Building collaborative youth development research-practice partnerships through Cooperative Extension

Amid much interest in building research partnerships that connect campuses and communities, researchers and practitioners alike struggle to find partners and form successful collaborations. Researchers who study youth development often have goals that are well-aligned with those of communities and youth-serving practitioners, yet practical advice on how to capitalize on this alignment is lacking. In this article, researchers and practitioners reflect on their partnership experiences and offer specific recommendations for establishing research collaborations that extend over time. To do so, we highlight an underutilized conduit to form partnerships, the U.S. Cooperative Extension network. We use a partnership initiative with Extension's 4-H Youth Development Program as a case study to discuss how to find partners, leverage shared purpose, and navigate common partnership challenges. •Cooperative Extension presents opportunities to build research-practice partnerships.•Youth development researchers and practitioners can benefit from such partnerships.•We describe the design of a partnership-building intermediary organization, PRYDE.•Experiences in PRYDE offer a case study of partnership challenges and solutions.•Successful partnerships incorporate practitioner insights early and extend over time.