Who's This For
You have an early developing sense of your (and/or your team’s) impact possibilities from the intro of issue 1 of StoryStacks. This will help to define the intersections of capacity and purpose across multiple dimensions of the changes and impacts you want to make. Now you need to think about who else is in this story.
This issue is for anyone designing partnership possibilities based on impact goals (long-term and short-term). Anyone who tends to center themselves in broader impacts without seeing the full cast, and anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to think deeply about what partners actually need, want, and can contribute as part of a collaboration.
The key insight: partners are protagonists in their own stories. When you truly get that, your partnership design changes.
The Partnership Moment
For everyone actively writing or daydreaming drafts of a broader impacts section and you write something like: "The PI will partner with local organizations to expand the reach of xyz research findings." Raise the flag!
It sounds reasonable. But who are these organizations? What do they get from this? What's their story? Are they in danger of not surviving without knowing the ‘z’ of your xyz findings?
Too often, partners appear in proposals as interchangeable extras, background characters who exist to receive what the researcher provides. They fill a role, but they don't have depth.
Hopefully reviewers notice this fault. More importantly, partners notice it. And partnerships designed this way rarely make durable and integrated impacts.
Under the Surface
Every story has characters. In broader impacts, the cast typically includes:
You, the researcher. But not as the all-powerful author who controls everything. You're a participant in the story, one who needs to be responsive and adaptable as the project unfolds.
Your students and team. Graduate students, postdocs, undergraduates working in your lab. They're not just labor; they're characters with their own development arcs.
Partners. Organizations, institutions, individuals who collaborate with you. Museums, schools, industry, community groups, government agencies.
Beneficiaries. The people your broader impacts ultimately serve. Students who gain STEM awareness. Communities who benefit from research translation. Workforce pipelines that connect to employment.
Institutions. Your university, partner organizations, funding agencies. They have their own purposes and constraints that shape what's possible.
The mistake most faculty make: treating everyone except themselves as passive recipients rather than active participants with their own goals and journeys.
The Partnership Shift: Partners as Protagonists
Here's what changes everything: partners have their own stories.
A museum isn't just a venue for your outreach. It has a mission, programs, audiences, and challenges. It's trying to accomplish something that may or may not align with what you're proposing.
A school district isn't just a source of K-12 students. It has curriculum requirements, scheduling constraints, teachers with their own expertise, and strategic priorities.
An industry partner isn't just a funding source or internship provider. It has workforce needs, competitive pressures, and organizational culture.
When you see partners as protagonists, you ask different questions:
What's their story? What are they trying to accomplish?
What tensions or challenges do they face?
How might working with you help them advance their goals?
What would they need from this collaboration to make it worthwhile?
This isn't just ethics or niceness. It's practical. Partnerships where both sides have real stakes work better than partnerships where one side is doing a favor for the other.
The Partnership Pattern: Preparation Before Partnership
Two practices transform how you approach partnership:
Show up first. Before you ask for partnership, understand the organization. Volunteer. Attend their events. Help with their existing programs. See how they operate from the inside.
This is idealized. Not everyone has time. But even a small investment pays dividends. If there's a career fair, show up. If there's a startup weekend, participate. If there's a guest speaker slot at an incubator, take it.
You learn things you can't learn from websites: how decisions get made, what they actually care about, where the friction points are.
Do your homework. Before any partnership conversation, know their mission statement, their strategic priorities, any public reports or board meeting summaries. Look for alignment between what you care about and what they're working toward.
When you walk into a meeting already understanding their context, conversations move faster. You can propose ideas that fit their world rather than asking them to fit yours.
This also builds trust. Partners notice when you've done the work to understand them. It signals that you see them as more than a means to your ends.
Your Partnership Move
For each potential partner in your broader impacts plan, answer these questions:
1. What's their mission? Not vaguely, but specifically. What are they trying to accomplish?
2. What tensions do they face? Resource constraints, competing priorities, organizational challenges?
3. What would success look like for them? If this partnership worked beautifully, what would they celebrate?
4. What assets do they bring? Not just what you need from them, but what they're genuinely good at.
5. What do they need from you? Content expertise? Credibility? Student labor? Access to something they can't get otherwise?
6. How does this fit their story? Does partnering with you advance something they care about, or is it a distraction from their real priorities?
If you can't answer these questions, you're not ready to propose partnership. You're ready to learn more about them.
Avoiding the Partnership Template Trap
Here's a warning sign: if you could easily substitute one partner for another without changing your plan, your partners are background characters, not protagonists.
"We'll partner with a local museum" is interchangeable. Any museum would do.
"We'll partner with the City Science Center, building on their existing teen program to connect our materials science research to their maker space curriculum" is specific. It shows you understand what they do a bit more and how you might fit.
Reviewers see the difference. More importantly, partners see the difference. The second version gets real engagement; the first gets polite form letters.
Your Team's Turn
If you're working through this with a cohort or team there is a link below to help you work together as a team on this in whatever style works for you:
For each partner in your plan, can you articulate their story? What are they trying to accomplish? (ideally as direct voice)
Where do you have genuine alignment vs. where are you hoping they'll just go along with what you want?
What homework do you still need to do before your next partnership conversation?
You can use the slide deck as part of a team meeting or to generate a next steps process for building your collaborative impact story. Click here to access the Team Slides for this issue (PDF)
These interactives are great for individual and team use and will open an external link in your default web browser.
Cast the characters in your broader impacts story: partners, students, community members, and institutional allies. —> Try the Character Casting Tool
Using this with your team? All team members are encouraged to have an active subscription with STEMsaic Partnership Insider. All the resources are free for subscribers for this team guide. We are here to support you and appreciate your support of STEMsaic. We have group and team discounts.
Your Local Action
Your research development office and broader impacts professionals have relationships across campus and community. They know which partners have worked well with faculty, which are looking for new collaborations, and which have had difficult experiences.
Ask them:
Who are potential partners for the kind of work I'm describing?
What do you know about how they like to work?
Are there existing relationships I could build on rather than starting from scratch?
Also ask:
What characters in my story am I missing? Who should be involved that I haven't thought of?
Outside perspective helps you see the cast you can't see from inside your own assumptions.
Continue the Journey in Issue 3
Do this before Issue 3: Pick one potential partner from your broader impacts plan. Answer question 1, just the mission question. If you can answer it in two specific sentences, you know this partner. If you can't, that's diagnostic: you're not ready to propose partnership yet. You're ready to learn more about them. Either answer takes 60 seconds and tells you something real.
Last Issue: The Story You're Already Telling - reframing broader impacts as story
Next Issue: Your Impact Identity Dimensions: the 6 questions that explain why your broader impacts feel like someone else's plan
You can see your partners now. But can you see yourself? Most faculty know what they do, but they don't know why certain broader impacts feel right and others feel forced. The Impact Identity Framework reveals that. It's six dimensions that explain where your broader impacts actually come from, and why some approaches fit you while others feel like obligations
Story Stacks is part of the STEMsaic Team Guide Collection.
Your institution's research development office and broader impacts professionals are your best local resources. The frameworks here come alive when you apply them with people who know your context
Make your STEM mosaic, your way