NADSP is the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals. It is the organization that treats direct support as a profession with its own ethics and skills, rather than as an entry on a fee schedule. It publishes a code of ethics and a set of competency areas. Training programs and some state credentialing efforts borrow both. NADSP also runs a national certification built on that work.
The alliance is not ANCOR. ANCOR represents provider agencies. NADSP's constituency is the workforce itself: the DSP, and the frontline supervisor who coaches them. The two groups show up in the same hearings and they do not have the same interest in every rate design. A pass-through that raises wages and a rate increase an agency can spend freely are different wins. Knowing which organization is speaking tells you which win is being asked for.
Competencies are the alliance's answer to the missing national license. States still set required training hours, and those hours vary. An agency can require NADSP-based training, ignore it, or use it as the curriculum under a state rule. Certification is voluntary unless a state or an employer says otherwise. The letters after a name are meaningful inside the field and unknown to most wage bills.
You will see NADSP cited in recognition campaigns and in arguments about why the job should not be priced as interchangeable unskilled labor. That is advocacy attached to a real body of standards. It is not, by itself, a change in the fee schedule.
When a story says "the professional association," and the subject is the worker, this is the one. When the subject is the employer, it is probably the provider association instead.