This project will provide state fish and wildlife agencies (SFWAs) with a reliable, replicable, and field-tested methodology for initiating new partnerships that increase their capacity to effectively deliver hunting, angling, and shooting sports recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3) efforts. The need for effective methods of finding and partnering with new, R3-vested groups and organizations has only increased in relevance within the professional R3 community in recent years as numerous research efforts and R3 committee reports have documented the failure points of existing partnership models. These shortcomings have provided new insights into how and why SFWAs struggle to secure and maintain the partner relationships they rely on to deliver significant portions of R3 strategies and objectives. As noted by multiple research efforts led by the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) and partner SFWAs, the most successful SFWA partnership-building efforts have been those that, whether by design or not, identified and empowered at least one existing staff member to play key roles in connecting agencies with new partner groups. These staff members bring crucial skills, insights, and enthusiasm to the partnership-building process; in addition, they also have pre-existing connections, either with the specific new partner group or with the group type (e.g., with values or perspectives that differ from those that predominate in the agency). Based on these observed patterns, WMI has developed a provisional partnership-building model that will, over the course of this project, be subjected to real-world experimental testing. In this intensive applied research effort, WMI and DJ Case & Associates (DJ Case) will collaborate with at least one agency from each of the four SFWA regional associations in designing, implementing, and evaluating agency-specific strategies focused on establishing, in each state, at least one new partnership that can effectively contribute to R3 outcomes. The team will use the results of rigorous evaluation methodology to refine the partnership-building model, then synthesize and package tactical recommendations for use by R3 staff and practitioners. Anticipated project outcomes include enhanced staff capacity for building lasting R3 partnerships across a range of values and perspectives; increased confidence of SFWA leadership that their agency has the tools it needs to build effective R3 partnerships; an increase in hunters, anglers, and shooting sports participants with a wider range of values and perspectives; new agency relationships with active partners willing to engage in R3 and other conservation-supportive behaviors; increased agency credibility in—and increased future support for agency-recommended policy and practice measures from—broader segments of the public with broader values and perspectives. Project deliverables will include tested tactical recommendations presented as a practical, accessible Partner Engagement Manual that can be used by staff at any level within an agency, descriptions of processes used during the project, links to resources used during the project, and an evaluation of project outputs and outcomes. Additional deliverables will include durable R3-focused partnerships for the four or more participating SFWAs, and real-world validation of the project partnership model for all SFWAs in need of a reliable methodology for developing new partnerships.