Membership

Why You Should Start an NAI Chapter?

An NAI Chapter is a powerful collaboration tool that allows you to recognize and honor local inventors, researchers, and innovators in your community that help promote and foster the spirit of innovation in your community. You have flexibility of choosing the structure for your Chapter (invitation only or application). You can also use Honorary membership to recognize leaders and representatives in your institution and local community who have helped facilitate, nurture, or promote economic development. This is a great way to recognize presidents, vice presidents, and local federal delegation for their efforts.

There are currently over 50 NAI Chapters with over 2,600 members that together create a network dedicated to facilitating innovation and celebrating their inventors at their respective institutions as well as on local and regional levels.

Student Impact: Having an NAI Chapter is a great way to engage with innovative students. Included in our mission is the desire to “educate and mentor innovative students”. Through your membership you can also award honorary membership to student’s innovators. This provides your students opportunities to connect with world renowned inventors not only from your institution, but from other NAI member institutions online through our GAIN mentorship and professional development platform as well as at our Annual Conference.

Learn more about the benefits of starting a Chapter and How to Get Started? Watch our webinar featuring our Chapter Ambassadors from five of our most successful sites.

What’s the Cost?

Your institutions annual membership fee allows you to recognize up to 40 chapter members per year at no additional cost. Chapters with over 40 members will be billed $60.00 per each additional member up to $4,800 U.S. or $7,200 for international members.

Ready to Launch Your Chapter? Start Here.

Certificate of Membership Templates

The certificates are intended to be personalized by you and presented to each new member of your chapter, along with their membership lapel pin. There are two membership categories for Chapters of the NAI:

Inventor Members: Academic inventors at your institution who hold an issued U.S. patent(s). Your chapter may choose to recognize all inventors at your institution (faculty, staff, students, alumni and affiliates) or only those who have an issued patent(s) from your institution. Additional criteria for membership in your chapter is defined by your institutional representatives.

Member Certificate Template 

Honorary Members: Leadership and representatives of your institution and local community who have facilitated and nurtured innovation and economic development (who do not hold patents themselves). This is a great way to recognize your president, vice presidents, members of your local federal delegation etc. for their support and efforts in fostering a spirit of innovation at your institution.

Honorary Member Certificate Template 

Chapter Website Examples

We recommend creating a separate webpage on your institution’s website for your Chapter of the NAI. It is a great place to post a list of your members, the application form to become an individual member of your chapter, and activities and news about your chapter and chapter members (examples below).

Send us a link to your page if you create one as well as any press releases, pictures, news stories, etc. about your chapter, so we may share them on the national website and on social media.

For these and other templates and examples please see:
NAI Chapter Guide 

Florida Polytechnic University Chapter of the NAI

“The launch of our NAI chapter provided a very cohesive way of bringing faculty together, which is a vital benefit for a new institution like Florida Poly. We look forward to this group of NAI members engaging with each other to grow the chapter and seek out innovative initiatives that will benefit the faculty and students of our university.”

—Jeanne Viviani, Contracts and Grants Manager, Florida Polytechnic University

 

Stand-out as an Elite Institution

Display your NAI Membership seal to designate your organization as part of the NAI global community network.

NAI Member Institutions and local chapters can download the NAI membership seal and display this innovation accreditation on websites, social media, email signatures, and more.

Thank you for your continued support of the academy, innovation, and discovery!

Member Institution Badge
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Chapter Member Badge
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Post your NAI seal and tag us on the following social media sites:
Twitter – @acadofinventors
Linkedin – National Academy of Inventors
Facebook – National Academy of Inventors

If you share your chapter news on social media be sure to tag Twitter handle @AcadofInventors or tag the NAI on Facebook. We look forward to assisting you with a launch or annual event for your chapter. For additional information, please contact [email protected]

Customize Your Institution's NAI Chapter

The NAI encourages Member Institution’s to launch chapters that are unique to their innovative initiatives. There are many ways to recognize your innovators and no single chapter event is the same.

WPI awarded license plates to chapter members who were granted licenses on their technologies

“Launching an NAI Chapter was a great thing for WPI and generated a lot of enthusiasm among our faculty. In addition to inducting members into the WPI Chapter of the NAI, we developed two awards to recognize faculty. The first highlights faculty who have received a license for their technology and the second, and highest level chapter award, is a Hall of Fame award for those who have successfully taken their patents to the marketplace. We look forward to the morale this tier system will build year after year to encourage our faculty to not only pursue patents, but also translate their patents into products, companies and jobs.” —Todd S. Keiller, Director of Intellectual Property & Innovation, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

At the University of South Florida, the Inventors Commons was established to honor the members of the USF Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors. A brick walkway features a brick for each chapter member.

Thomas Jefferson University provided new members with eggs to symbolize the hatching of new ideas.

NAI | Stony Brook Chapter

Stony Brook Chapter of the NAI

NAI | Stony Brook University

Stony Book University Co-Branded Logo To request your co-branded logo, please contact the NAI.