Celebrating Innovation in Association Business: Pierre Award Finalists Announced

The Professionals for Association Revenue (PAR) announces the 2024 finalists of the Pierre Award, recognizing associations that have successfully aligned their business strategies with their core mission and driven meaningful change within their industries.

The 2024 Pierre Award finalists are:

Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology  (APIC)

Over a 14-month period, APIC launched three new certification preparation programs to better serve industry professionals, APIC’s instructor network, and enterprise and government partners. These programs, created in partnership with Holmes Corporation, provide accessible, quality training to advance the practice of infection prevention & control and generate revenue for future projects.

One of APIC’s three strategic priorities is to foster the development of the next generation of infection prevention and control (IPC) workforce. These programs make training and certification accessible to all, ensuring that IPC professionals at all levels have the training and knowledge they need to tackle the IPC challenges they face each day.

As a result of the launch of these three programs, APIC achieved and surpassed multiple revenue goals while recouping the initial investment in 13 months. The revenue generated from these programs goes back to support APIC products and services.

American Society of Association Executives (ASAE)

ASAE’s Demo Days program exemplifies its mission to create new opportunities that help its members to succeed. This virtual event features presentations from industry partners and allows members to research and identify the technologies and tools that will help their organization to be more successful.

At a time when industry partners had fewer ways to reach their target audience to generate leads for new customers, ASAE Demo Days created a new way to connect solution providers with the organizations that needed their services. Because the members who attend demo days are ready to buy, when they indicate interest to a participating industry partner, the sales cycle is often shorter, making these prospects more valuable to industry partners.

Demo Days, created in partnership with Matchbox, has grown to become one of ASAE's most successful non-dues revenue initiatives. Hundreds of attendees register to attend and actively participate in the monthly Demo Day events, while industry partners feel more supported and connected to ASAE.

Society of Interventional Oncology (SIO)

The Society of Interventional Oncology (SIO) achieved an unprecedented fundraising achievement, raising $6 million for the first multi-industry supported international clinical trial in the interventional radiology space.

SIO is a young, but bold organization with a clear vision to build interventional oncology as the “fourth pillar” of cancer therapy, alongside medical, surgical, and radiation oncology worldwide. To do this, increasing levels of evidence in the interventional oncology field at large is a critical and important step to advancing both the society's future and access to these life-saving interventions for cancer patients.  Fundraising for mission-driven projects that will break down these current barriers is a key strategic role the organization will continue to play in the future, and the trial, known as ACCLAIM Trial, laid the groundwork to learn the process of executing on projects that are aimed to change the standard of care and collaboratively partner with society leaders and multiple industry partners.

The story of ACCLAIM has allowed SIO to build on this momentum for future strategic efforts that will involve multi-industry, multi-society, and international participants.