When institutions are preoccupied with the external support needed to launch the initiative, they default to internal processes for research management. At the launch, reliance on existing processes feels reasonable because, although the stakes are high, the research itself is viewed as a longer, more expanded scope of a regular project. In the beginning, leaders view these initiatives as just more expensive versions of what the organization already does—not initiatives that risk reputational exposure, field positioning, or the institution’s financial well-being. Misaligned findings heighten each of these risks.

Where Process Breaks Down
Internal research management processes were built for execution. They were not built for the decisions that precede it. Process cannot govern an undefined strategy for the initiative—why the initiative exists, why the institution must launch it now, and how the initiative will advance the institution. Process cannot govern decisions about which data points are important, the language used to report them, and how to communicate politically sensitive findings.

When it’s time to analyze the data, the research manager is given a strategic decision on what to report without the authority or a strategic framework. When many external stakeholders are involved in the initiative—funders, practitioners, and other research organizations—they exert varying levels of influence on what the research should report. Funders need to see how the research offers a return on their investment by advancing their own institution’s goals. Practitioners need recommendations to apply in their voter outreach plans. And other research organizations want to see how the initiative advances learning and unearths opportunities for future research. The research manager then triages between stakeholders and works backwards to create an interpretive framework under the tight timelines of an election cycle. When the research manager cannot resolve competing stakeholder demands, a governance gap is confused as a skills gap. And the institution sources external support to resolve a problem that governance would have addressed.

When governance is absent, leadership starts executing on the research, analyzing the data, and deciding what to report. Leadership and the research team iterate on interpretative decisions that should have been established before launching the initiative. Leadership and the research team operate without a defined strategic framework. The institution risks failing to deliver on its commitments and missing a narrow window to influence stakeholders’ decisions in a looming election cycle.

Research Governance vs. Research Management
Research governance is not research management. Research management executes on strategy, including applying the interpretive framework to the data. Research governance establishes the strategy of the initiative, decision rules, accountability, and an interpretive framework for data analysis. Research governance is a leadership function that must be established before execution.

The structural condition behind that blame is a governance gap: a lack of accountability structures at the executive level. In major civic engagement initiatives involving high costs, risks, and numerous external stakeholders, research leadership is often scoped operationally as project management, residing in the middle of the organization instead of at the top.

Who absorbs the cost?
Without a defensible rationale before execution, the purpose of the initiative is unclear to funders, partners, and even internal staff. As a result, funders and partners demand different outputs from what was planned. The research director then spends hours re-litigating the scope of the initiative. And internal staff struggle to communicate the value of the research to community practitioners—often the communities whose data was used for the research.

When this happens, accountability that belongs to leadership is offloaded to lower-level staff. In progressive civic engagement organizations, these people are often members of marginalized communities. And the executive who championed the research abdicates power to influential stakeholders while distancing themselves from frontline accountability.

When governance failures accumulate across the field, organizations become more risk-averse to undertaking large, multi-stakeholder research initiatives. This risk aversion forecloses research breakthroughs for the communities that need these insights the most.

The case for research governance architecture
Research governance architecture is the structure that establishes executive-level accountability before execution begins. When conflicts over scope, purpose, and stakeholder demands emerge, the governance architecture is the single source of truth to reference. Decision rules are built-in to help reconcile competing priorities as the needs of advocacy and civic engagement groups shift.

That single source of truth prevents downstream extraction. The purpose of the initiative is clear to funders and partners supporting the research, as well as internal staff. Stakeholders understand the boundaries of scope requests. And the interests of the communities most affected by the research are factored into decision-making.

Governance architecture keeps accountability at the top
Major civic engagement research initiatives are too big to fail. Establishing governance before execution prevents failures and extraction from the very communities such initiatives often hope to serve. Governance protects internal staff from absorbing the accountability that belongs to leadership. Research leadership is a governance function that exists at the executive level.