Partner Engagement
What is it?
Organizations vested in R3 rarely have the capacity, resources, expertise, or breadth of perspective to deliver the volume and scope of R3 efforts needed to significantly impact participation in hunting and shooting sports. The scale is just too large. Thus, finding and working with partners is essential. This chapter describes how to create and sustain mutually beneficial relationships with partners that can help achieve R3 objectives.
Why is it Important?
Helping someone learn and adopt a new activity like hunting or target shooting is difficult. It takes significant time, teaching, and resource investment. This is one reason why close family members and friends are the most effective delivery mechanism for R3. They have the capacity and incentive to invest the time and support needed to create a new hunter or target shooter from within their social group. Unfortunately, this intensive process of creating and sustaining new participants is not nearly as well suited to organizations that must be efficient with limited resources. Strategic partnerships with other organizations can be a huge asset. Partners not only contribute a share of the time and resources needed to move individuals along the adoption pathway, but they also can provide a broader suite of experiences, opportunities, and perspectives. Partnerships can offer staff capacity, resources, and technologies to help scale your R3 effort beyond where your organization can take it alone.
Why Working With a Subject Matter Expert Is Important
This resource examines the importance of working with a subject matter expert. It also covers elements including cost, technical specificity, and other things to consider when working with a SME.
How can your organization help its practitioners?
- Allocate staff time for partner relationship management.
- Support reallocation of organization staff who may be willing to serve as bridge-builders—individuals who are good at building relationships and partnerships.
- Leadership attend early partnership events and meetings to reflect organizational buy-in.
- Allocate funding for partnership engagement events and R3 strategy sessions.
- Share data with partners to allow for effective communication when an R3 effort starts and for evaluation once it is complete.
- Highlight partners’ achievements on websites, in publications, and via press releases.
How To Find Partners
Just because an organization works in the R3 arena does not mean it will be a good partner for your particular R3 effort, target audience, or organizational approach. Fortunately, there is a broad and diverse group of potential partners who are committed to advancing hunting and shooting sports R3 (lists of these potential partners can be found in the table of resources below). However, R3-vested organizations should complete an internal R3 planning process, or at least a prioritization of objectives (see Planning and Strategy chapter for more information) before seeking new partnerships. The most effective and long-term partnerships form when both parties clearly understand the other’s mission and have a mutual vision for engaging specific target audiences and delivering parallel R3 efforts.
Though each partnership is unique and usually requires a customized approach, following are general steps an organization should undertake to secure a mutually beneficial relationship with other R3-vested organizations. These steps are derivations of those found in the Wildlife Management Institute’s Pocket Guide to Relevancy.1
- Identify and prioritize the type and breadth of R3 efforts your organization is committed to implementing. Consider matters like cost, priority, focal area, target audience, scale of engagement, etc. From this, determine which efforts would benefit from external partners’ additional resources, capacity, or expertise.
- Identify (such as through stakeholder mapping listed in the table of resources below) which partners are best aligned with your organization and the types of R3 efforts you have prioritized.
- Learn all you can about partners before contacting them. What can you find out about what their past experiences may have been with your organization? What are their preferred communication styles? What else in their context may influence their willingness or ability to partner with you?
- Identify the “bridge builders” in both organizations—those special individuals who are good at relationship and partnership building. Be intentional about how you build relationships with them. “Breaking bread” is an age-old way for people to get into relationships, and modern technology has yet to offer a better substitute.
- Collaborate with the partner organization to learn how their members connect with the outdoors, hunting, or shooting sports. Consider how those align with your organization’s mission, R3 goals, and programs.
- Ease into a partnership through approaches co-created with your partner. Avoid making assumptions about what programming or efforts they will value or where they wish to meet and conduct business.
- Once preliminary relationships are established, build broader relationships across the organization. Make connections among leadership, marketing, communications, hunter-ed, shooting range, resource management, and so on.
- Look for ways to build the skills and capabilities of your organization’s staff (and offer opportunities to partner organization staff). Start with those who have expressed interest in working in partnerships that are becoming established. Work with your partner to be adaptive; listening, learning, and growing all along the way.
- Build a database of potential partner organizations or contacts. This will allow you to filter partners and/or individuals by interests, reputation, roles, mission of each organization, etc.
- Join the National R3 Community and get to know other conservation organizations and R3 practitioners in your area.
15 Organizations Advancing Diversity Outdoors
This list is by no means exhaustive, rather, it’s the result of research we’ve done to learn more about efforts to improve diversity outdoors and how we can do more to help.
65 Black, Indigenous & POC Outdoor Organizations to Support
This index of BIPOC-owned outdoor collectives is a “living document,” created and updated seasonally.
CAHSS R3 Topic Guide “Statewide Collaborations”
This resource provides guidance for engaging partners in R3 Collaborations.
NGO R3 Coordinators
List of potential NGO partners and their R3 Coordinator contact information.
Shooting Sports Organizations and Programs
List of potential shooting sports organizations and programs.
Stakeholder Mapping Tool
This document summarizes an approach to building understanding, segmentation, and prioritization of partners, and provide templates for completing this work.
State R3 Coordinators
List of potential state agency partners and their R3 Coordinator contact information.
How to Engage Partners
At its core, partnership engagement is the work of building and maintaining good relationships. Thus, it requires understanding, appreciation, and respect for new and potential partners’ missions, incentives, and constraints. It also means that an R3-vested organization needs to be realistic about how many partners it can manage. Trusted relationships take time, resources, and energy, so take care not to overextend your organization’s partner relationship management. A disappointed partner can often be more detrimental to an R3 effort than no partner at all.
A partnership where each organization clearly understands the other’s needs and capacities has the best chance of succeeding. Examples of successful R3 partnership types include:
- Shared R3 Coordinator positions between conservation NGOs and state, federal and tribal agencies.
- Design and delivery of on-the-ground R3 programs and events (learn-to-hunts, learn-to-shoots, collegiate skills training programs, hunting expos, co-branded marketing campaigns, etc.)
- Public range development projects between conservation NGOs, shooting sports industries, and public agencies.
- R3-related research initiatives between university social science experts and conservation NGOs or public agencies.
- Hunting access initiatives between conservation NGOs, private landowners, and public agencies.
- Hunting and shooting sports-supportive policy initiatives between NGOs, outdoor industry, and public agencies.
These and many other R3-supportive partnerships require maintenance and care. This can be done by implementing a communications plan to ensure R3 staff regularly update each other on shared efforts. Many organizations hold annual or bi-annual R3 partner and stakeholder summit meetings. These can be very helpful for maintaining existing (and establishing new) R3-supportive partnerships. See the CAHSS Statewide Collaborations Topic Guide and the National R3 Implementation Workgroup Interim Report in the table of resources below for more details.
Finally, engage your partners often as your organization continues evolving its approaches to implementing R3 goals and strategies. This is particularly important when your organization goes through staffing or leadership changes. It can be tempting to focus solely on the day-to-day delivery of R3 efforts and forget to maintain the relationships that will help your organization down the road. Research in organizational relationship management indicates that nothing impacts relationships and collaboration more than trust—or the lack thereof. To foster trust in your organization’s partnerships, practice the following principles:
- Celebrate victories. Recognize good work done by your partner publicly and in a timely manner.
- Build intentional relationships. Avoid falling into transactional interactions, i.e., “You give me thing A in exchange for thing B.” Think and care about your partner’s community and vision.
- Invest in professional and personal growth. Keep learning about your partner and provide them opportunities to learn about you.
- Share power and credit for success.
- Give people challenges and autonomy to develop solutions.
- Crowd-source deliberations and decisions. Create opportunities to listen to your partner and their community members.
- Share all types of R3-related information with your partners. Always work to increase transparency.
- Consider keeping a database (CRM) of partner organizations or contacts so partners and/or individuals within partner organizations can be filtered by interests, reputation, roles, mission, etc. to receive communications, requests for assistance, and other messaging.
CAHSS R3 Topic Guide “Statewide Collaborations”
This resource provides guidance for engaging partners in R3 Collaborations.
Fish and Wildlife Relevancy Roadmap
This is a practical guide that conservation agencies can use to overcome barriers to broader relevance, public engagement, and support.
National R3 Implementation Workgroup Interim Report
The results of a 24-chair, five-month R3 implementation workgroup. Identified meeting and addressing state and local partnership needs. Pg. 36-43.
National R3 Implementation Workgroup Interim Report
The results of a 24-chair, five-month R3 implementation workgroup. Identified needs within State & Local Partnerships. Pg. 36-43.
Shared Staffing With Partners
One method of maximizing funding is to utilize shared staffing opportunities with a partner organization. The nature of these relationships varies among organizations, but the core concept is that two organizations will pool resources to hire one full-time employee to share between them.
Your organization may partner with another to hire one person on both organizations’ payrolls. In this case, each organization pays half (or some other agreement) and develops a plan to share the employee’s time. In other cases, one organization pays the employee’s salary, and the other provides office space and/or other equipment. This can be very useful in cases where a state/tribal agency is not allowed to add staff (salary), but they have space and other resources to offer.
Following is an example position summary from the National Wild Turkey Federation and the State of Oklahoma (the complete listing exists in the Clearinghouse and can be found in the table of resources):
The National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) is seeking qualified candidates for a term limited (3-yr minimum), full-time position coordinating hunting recruitment, retention and reactivation (R3) efforts in the state of Oklahoma. This position is a cooperative effort between the NWTF and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) and will be responsible for coordinating and collaborating with various partner organizations to assess gaps in current hunting R3 efforts. The position will be based out of the ODWC office in Jenks, OK office. The position will be responsible for implementing efforts to develop clear and measurable pathways for hunting R3 in Oklahoma.2
The exact format, agreements, organizations involved, and goals of these positions vary widely depending on many factors. Identifying your organization’s needs for staffing is the first step towards efficiently spending resources on shared staffing opportunities.
Other benefits of shared staffing positions include:
- Financial supplementation. NGOs can readily hire people for fixed periods, while states must follow full-time employee laws and regulations. The importance of the flexible “at will” hiring process available to NGOs cannot be overstated. That, along with being able to leverage federal money on a matching basis, is the most significant advantage for cost-shared positions.
- Presenting a unified front. State and NGO partnerships convey shared goals and values. They develop buy-in from multiple stakeholders.
- Grant funding. NGOs may be able to apply for and utilize grant funding for these partnerships, whereas a state may not.
- Expands potential pool of applicants for job positions.
- It broadens the scope of work because R3 efforts can often be more flexible outside of state/tribal agency.
While there are many benefits, you should also know the potential challenges that may come with shared staffing positions:
- The position has many “bosses,” and workplace directives may become confusing.
- Agreeing on work direction between all partners can be challenging.
- Credit for the activities of shared staffers can be unclear, given the mix of branding and voice requirements among organizations.
- Standard operating procedures may be different between organizations and locations.
- How and when the role is funded can become a point of contention unless clear expectations are established.
- The positions often lack long-term benefits (retirement, health insurance, etc.).
- The positions aren’t as stable as governmental employment (subject to budget constraints, mission shifts, and opinion changes).
Remember that communication between organizations and the shared staffer is paramount to a successful relationship. Clear and thorough communication will ensure that your staff members benefit from the best all the partners have to offer.
Clearinghouse Partner Collection of R3 Job Descriptions
This is a partner collection in the R3 Clearinghouse that contains R3-specific job descriptions.
How to Evaluate Partnership Engagement
You should carefully evaluate the outputs and outcomes of every R3 effort you implement, and the chapter on Evaluating Outputs and Outcomes covers how to do that in detail.
Similarly, if you are tasked with managing and evaluating volunteers as part of your partner programs, the chapter on Volunteer and Mentor Management covers how to do that as well.
This section is about evaluating the relationship between your organization and a partner organization. Building and maintaining partnerships is time- and resource-intensive. Each new relationship adds a suite of time and attention needs, challenges, coordination, and management. This section describes some ways you could monitor an R3 partnership to ensure that your organization does not become overwhelmed with inefficient or poorly managed relationships that drain R3 staff time and effort.
In most cases, relationships aren’t nearly as easy to evaluate as marketing efforts or programs. It’s often more of an art and less of a science. Here are a few “metrics” you could use to measure your organization’s partners and partnerships. These evaluations are likely best done by someone in leadership or at a regular meeting than with traditional tools like surveys or dashboards.
ROI
You teamed up with the organization because you didn’t have the knowledge, perspective, or bandwidth to take on a given R3 effort, objective, or audience alone. But suppose the effort required to manage the partnership is more than the results you see from it. In that case, you might want to reconsider the partnership (start by trying to improve the partnership rather than ending the relationship). As with any evaluation, the key is to have clear objectives for what you are trying to accomplish so it’s easier to communicate with partners about what is and isn’t working.
Communications
How often do you hear from the partner? Not a mass email or other impersonal connection, but an honest, one-on-one communication? How often do they hear from you? Have you invited them to state R3 summits, allowed time for them to provide updates and insights during the meetings, or asked for input on the agenda?
Values
Do the partner’s values align with your organization’s values? And do both of your values align with the programs you are working on together? How could you make them align better?
Dependability
Can you count on the partner to do what they said they would, how and when they said they would? Can they count on you to do the same? Dependability is central to a good partnership. If you don’t own, pay, or otherwise control a partner, you probably don’t have any leverage to make them do what you have agreed to, and vice-versa. Follow through on your commitments and watch for your partners to do the same. Communicate with them early and often if you see deadlines slipping.
Do YOU show enough appreciation for THEM?
Partnerships are, first and foremost, relationships. How long will anyone help you if you never thank them? Nothing costs less and is valued more than showing your appreciation. When was the last time you thanked a partner organization publicly? How about the individuals that make up that organization?
Are they happy with you?
Remember, a relationship is a two-way street. Both partners need to be satisfied for the partnership to remain strong. You might ask them a few questions.
The answers could be telling:
- How are we doing?
- Is our partnership helping you meet your organization’s objectives?
- How could we do better?
- Are there other ways our organization could help your organization that we have never explored?
- Are there other ways your organization would like to help our organization that we have never explored?
R3 Specific Evaluation & Social Science Training and Resources for the Modern R3 Practitioner
Evaluation Training Resources designed specifically for the R3 Practitioner.
- Wildlife Management Institute (20??) Wildlife Management Institute’s Pocket Guide to Relevancy. [↩]
- National Wild Turkey Federation. 2019. Hunting Recruitment, Retention and Reactivation Coordinator – Oklahoma. NWTF. https://find.nationalr3community.org/collections/view/23BCE69A-0BA4-4D36-92D72242FC9831FE/?mediaId=3B819BC9-55FD-4AA2-98E3EE120C4C03E6 [↩]
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R3 PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE