You know that to fund major research projects it’s essential to be in collaboration with other research centers, companies or institutions. For communicating, too.

Having a relevant partner to help you in your campaign or social media networks will make your results more credible and will make them take some strength. This partner could be an institution, a company, an organization or an eminent person who can work with their reputation to increase yours.

There’s not necessary to have a previous research collaboration, like for instance financing it, to engage in the task of dissemination. This partner can help in spreading their resources, their means, tools, convening power, etc. And you can also make your research more credible if their name and logo is in the communication you do, because their prestige is transmitted.

How to get a partner for the dissemination of results

To have a partner to help you in disseminating your results you must think very well about who do you want to go to and who is the person responsible for making the decision to end up working together. In this case you should look for a partner that is powerful, relevant in his sector and who is used to having these king of relationships (patronage, sponsorship, etc.).

Once you have a long enough list to receive many “noes” and still end up with a partner, you should prepare a document that will serve as support to get them. In this document you should include the following information:

– Who are you: institution behind you, curricular experience of the project leader, what is your area of research, etc.
– What project do you have in hand: research objectives, summary of results, investment it has meant, which other institutions have confidence in the project …
– Contributions: explain what kind of contributions could this partner perform and what other partners and your own institution could perform to see that the effort is shared.
– Considerations: make clear about the benefits they get if they collaborate in terms of image and reputation, specifying how you’ll “compensate” them; for example putting the logo on the back of the press conference in the press release, etc.

Now you pretty much already know how to find a collaborative partner who can help you with the communication of your research. This work is called public relations and institutional relations. If you don’t think you’re able to do it alone, we can help you in RecerCom.

Have you ever thought about this kind of institutional relations just for looking for support to communicate?