This document provides three suggestions for more effective community-university research partnering: 1. Both parties need to clearly understand why they want to partner - their goals must be compatible. The community sector and university sector each have multiple potential reasons for partnering. 2. Successful partnerships are built on trust between the parties. Trust takes time to develop and cannot be rushed. 3. Time is the most important yet difficult factor, as both sides are busy. Discussions about governance, resources, participation and dissemination need time that is often not funded. More flexibility from funders may be needed.

1. How to get more effective
community-university research
partnering: three suggestions
Caroline Andrew
Centre on governance
University of Ottawa
candrew@uottawa.ca

2. Starting point
• Community-based research can be useful to the
settlement sector
• Community-based research can be useful to
university-based researchers
BUT
It isn’t always
- there are some good examples
- there are some bad examples

3. So what needs to happen to make
it work
Three suggestions –
1. Knowing why you are there
2. Trust
3. Time

4. Knowing why you are there
The settlement sector – very important to know why you want to have
research
Lots of possible reasons
- You think that one of your services isn’t meeting the needs and you
want to know if this is true and understand why
- You think that one of your services is meeting needs extremely well
and you want to be able to demonstrate this to your funders
- You think that one of your services could meet needs much better if
some of the existing rules could be changed and you want to
demonstrate this to your funders
- You have some great staff that would benefit from training and/or
credentializing
- You want some additional financial resources to be able to offer an
important service/activity
- You think that the importance of the challenge of reinventing
Canada needs all possible partners

5. Knowing why you are there
University sector – very important to know why we want to do the
research
Lots of possible reasons
- We want additional financial resources
- We have some great students who want to do something useful and
want us to support this
- We think that you are doing really important work and we would like
to understand it better
- We are getting pressure from our University to bring in more
research dollars
- We are passionate about evaluation research (or quantitative
methods or…) and you offer exciting examples
- We think that the importance of the challenge of reinventing Canada
needs all possible partners

6. And if we are not clear about why
we are there, the results won’t be
successful
So we each need to figure out why we are
there
Then we need to figure out if the reasons
are compatible

7. 2. Second Suggestion – TRUST
• Partnerships work when there is trust
• Trust doesn’t get built in a day
• Lots of examples – but the LIPs are a
good case
- where relationships and trust existed for
several years people could quickly start
work
- where that didn’t exist it can be built
but it takes time

8. 3. Third Suggestion - TIME
This is perhaps the most important, and the most difficult, factor
you are busy
we are busy
And you aren’t funded to discuss and debate the governance of
research partnerships (you should be)
The consequence:
Most research partnering starts without enough discussion about how
to achieve what we want
Examples: distribution of resources
participation in research design
participation of staff as researchers/students
dissemination of results and ownership of results
pressure on granting agencies and other funders

9. So what can be done?
• Too important to just say it can’t work
because of lack of time
• Too important to just say it can’t work
because funders are too rigid
Suggestions? Comments?

10. Thank you