Aerial photo of downtown Lawrence

Community Partners

KU’s institutional commitment calls for the cultivation of meaningful and sustained partnerships with communities. Community partners contribute expertise and local knowledge that strengthen teaching, research, and service. KU’s community partners are diverse, representing a wide range of issue areas and sectors, both locally and globally. These meaningful partnerships emphasize shared goals, community priorities, and reciprocal relationships to support sustained engagement. Community partners are invited to use the Engaged KU Toolkit to learn more about the University’s commitment to engagement and identify opportunities for collaboration across the KU community.

How do I get started?

  • Explore the Engaged KU Toolkit to learn about KU’s commitment to community engagement.
  • Identify areas where your organization’s mission, priorities, or programs align with KU teaching, research, or service activities.
  • Connect with KU faculty, staff, researchers, or students to explore potential collaborative opportunities.
  • Share feedback on partnership experiences to help improve KU’s engagement practices and support continuous improvement.

Standards & Guidelines

  • Full Participation & Representation: Engage in reciprocal partnerships with shared goals, responsibilities, and benefits. Identify community needs and issues to be addressed through academic-community partnerships. Participate in co‑creation of programs, research, and learning experiences. Provide voice in planning, implementation, and governance. Collaborate on agreements (e.g., MOUs) that document roles, expectations, timelines, and resources to ensure mutual benefit and bidirectional relationships and interactions. Ensure resources and supports are provided by academic partners to remove barriers and enhance opportunities to support community engagement (e.g., transportation/parking, scheduling beyond academic calendars, accessibility, digital access, remote participation, scheduling outside academic hours, translation/interpretation, childcare, safety, compensation).
  •  Mutual Benefit: Identify liaison contacts for both academic and community partners. Determine mutually beneficial opportunities to engage with academic partners through teaching/training, research, service, or outreach. Promote community assets, priorities, and expertise in shaping engagement activities. Share decision-making and co-creation of goals, activities, assessment, and dissemination. Ensure opportunities for agreed upon authorship/credit of community partners. Ensure results, outputs, and products are provided in usable community-friendly formats that are of value to the community. Seek sustained academic-community partnerships and collaboration.
  • Assessment and Reporting: Log and report volunteer and engagement opportunities through institutional processes (e.g., volunteer.ku.edu). Participate in surveys and opportunities to provide feedback. Conduct routine partner feedback cycles. Ensure that information and data gathered are shared back; document improvements; maintain survey list for Carnegie classification. Document policy/practice impacts and benefits to the community. 
  • Recognition and Rewards: Ensure community expertise is valued and rewarded, including through compensation, stipends/honoraria, professional development, materials, and space to support reciprocal partnerships. Ensure acknowledgement and opportunities to contribute to co-developed products that support shared goals. 

Community Partner Resources

Examples

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