Fertile Ground for Collaboration: Investing in Community–University Partnerships with Soil Money

Any avid gardener will tell you that planting seeds is not enough to ensure an abundant harvest. While you might get lucky and hit a patch of fertile ground, you will likely have more success if you first prepare the soil. Community–university partnerships (CUPs) require the same investment. Just as soil provides the physical foundation for plant growth, relationship building between communities and researchers provides the foundation for productive and sustained CUPs. In that vein, we argue that successful CUPs not only require seed money to initiate projects, but soil money to cultivate strong, resilient, and productive partnerships. There is increasing pressure for scientists to demonstrate the societal relevance of their work (Keeler et al. 2017). Many scientists achieve this through partnership with community organizations. Yet, whether CUPs are effective, and for whom they are effective, is poorly understood, partly because partnerships are often formed under conditions that are driven by funding and academic publishing opportunities. This may ultimately shortchange the potential benefits to scientific innovation and the ability of science to contribute toward social benefit. Partnerships formed through the exploration and definition of mutual interests may yield more impactful work (London et al. 2017). Soil money directly addresses one of the challenges faced by many budding CUPs—establishing and sustaining strong and resilient CUPs before a funding opportunity arises. Universities currently support CUPs in several ways, for example, seed money that supports emerging projects. In addition, some universities maintain centers that facilitate connections between campus and the community. However, these mechanisms do not directly fund relationship building among researchers and the community. Academia's limited investment in CUPs is compounded by an increasingly competitive funding climate, with interdisciplinary funding (the focus of many CUPs) becoming more limited (Bromham et al. 2016). In addition, within the current funding system, engagement can be superficial. For example, the broader impacts requirement of a National Science Foundation proposal encourages application of research findings to management or policy; however, it rarely drives the direction of research and is sometimes viewed as an obligatory recognition of potential social benefit, rather than an opportunity to engage with communities. Soil money could foster relationships that allow the broadest impacts where community members are repositioned from “study participant” to