ADVANCE Education and Development Institute was developed in the late 1980s by Dr. Gordon Neal Diem while he was serving as an Assistant Professor of Social Science and Human Services Administration at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. Dr. Diem recognized the need for non-institutional training for field professionals employed in human services administration and community economic development, and the need for professional consulting services to support these field professionals. Dr. Diem and several associates began offering one-day training workshops through college and university continuing education programs and industrial councils and also began offering support services to non-profit associations and rural communities. Training workshops and services were offered throughout the Mid-Atlantic area of North America. In the 1990s, while he was serving as a political science professor at North Carolina Central University in North Carolina, Dr. Diem recognized the need to add training for citizens serving in elected governmental positions, including city councils and soil and water districts, and the need to provide training and services to emerging private, non-governmental organizations in developing nations around the world.

In 1998, ADVANCE Education and Development Institute was reorganized and expanded to include a distance learning capability and to include a structured training curriculum leading to the award of academic certificates for completion of structured programs of study. Textbooks were written to support each of the training courses offered by the Institute.

ADVANCE Education and Development Institute associates believe the institutional education factories of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries are no longer relevant to the high-technology, mobile, and fast-changing world of the Twenty-first Century. The Institute operates with minimal administrative overhead and minimal staff support in an effort to contain costs and offer the highest quality programs and services at the lowest possible cost. The Institute also operates with minimal physical plant and equipment, preferring, instead, to offer courses on-site using the plant and equipment of other institutions, non-profit organizations or local governments, and through postal and internet services. Institute courses include the theoretical and intellectual content of the old-style academic courses, but go beyond the academics to stress the practical value, utility, and application of substantive course content.

Today, ADVANCE Education and Development Institute is a leader in high-quality, low cost, non-institutional academic and professional training in non-profit management, economic development and political action.

In 1999, ADVANCE Education and Development Institute began to more actively promote its offer of direct services to non-profit and local government clients. Institute personnel serve as part-time professional staff, providing fundraising, media relations, or research services to small organizations and local governments on a contract basis at minimal cost to the client.