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Partnership Design:Build · Team Guides

The newsletter that builds your partnerships.

A Team Guide is more than a newsletter. It's a whole collection: interactive tools, newsletter issues, handouts, and slide decks, with videos on the way, packaged so your team gets to the good part faster. The Partnership Design:Build newsletter is one element of each guide, and it's how they arrive.

Broader Impact Story Stacks, a complete guide with all eight of its tools, is free with your subscription, along with five premium posts a month. It is the guide on naming the impact you are already making and telling the story of it so a partner, a reviewer or a dean can see exactly where they fit. The other seven guides are free to subscribers too.

Get Broader Impact Story Stacks free →

How it works

Start free. Go as deep as you want.

Subscribe to the newsletter

Partnership Design:Build lands once a month, with field notes on designing and building the science:society interface.

Get Broader Impact Story Stacks, free

One complete Team Guide and its eight tools, free with your subscription. Read it, run the interactives, and see how STEMsaic works.

Join a Lab, no prerequisite

Any of the four Labs is open to you now. A seat adds a private channel where your questions come back as recorded answers, and a facilitation walkthrough for running each guide with your team.

In Every STEMsaic Team Guide

Reading is the smallest part of it.

Newsletter issues

Colleague-over-coffee writing with frameworks and examples. Read in 10 minutes, apply the same day.

HTML interactives

Decision trees, builders, games, and scenario tools, right in your browser, no downloads. 68+ across the guides.

Slide decks

Ready-to-use presentations for 60-90 minute team sessions, with facilitation notes so anyone can lead.

PDF worksheets

Fillable templates, planning documents, and protocols. Print them, share them, use them in meetings.

Video walkthroughs

Short demos of each interactive and an overview for each guide. Watch, then try it yourself.

A growing community

A network of STEM professionals working the same challenges. Share what works, ask what doesn't.

Eight Team Guides · 68+ tools

The STEMsaic Team Guides

There's a natural progression from identity to legacy, but each guide stands alone. Pick the one that matches where you are right now.

Most tools are accessed with a free or paid community subscription. Just need your email to subscribe for free to the whole Broader Impact Story Stacks set.

Guide 01 Free

8 issues · 8 tools

Broader Impact Story Stacks

From Impact Identity to Impact Legacy

Know who you are before you partner. Build your Impact Identity and learn to tell the story of your work so others see exactly where they fit.

Inside: Impact Identity Profile Builder, name the impact you are already making · Transformation and Character Pairing, say what you do and who it is for in two cards · Story Structure Mapper, build the version you can say out loud in a review panel · Impact Legacy Mapper, see what is left standing when the funding stops.

Name the impact you are already making, free with signup → Get this guide free →

Guide 02

8 issues · 8 tools

Partnership Idea Sparks

What Partnerships Actually Look Like

Move from "we should partner" to "here's exactly how" with 20+ real partnership structures across seven sectors and tools to match your situation.

Inside: Partnership Decision Tree, pick the partnership shape that fits your situation · Partner Finders, find the partners already in your orbit · Industry Modeler, work out what an employer actually gets out of this · Portfolio Builder, see every partnership you hold in one view.

Pick the partnership shape that fits you, free with signup → Get Partnership Idea Sparks free →

Guide 03

12 issues · 12 tools

Participatory Evaluation for Researchers

Evaluation nobody has to be talked into

Design activities that serve participants and generate assessment data at the same time, the dual-purpose principle at the heart of STEMsaic. An expanded guide across six practitioner audiences.

Inside: Translation Architecture Explorer, turn what you already do into evidence a funder can read · Story Capture Wizard, collect participant stories without adding another survey · Collaborative Scoring, get your team to agree on what counts as working · Improvement Cycle Mapper, build the loop that makes next year better than this one.

Turn your activity into evidence, free with signup → Get Participatory Evaluation for Researchers free →

Guide 04

8 issues · 8 tools

Participatory Evaluation for Workforce Programs

Evaluation at the speed of industry

Workforce partnerships move fast. Design evaluation into the work itself so employers get results, students get pathways, and agencies get data, without slowing down.

Inside: Journeyer Portfolios, show what a student can do instead of what they attended · Skill Development Mapper, match your training to the skills employers actually name · Career Pathway Visualizer, draw the route from classroom to job · Credential-Competency Mapper, line up credentials with the competencies behind them.

Show what a student can actually do, free with signup → Get Participatory Evaluation for Workforce Programs free →

Guide 05

8 issues · 8 tools

Partnership to Proposal

From first contact to funded implementation

Turn partnership conversations into funded collaborations. Walk the entire timeline through the messy middle where most partnerships stall.

Inside: First Conversation Guide, know what to say in the first meeting with a partner · Asset Mapper, name what each side is really bringing · Expectation Alignment, surface the mismatch before it becomes a problem · Letter of Support Builder, get letters that say something a reviewer will notice.

Know what to say in the first meeting, free with signup → Get Partnership to Proposal free →

Guide 06

8 issues · 8 tools

Proposal to Reporting

From submission through year 3+ and beyond

The grant got funded, now the real work begins. Build the rhythms and documentation that keep partnerships alive and make reporting almost write itself.

Inside: Proposal-to-Workplan Translator, turn what you promised into what you do Monday · Story Capture Scheduler, collect the reporting evidence while it is happening · Annual Report Builder, make the report almost write itself · Legacy Documentation, write the capability down so it outlasts the staff who built it.

Work out what to do when a partnership stalls, free with signup → Get Proposal to Reporting free →

Guide 07

8 issues · 8 tools

Layered Partnership Design

From surface collaborations to systems change

Design partnerships at every level, from one-off collaborations to backbone organizations and systems-level networks that hold a region together.

Inside: Partnership Layer Mapper, see which level each collaboration is really operating at · Ecosystem Visualizer, map the whole region instead of only your own partners · Backbone Org Identifier, work out who is actually holding the middle · Layered Partnership Scorecard, check whether the layers connect or just coexist.

See what level your collaborations run at, free with signup → Get Layered Partnership Design free →

Guide 08

8 issues · 8 tools

Workforce Development Pathways

From classroom to career

Architect career pathways that connect education, employers, and credentials into work-integrated learning that lasts, and that regions can sustain.

Inside: Career Pathway Architect, design the route from classroom to career · WIL Design Tool, build work-integrated learning an employer will actually staff · Credential Stacking Mapper, stack credentials so they add up to something · Earn-and-Learn Calculator, see what an earn-and-learn model costs and what it returns.

Design the route from classroom to career, free with signup → Get Workforce Development Pathways free →

For colleges & universities · a STEMsaic service

Custom Professional Support & Course Development.

This one is a STEMsaic service rather than a Team Guide. STEMsaic takes the Team Guide approach and builds it into a professional-support program mapped across a year or more, so the support reaches your faculty and staff inside the meetings, calendars, and systems they already run. It arrives as part of their work, not as one more thing to read.

Build it around the support your teams need most

Grant facilitation Partnership coordination Partnership design Ongoing partnership health checks Participatory evaluation Workforce development Proposal to reporting Impact storytelling

A sample of what your teams work with

Impact Identity Profile Builder

Broader Impact Story Stacks

Partnership Decision Tree

Partnership Idea Sparks

Translation Architecture Explorer

Participatory Evaluation

Career Pathway Architect

Workforce Development Pathways

Real, working tools from the Team Guides. A custom program assembles the pieces that fit your teams, into the systems and calendar you already run.

Integrate with your systems

Built to work with the learning management system, the LMS, and the certification systems your institution already runs, Canvas included, so progress, credentials, and completion live where you track everything else.

Packaged for you to host

Prefer to run it yourselves? I package the full guide platform for your team to host, monitor, and own, with the structure and facilitation built in.

A workflow built around your priorities

Or we design the workflow together, built around the professional support you most want to give your teams, with the series mapped into the meetings and milestones of your year.

It starts with the situation your teams are already carrying. Write it down and send it, and STEMsaic scopes the support around the calendar, the proposals, and the partnerships your campus runs today.

What custom support is built from

Grant development and evaluation: scoped to your solicitation and your deadline.

Partnership analysis: network mapping that shows who is actually in the partnership.

Hosted workshops and celebrations: the events where your campus shows the work.

Send STEMsaic your situation → Free to send, no card, no commitment.

One stuck situation, in writing

When the tool is not the problem, the situation is.

Sometimes you run the interactive, you get an answer, and you still cannot tell what to do on Monday. The partner has gone quiet. Two deans want different things from the same memo. The pathway works on paper and nobody has said yes out loud.

Write that situation down and send it. The form asks which areas your work sits in, gives you room to describe what is actually happening, and asks what deadline you are working against. No product name required, and no card.

Describe the actual thing. The email you have not sent, the org chart that does not work, the reporting question you have been avoiding. A specific situation is what makes a useful answer possible.

STEMsaic reads every one. What comes back depends on the week and on what is already on the bench, so nothing here promises a reply by a certain date, a connection, or a meeting. When the work looks like a fit, you hear about it directly.

Send STEMsaic your situation →

Start with one free issue.

Subscribe to Partnership Design:Build and Broader Impact Story Stacks comes with it, complete, with all eight of its tools. See whether it changes how your next meeting goes. Every issue that lands in your inbox is yours to keep, whether you stay subscribed or not.

Get Broader Impact Story Stacks free →