Before getting into the nuts and bolts of partnership building, it's also important to adopt some principles to guide you. These are elements that should be present in any positive relationship, and will help ensure the success of your partnership. Humility, trust, respect, mutual benefit, balancing power, transparency, these are the guiding principles. It's important to recognize the value a community partner can bring to your work, and the expertise that they bring to the table. They know more about the community than you do, and they have relationships with traditional and non-/traditional leaders. By dropping your preconceived notions about who is and who is not an expert, you can better hear and interpret insights from community members. This opens the door to stronger partnerships between community researchers, be humble when you approach the community. To build trust, it's important to understand what the community's experience with research has been in the past. If the experience was negative, you must acknowledge this and talk openly about how to avoid the mistakes your institution has made in the past. Be clear about your expectations and your needs, and listen carefully to the community's concerns or reservations. Negotiation and compromise are also essential to building trust. Be trustworthy, respect the mission of the community organization and the work that they do. While you may feel very strongly that your study is important, do not assume that the people in the community will share your point of view on this. Community organizations are focused on problem solving in the here and now. Learn about their mission and work to understand what would motivate them to partner with you. Identify mutual goals that will benefit both partners. It is clear how you and your project can benefit from community partnership, but it will take some creativity to identify benefits to the community organization. Money is always a welcome, including facilities fees for use of their location as a study site or paying staff and community members to help with outreach and recruitment, but funding is not always available, and research institutions have a lot of other resources that can benefit the community. Things like assistance with improving data collection and evaluation of their programs, sharing data about their population and community health can improve their services and inform grant proposals. Building the capacity of their staff on research related activities, such as literature searches, data analysis and interpretation, educating staff or clients about specific health concerns, working with young people to get them interested in research careers, and returning the results of your research to the community. The give-get grid provides a very simple way to determine what each partner will receive and will give to the partnership. Sit down with your partner and use this tool to have a frank conversation about what each partner will give and what each partner will get. A natural power imbalance exists between researchers and minority communities. Historically, this has resulted in research that has harmed these communities. Researchers by their training, status, white coats and badges, are empowered as authorities. Community members view researchers as powerful and often and don't recognize their own power. The value that they bring in terms of their lived experience and their knowledge of the community. To strengthen your community partnerships, take deliberate steps to balance these power inequities, identify goals that will benefit both the community and the research, work together to set up a process, where the community partner shares in leadership and decision-making. Clearly define the roles and expectations for each partner, put these in writing. Expect conflicts and decide on a process for resolving these before they happen. Schedule regular meetings to check in on progress and discuss problems and celebrate your successes. Share facilitation of meetings, so that the research team is not always in control of the conversation. Talk about how the data or research results will be used. Acknowledge community ownership of the data that you collect, and develop an agreement on how to share it. Transparency is critical to building trust. A community organization's expectation about money, decision-making, and timeline can be very different than yours. Unless they have a lot of experience partnering with researchers, they are unlikely to understand the rules that you must follow. They may think, for example, that if you have a very large grant that there should be plenty of money to support their community partner. They may not be aware of the regulatory requirements that may limit or change your research activities. They may not understand the role of the Institutional Review Board and how that body can delay or change a project. It's important that you are open about what you can and cannot do, be transparent about your plans, the constraints you're under, how money will be handled and how decisions will be made. Find a partner with common interests, does your research in any way compliment their mission? Do you already have connections to their community through staff or the community engagement program at your institution? Working with an individual that is already known and trusted in the community is a good way to get started. If possible, plan to engage the community as early as possible. The proposal writing stage is not too early. One of the most common blunders that researchers make with their community partners is to ask them for a letter of support just days before their research proposal is due. This shows a lack of respect and while organizations will often agree to do this, it's not a good way to start a partnership. If your project is already funded, you can still approach a community organization for their help, but remember the guiding principles. Many community organizations operate with very tight budgets and limited resources, research collaborations, no matter how beneficial they may seem to you, can be a burden on a community organization. The collaboration can take up staff time, the presence of recruiters or data collectors can be disruptive to their programs and to their service delivery. Be mindful of these burdens, and take them into consideration when you're negotiating with your partner. Offer equitable compensation for any work done for your project by community members or by staff. There are many strategies to help you build an equitable, mutually beneficial partnerships. Formalize a relationship with a written agreements such as a memorandum of understanding or an MOU. They MOU will spell out the purpose of the partnership and the roles and responsibilities of each partner. If money is involved to pay for the use of their organization's space or their staff, clearly spell this out in the MOU. You may need a data-sharing agreement to spell out the organization's access to the data that your project will collect and how they can use it. If staff or community members have a role in your project, write job descriptions for them. Set up a process to maintain regular communication through standing, meetings or regular reports. Set up a process for your partner to have a say in decisions that impact their organization and their community. Early in the partnership, discuss how you will share the results of the study with research participants and with the community. Key points to remember about building effective community partnerships are, know the community that you're studying, do your research online, but also talk to people and learn directly from the community, spend time in the community, this helps you to learn more about it, but also gives community members a chance to get to know you. Build trust, establish a relationship with the community, give back to the community, share what you've learned from your research.
