There are many things to consider in advance of preparing and submitting your application for a SSHRC Partnership Grant. This month, CFICE has taken a look back at its own SSHRC application process and we have attempted to share some of the lessons we’ve learned along the way. This is the fourth article in our SYWASPG (So You Want to Apply for a SSHRC Partnership Grant) series. See our other stories on whether or not the SSHRC Partnership Grant is right for you, how to respectfully involve your community partners in the application process, and the ins and outs of Project Work Plans and Budgets.

Heather Reid chats with other CFICE members.

It’s no secret that with at least a dozen university partners and more than 60 community partners, spanning the course of seven years and across the country, the CFICE project has been—and continues to be—a pretty massive undertaking.

That’s not to say that it’s in any way better than a smaller partnership project that might have one or two or even three partners. Determining the size and scope of your research project really depends on your objective. Think of a bow and arrow. Your research question is the bow; your answers are the target. How many arrows will it take for you to hit your target? Repeatedly? In such a way that you can then pass what you have learned about your target onto the next archer? (Don’t forget, at the end of the day, a SSHRC Partnership Grant is indeed about funding the production of academic knowledge.)

CFICE’s current Principal Investigator (PI), Peter AndrĂ©e, says that CFICE “was appropriately-sized for its long-term objective, which was to identify ways to maximize the value of community-campus partnerships for the non-profit sector, and to further efforts to institutionalize what we’ve learned.” In other words, CFICE aimed to strengthen the Community-Campus Engagement movement as a whole in Canada. In order to do so, including partners from across a range of sectors and across the country was an appropriate—if lofty—goal.

But, that doesn’t mean that CFICE’s large size did not present some challenges.

The challenges of a multi-partner and large-scale research project

Within a multi-partner project with limited funds, there is only so much money to go around. Of course, the more partners you include, the thinner those funds must be spread.

“Our degree of engagement with specific partners really varied,” said AndrĂ©e of CFICE, which led to some community partners noting that the partnership ultimately had “limited impact” on their capacity or projects. In some instances, partners might have only received five thousand dollars, and limited follow-through.

If having many partners suits your project, then having open and honest communication about your project’s capacity and priorities can help to ensure that everyone has reasonable expectations for the project.

The CFICE team included community partners in a participatory budgeting process, which helped facilitate this communication in a more structured setting. Additionally, CFICE expanded its secretariat, because, as AndrĂ©e said, “project management, administration, and communications need to be especially strong in a large project that seeks to communicate with a broad network.”

The allocation of more time and resources into funding-related decision making can also be a downfall of a larger partnership project, as it means more costs are allocated to central administration. As Genevieve Harrison, CFICE’s Project Administrator, puts it, the process of allocating resources among many partners can also be “time consuming and contentious.”

“Partnerships that are smaller in scope can be more efficient in terms of communication and decision making,” said Harrison, though smaller partnerships can be subject to different constraints. For example, Harrison mentioned that, “Organizing a group with fewer players often is easier, unless those players have restricted time available to participate.”

Harrison spoke to how the issue of resources is generally a challenge regardless of the size of the partnership. The issue of insufficient compensation for community partners “is felt by both community partners and their academic counterparts,” Harrison said. “This is in part due to the fact that SSHRC funds opportunities for academics and students, and although it is aware of the need to fund community partners in research, does not see it as part of their mandate.”

While a larger research project generally presents the hurdle of coordinating and clearly communicating with many partners that are potentially spread across the country, that same large network can provide unique benefits, too.

The benefits of a multi-partner, large-scale research project

Large partnerships offer a wide network, which can then “offer exposure to a larger pool of participants that ultimately develops priorities for research that meet the needs of a larger community,” said Harrison.

As a result of having a larger research network, your project might create more “noise as partners assist in spreading the word about the research to a larger audience,” said Harrison. This noise or increased attention to your project can help to generate “larger in-kind contributions to the work and they can offer a greater variety of project resources,” Harrison added.

For CFICE, its large size meant it was able to engage a wide range of partners, including academics, institutions, students, and community organizations. AndrĂ©e attributes the large scale and scope of the project to the project’s ability to help “expand and extend the reach of thinking about community-campus partnerships.”

To make the most of a large-scale research project like CFICE, AndrĂ©e says its important to “do it with eyes wide open,” and be realistic about what you can promise your partners. “Find a partnership direction that fits the aspirations and needs of your wide partnership,” he said, and develop your project governance structure early on, and with input from with your partners.

Regardless of how many partners you have, or the physical distance that separates you, there are unique challenges and benefits that come with having both smaller and larger CCE partnership projects. Mindfully managing expectations, communicating thoroughly and openly, and being realistic about the resources you have available are important to addressing some of these challenges.

Working with an institution as large as a university can be a daunting, challenging task filled with moving parts and bureaucratic hoops to jump through.

For a community organization, tackling the challenges that come with a partnership with a post-secondary institution can be time-consuming, particularly if it’s relatively new territory. This is where administrators—experts in things like financial reporting and institutional coordination—come in.

In CFICE’s first four years, administrative duties were found to be a bit of a burden, particularly for community partners, who are often already stretched thin for time. In the Violence Against Women hub, for instance, the academic co-lead took on an administrative role so that the community partner could have more time and energy for hub projects. “As a senior academic, the academic co-lead was less vulnerable to academic publishing pressures and thus able to take over these kinds of duties without jeopardizing her career,” the year 4 summary report reads.

While that division of duties worked in some ways, there were also challenges. Community partners at times felt that the academic co-lead had more control over things like drafting and soliciting proposals. “It does require trust and it does require consultation and comfort with handing over that responsibility to someone else,” a community partner said.

Hiring a professional administrator to handle the ins and outs of funding applications, university bureaucracy, and to advocate for the project can provide an opportunity for capacity building for both community and academic partners.

Genevieve Harrison is CFICE’s Project Administrator.

Having an administrator on your team “is more important when you’re dealing with an institution, because each department in an institution is a separate entity, and a separate landscape,” says Genevieve Harrison, the administrator for the CFICE project. Administrators have “the ability to tie those things together” and to “keep communication going,” Harrison said.

In addition to her role as the CFICE Project Administrator, Harrison wears many other administrative hats, including being the administrator for the ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ Centre for Community Innovation, (which houses the CFICE project).

Harrison uses her skills to:

• Ensure CFICE is in compliance with the funder
• Handle financial reporting
• Co-ordinate between institutions
• Handle all project HR needs.

Needless to say, the CFICE project would not be where it is today without her involvement.

Harrison, who is well-versed in the requirements of both the university and of the project funder, says the most important function of her position is “ensuring the project team has the best information for decision making. There’s a lot of moving parts in the project, and making sure that people are up to date with what is happening financially can help them make decisions,” she told CFICE.

In addition to navigating bureaucracy and policy, a good administrator approaches a project with flexibility, patience, empathy and diplomacy.

“You’re in the middle dealing with people who have problems, and people who you’re trying to help resolve their issues. You’re sort of like the broker in that sense,” Harrison said. “It’s important to understand the constraints and limitations that people are dealing with” in order to best help them, she added.

While a good administrator can benefit a project’s capacity building, decision making, and general organization, project leaders can also take steps to effectively work with the administrator, maximizing her skills to the best of their ability.

Harrison says one important way to do this is to remember to involve your administrator early on in discussions, and to always advise them of what your plans are. That way, the administrator has the opportunity to guide the project leaders through the system, rather than trying to problem solve when it might already be too late.

“I think it’s important to remember that the administrator is on their side and that the administrator works for the project. I think there’s the perception that sometimes the administrator works for the university,” Harrison says, often because the administrator is put into the position of advising on what restrictions or limitations a project must adhere to, per university or funder policy, for instance.

But, while administrators cannot change the policies, they are experts in problem solving.

“One of the key principles that I try to keep in mind, is the attitude of ‘how can we do this?’ Quite often when dealing with an institution the answers are ‘you can’t do that.’ So finding a way to do things is really important,” Harrison adds.

While hiring an administrator might seem like an added cost to your project, they really can save time, resources, and add to your capacity in the community.

Try building in the cost of an administrator into your funding proposal to begin with. Once you’ve had an administrator working with you, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without!