Universities are increasingly stepping outside the traditional boundaries of research and teaching to help solve complex societal issues. This shift requires academic institutions to partner with outside groups, such as nonprofits, industry leaders, and local governments. Millions of dollars go toward these collaborative projects every year to address widespread challenges like climate change and housing insecurity.
These resources can easily be wasted if the partnerships are poorly designed. Academics and nonprofit workers often operate within completely different organizational cultures. They have different workplace incentives, speak in different technical languages, and operate on different timelines.
Researchers Mason Clay Mathews of Florida State University and Alexandria J. Drake of the University of Puget Sound set out to see if participants in these mixed groups share a common understanding of how collaborations should function. Their investigation, published in PLOS One, measures the degree to which academic and nonprofit professionals agree on the underlying reasons for partnership success.
Measuring shared beliefs
To understand the dynamics of these collaborations, the researchers focused specifically on academic-nonprofit partnerships. This narrow focus helped prevent the mixing of different belief systems that might arise if industry or government partnerships were included. The research team began by conducting 44 interviews with students, professors, and nonprofit staff who had partnership experience.
During these interviews, the participants were asked to generate lists of the reasons they thought partnerships succeeded. The researchers grouped the responses into themes, ultimately producing a master list of 18 distinct factors. These factors ranged from establishing realistic timelines to sharing decision-making power.
In the next phase, the researchers surveyed 80 individuals who had participated in at least one academic-nonprofit partnership. The survey presented the participants with the list of 18 success factors. Respondents were asked to drag and drop the items into a ranked list, ordering them from most to least important.
To analyze the ranking data, the team used a mathematical model that calculates the relative weight that participants assign to different options. They combined this with a statistical technique designed to measure whether a group of people shares a common mental framework. Together, these tools allowed the researchers to see if a consensus existed across the entire group or within specific subgroups.
The core factors of success
The analysis revealed a definitive hierarchy in how the participants viewed partnership success. Three factors emerged at the very top of the rankings. Respondents consistently prioritized having clear project goals and deliverables, maintaining regular communication, and establishing a shared vision or purpose.
Just below this top tier, participants placed a high priority on having clear roles and responsibilities. They also highly ranked the need for sufficient funding to complete the required tasks. At the bottom of the list were items like co-creating a conflict resolution plan and establishing a clear end date for the partnership.
The researchers note that the lower-ranked items are not necessarily unimportant. The rank-order design forced respondents to make choices about priority. The results simply illustrate which factors participants view as the absolute foundation of a working relationship.
When the researchers looked at subgroups, they found surprisingly high levels of agreement. Even though academics and nonprofit staff come from different workplace cultures, they largely agreed on the top-tier reasons for success. Students were the only subgroup to show a slight divergence, ranking items like administrative buy-in differently than the older professionals did.
Applying the framework
The researchers argue that this approach can serve as a practical tool for groups embarking on joint projects. By asking team members to rank their priorities at the beginning of a project, leaders can identify misaligned expectations early. If one partner prioritizes shared decision-making while the other prioritizes clear deliverables, the team can address that disconnect before it causes friction.
This process can also be repeated as the collaboration unfolds. Teams can use surveys periodically to see if the group’s shared priorities have shifted over time. It offers a structured way to evaluate the health of the partnership across its entire life cycle.
The authors point out a few limitations to the current data. The survey relied on a specific, non-random sample of 80 people, meaning the results might look different in other contexts or regions. They also note that this study measured what people believe makes a partnership successful, rather than tracking actual project outcomes.
To determine if these shared beliefs directly lead to better results, future studies will need to track individual partnerships over several years. By gathering longitudinal data, researchers could measure the direct association between early team agreement and the final impact of the collaborative work.
Headline options
- What makes academic and nonprofit partnerships actually work
- Researchers identify the top priorities for cross-sector collaborations
- How shared beliefs shape academic and nonprofit partnerships
- The core factors behind successful team science
- Do academics and nonprofits agree on how to collaborate?
- Survey reveals top priorities for academic-nonprofit projects
- Communication and clear goals top the list for partnership success
- Measuring what matters in cross-sector collaborations
- How different work cultures view partnership success
- A new way to evaluate academic and nonprofit team projects
