Community Archives Collaborative

Cultivating a Partnership

Getting started Cultivating a Partnership Sharing Community History Teaching Tools
Home
Getting Started
Cultivating a Partnership
Sharing Community History
Teaching Tools
If you work in a larger, more well-resourced institution, below are some questions to consider before and during engagement with a community partner. The questions are followed by a list of resources that provide more detailed guidance and information on engaging with community organizations.

What are your institution’s values and principles?

Before entering into a partnership with a community organization, it is important to understand and document your own institution’s values and principles. If your values and goals for the partnership are unclear, we encourage you to document your principles for engaging with community organizations before engaging in a partnership. If they do not align with those of the community organization you seek to partner with, we urge you to reconsider the collaboration. For an example of a principles document, see Community Centered Archives Partnerships, from the Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive Center, University of California, Irvine Libraries
  • What is your mission?
  • What values, beliefs, and principles will guide your interactions with a community organization?
  • What are your reasons for entering into the partnership? Is there alignment between your mission and that of the community organization?
  
Once you have established your institution’s values, principles, and mission in partnering with a community organization, it is important to recognize that community organizations may not attend or participate in the same events, conferences, and activities that you do. You may need to do outreach at local celebrations, fairs, meetings, or other events in order to make community organizations aware of your institution and the services and resources it can provide. It is important to ask yourselves: who are you seeking a partnership with, and why? To help identify a partner, see the sample: Community-Based Partnership Institution Proposal Form with guiding questions such as:
  • What are the names and contact information of the employees/colleagues who will be working on this partnership.
  • What commitment does your institution have to underrepresented communities?
  • What do you hope to achieve by partnering with a community-based organization (CBO)
  • What previous work, if any, has your institution done with local community-based organization?
  
Pursuing a community-based partnership is beneficial for both a university archive/special collection and the community-based organization (CBO). A partnership allows for the acknowledgment and the recording of the work and activism that mainstream history overlooks. A community-based partnership also allows independence through training in the archival practice. For institutions Undertaking this partnership exposes them to the needs and critiques of local communities that may not have a positive relationship with traditional universities. Lastly, through a collaborative model the hierarchical structure of knowledge thereby placing everyone on equal footing at each stage of the proposed project.
Community organizations need sustainable solutions that enable them to continue to preserve and tell their stories. While short-term collaborations can be beneficial, they often result in a better outcome for the more well-resourced partner than for the community organization, which may have trouble sustaining the initiative beyond the timeframe of a single project. Additionally, if support for the partnership doesn’t include the leadership of your institution, the collaboration may be difficult to sustain.
  • Are you interested in building and maintaining an ongoing relationship with the partner?
  • Are your missions aligned in a way that makes continued engagement mutually beneficial?
  • Are staff at all levels of your institution committed to the partnership?
  
While it’s obvious that communities are composed of individuals, in institutional settings, sometimes a “community” is seen as monolithic. It’s important to recognize that community members do not always speak with a unified voice.
  • Are you making an effort to listen to and understand the differences and disagreements that happen within a community?
  • Are you willing to work with people who may not always agree with each other to arrive at a consensus?
  • How will you and the partner navigate disagreements over the aims, processes, and outcomes of your collaboration?
  
Rolling consent is consent to share that is always revocable. It acknowledges that a person’s rights to their own image and creations do not end when that image or creation is shared, regardless of whether the sharing is legal. Rolling consent is an ethical approach to sharing that reflects care for the ongoing relationship between your institution, your partners, and community members.
  • Can you agree to take down shared items at any time, for any reason?
  • Are you able to reach out to the community organization or affected community members if you receive requests for additional forms of sharing?
  

Is the partnership reciprocal?

It’s important to remember that traditional academic modes of research and knowledge-production are extractive and designed to benefit the scholar, researcher, or academic institution.
  • Are you providing what the community organization needs and has asked for?
  • Are you providing appropriate financial or in-kind compensation for the time, information, or labor you receive from the community organization or community members?
  • What are you doing to disrupt or counter this tendency?
  • Do you highlight the expertise and knowledge you receive from the community organization as much as your role in the partnership?
  
When working with communities whose histories and stories have been marginalized, misrepresented, or ignored, it’s important to make time and space to listen to them. Remember to listen more than you speak and respect their decisions about when and how they share their stories or information with you. It’s also important to take what they say to heart and adjust your expectations and activities accordingly.
Staff of community organizations are often juggling lots of projects and priorities. It’s important to be clear and consistent in your communications with them and to be flexible with timelines for their responses.
  • Does your community partner know and understand what you are planning?
  • Are you able to communicate with them in a language they understand without too much jargon?
  • Have you told them what resources (including funding) are available to you and to them?
  • Have you kept them abreast of timelines or deadlines they need to be aware of, including friendly reminders?
  • Have you clearly communicated requirements for grant or other forms of reporting at the start of the collaboration?
  • Are you keeping them updated about changes that happen in a timely fashion?
  
Community organizations are repositories of knowledge and expertise that may present itself in ways that are unfamiliar to you. It’s important to acknowledge this expertise and to respect and facilitate a community’s ability to generate, keep, and share their stories in whatever ways are appropriate for them.
  • Are you sharing leadership and decision-making with the partner?
  • Are you giving them appropriate credit?
  
Community organizations need sustainable solutions that enable them to continue to preserve and tell their stories. While short-term collaborations can be beneficial, they often result in a better outcome for the more well-resourced partner than for the community organization, which may have trouble sustaining the initiative beyond the timeframe of a single project. Additionally, if support for the partnership doesn’t include the leadership of your institution, the collaboration may be difficult to sustain.
  • Are you interested in building and maintaining an ongoing relationship with the partner?
  • Are your missions aligned in a way that makes continued engagement mutually beneficial?
  • Are staff at all levels of your institution committed to the partnership?
  
It seems obvious that for a partnership to succeed it’s necessary to do what you say you’re going to do. However, it’s important to understand that many community organizations have been disappointed by partners who didn’t live up to their promises. While every partnership goes through changes, it’s especially important when working with community partners not to overpromise, and to follow through on what you’ve agreed to. If you’re no longer able to fulfill your responsibilities, it’s important to apologize and explain in a clear and timely way. Most community organizations are working with very limited budgets and staffing. If you are unable to fulfill your commitments, it may have a much more devastating effect on them than it does on your institution.
Archival project questions for institutions to consider:
  1. What kinds of documentation projects can your institution support successfully?
    1. Potential documentation projects:
      • Oral History
      • Digitization
      • Exhibit Curation
      • Archival Collecting
      • Lesson Plan Development
  2. What resources will you need to carry out a partnership on a project?
    • Student Interns
    • Staff Time/Expertise
    • Supplies
    • Partner Compensation/Honorarium
  3. What project duration (semester, quarter, set number of hours) can you support?
  4. Does your Archive/Special Collections team have experience with grant writing/securing funding?
  5. What types of organizations do you hope to partner with for your collaboration?
    • Local CBOs?
    • CBOs not in your immediate area?
  6. Does your institution have experience in social justice work?
  7. Does your team need cultural competency training?
Institutions should provide a checklist to help CBOs through the partnership process and discuss the steps of entering into a partnership. See A Partner Checklist

Draft a Memorandum of Understanding / Partnership Agreement. See Agreement D_AgreementTemplate_CommunityArchivesPartnership. This template should clearly outline the following:
  • Identify the goals of the partnership (i.e. the project)
  • The duration of the project
  • Responsibilities of each partner
    • What does each partner commit to doing to support the success of the project?

TIP: Allow yourselves enough time for each partner to review and revise the partnership agreement.
See links to cultural competency workshops:
References/links to readings on community-based archives:

Community Centered Archives Partnerships
Includes a statement of principles for collaboration between Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive Center (OC & SEAA) and community organizations, summaries of past and current projects, and links to a partner agreement and registration forms. This resource provides helpful examples for your own archives collaboration and accompanying documentation.
Created by: Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive Center, University of California, Irvine Libraries (2024)

Guidelines for Collaboration
Two separate guides, one for museums and one for Native communities, on how to plan and carry out collaborative work. “Although the focus for both documents is on collections-based collaborations, the Guidelines apply to all types of collaborative work in museums, including education, exhibits and public programs.”
Created by: Indian Arts Research Center. Facilitated by Landis Smith, Cynthia Chavez Lamar, and Brian Vallo. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research. (2019)

The Community Archiving Program Listening Tour Report 2022
The report “summarizes the results of a listening tour conducted in Spring 2022 as the first step in planning for a new Community Archiving Program.” Includes insights and considerations on how academic institutions can successfully partner with community organizations and members.
Created by: Hernandez, R. & Mora, T. University of California, Santa Cruz Special Collections & Archives. (2022)

Architecting Sustainable Futures: Exploring Funding Models in Community-Based Archives
Report from a 2018 symposium that “gathered community-based archives to address one of their most pressing needs for sufficiency: sustainable funding.” Includes recommendations for community organizations, funders, university library partners, and scholars that anticipated the suggestions provided in this guide.
Created by: Jules, B. Shift Collective. (2019)