Best Practices for Community Partner Compensation

Develop a flexible infrastructure to deliver timely payments to community partners: • Include fiscal administrators in the development of procedures. • Consider providing cash advances. Embrace equitable power-sharing with community partners. Apply the principles of partnership when developing administrative processes.

What Does Equitable Community Partner Compensation Look Like?

• Shift responsibility from patient/participant to health care/research institutions when possible. 
• Focus expertise and strengths on communities experiencing marginalization. 
• Implement meaningful practices to improve interpersonal and institutional trust. 
• Reflect on and dismantle harmful practices within institutions. 
• Enact concrete strategies to repair and build authentic relationships with community partners. 
• Consider who benefits from the research.

Key Recommendations

• Consider establishing an escrow account with available funds (< $5,000) to mitigate any delays in funding partner  activities.
• Co-create institutional best practices to routinize mutually beneficial procedures for the community and your organization.
• Keep the project moving forward with prompt action while adhering to institutional policies and project timeline.  
• Appoint an ombudsperson to alleviate any administrative burden on community partners.       
  Identify holes in the system with gap analysis.  
• Assess immediately actionable vs long-term solutions.  
• Mitigate financial burden/risk for academic or research institution and community partners.  
• Analyze examples of other institutional processes.  
• Reduce time from invoice to payment.  
• Define strategies to overcome structural barriers.

Immediate Action Steps

• Include community partners in pre- and post-award administrative processes: 
  • Allow for shared decision making from the beginning. 
  • Recognize their goals and interests. 
  • Include them in grant writing. 
  • Provide compensation. 
• Be transparent with partners about approval processes and payment timelines: 
  • Develop a memorandum of understanding. 
  • Be accessible and responsive to partners. 
  • Use clear, plain language. 
• Outline clear procedures for tracking and managing payments: 
  • Ensure all partners have shared understanding. 
  • Track all partners’ expenditures respectfully. 
  • Review paperwork for accuracy prior to submission.
• Appoint a community liaison, also known as an ombudsperson, to alleviate any administrative burden on community partners.
  • Neutral, trusted navigators 
  • Institution > Community Liaison/Ombuds < Community 
  • Community Liaisons/Ombuds can inform critical decisions and serve as a neutral resource to help alleviate the administrative burden for community and academic partners while maintaining the anonymity of the party seeking assistance. 
    • For more information, see What Is an Organizational Ombuds (ombudsassociation.org). 
• Consider establishing an escrow account with available funds (<$5,000) to mitigate any delays in funding partner activities. 
  • Escrow is a financial process used when two parties engage in a transaction that can potentially remove uncertainties about fulfilling their obligations. 
  • Escrow refers to a neutral third party (i.e., Vice Chancellor of Research office) holding assets or funds before the funds are transferred from one party in a transaction to another.
  • The third party holds the funds until both partners have fulfilled their contractual requirements. Community partners can access funds to support their work while administrative processes continue. 
  • Escrow is associated with real estate transactions, but it can apply to any situation in which funds will pass from one party to another. 

Citation: Banton C. How escrow protects parties in financial transactions. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/escrow.asp. Updated February 20, 2024. Accessed March 8, 2024.

Long-Term Action Steps

• Support community-based organizations in building fiscal and administrative knowledge, skills, and infrastructure: 
  • Provide training and education to community members. 
  • Develop community-facing resources such as FAQs and quick reference resource guides to illustrate the payment processes. 
  • Hire community members as part of the research team.
• Develop a flexible infrastructure to deliver timely payments to community partners: 
  • Include fiscal administrators in the development of procedures.
  • Consider providing cash advances.

Embrace equitable power-sharing with community partners.

Apply the principles of partnership when developing administrative processes.

Requests for CEACR services can be made at in research. https://redcap.link/consultrequest