There are a variety of foundational documents that you’ll want to think about when building your research-practice partnership. Which ones apply to your context and how they will be used will depend heavily on the types of organizations involved in the partnership, how the organizations expect to work together, and the scope of work guiding the partnership’s activities. We’ve listed a few common ones here, but keep in mind that your context may require the development of additional documents to fully support the work.

Charter

The partnership charter generally lays out the mission, vision, and objectives of the partnership, all of which may be decided upon after working through the RPP’s theory of action. We’ve included two sample documents below from the NNERPP members that share how they’ve codified these.

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

The MOU is typically an agreement between both partners describing the scope of the work, expectations, and assignment of responsibilities (individually and shared). MOUs from two of our members, as well as an excellent annotated sample from the Research + Practice Collaboratory, are included below to help with your planning.

Data Sharing Agreements

Data sharing arrangements between researchers and practitioners are one of the most important topics to consider when starting a research-practice partnership. It should be broached early, since multiple iterations of drafts describing agreements may be necessary given the sensitive nature of the data. Many of the partnerships in NNERPP utilize administrative data, but other considerations may be necessary if the partnership intends on producing and collecting its own data. Examples of data sharing agreements can be found below.

Job Descriptions

The number and type of staff needed for the RPP will vary depending on the structural arrangement, the scope of work, and the amount of funding available, among other things. Until some of these questions are resolved, we recommend exploring some of the job descriptions provided below to get an idea for how other partnerships are staffed.