Leveraging University Capital and In-Kind Resources into Community Partnerships

Abstract

Public universities with campuses positioned in urban, low-income neighborhoods have an opportunity and civic obligation to engage with the K-12 schools, non-profits, and community-based organizations who directly serve their community. However, the lack of centralization of our community-facing work and the need to institutionalize community engagement leave community-engaged administrators and scholars with limited budgets and without formal strategic plans that prioritize the commitment of university resources. This paper presents five types of capital that can be leveraged from universities as in-kind resources to create educational programing for youth from low-income communities. Findings highlight the planning and implementation of three out-of-school time (OST) educational partnership programs alternatively based within a community center, on campus, and in two public schools. A document review and deductive thematic analysis of archival data capturing the in-kind resources from the university during a six-year period found the following types of capital were leveraged: physical, financial, intellectual, human, and social. Findings reveal granular examples of what, where, and how to leverage in-kind campus resources to launch and sustain educational youth programming and the early renderings of a strategic model for establishing inter-organizational alliances with cross-campus units for mutually beneficial outcomes that come from institutionalizing community engagement.