, and professional-development programming — rather than a certifying body. It does not administer a formal certification exam comparable to the Certified Research Administrator (CRA) credential that RACC administers for research administration.
When was NORDP founded?
NORDP was founded in 2010, making it a comparatively young professional association relative to NCURA (founded 1959) and SRA International.
Who should join NORDP?
NORDP is built for people whose work concentrates on the pre-award, strategic side of research funding — research development managers and officers, proposal development specialists, and staff who coach investigators, coordinate limited submissions, and build institutional research capacity — rather than for research administrators whose primary work is post-award compliance and financial management, who are more typically served by NCURA or SRA International.
Does NORDP have a Body of Knowledge document?
Not in the form of a single, formally branded reference document the way some more established professions publish one. NORDP’s closest equivalent is a combination of its own foundational definitional resources (including its widely cited “What Is Research Development?” description of the field), committee-developed training curricula, and the professional-development programming delivered through its annual conference and mentoring program.
