During the fall, I served as the lead client researcher for the Digital Legacy Clinic, a startup that focuses on providing support for end of life digital planning and post-mortem platform support. Our goal was to build partnerships with local organizations such as hospices, retirement homes, and death doulas who could refer clients to us. Because partnering with outside institutions was new for our clinic, I needed to build a process from the ground up that helped us understand each type of organization, what they were capable of taking on, and where our services might naturally support their existing work.

Once the research felt clear, I compiled a list of twenty potential partners: ten retirement homes, five hospices, and five death doulas. From there, I created flexible email templates tailored to each group. The goal was not to standardize our communication but to reduce the initial friction so that every outreach message was consistent in tone while still leaving plenty of room to personalize it based on the organization’s mission, values, and community.

Our team decided early on that we did not want these conversations to feel like sales pitches. Instead, we approached each outreach as an informational conversation and an opportunity to understand what these institutions were already doing, where they felt they had gaps, and how our clinic might be able to support them without adding any unnecessary strain.

As we moved further into outreach, we experimented with different communication methods: in person visits, emailing, and calling. Throughout this process, we took detailed notes on what worked, what did not, and why. Surprisingly, we found that in person visits, even when they were cold calls, worked far better than we expected. Staff responded well to the fact that we were genuinely trying to learn about their work rather than simply asking them to send clients our way. That intention carried through in our conversations and helped us begin these relationships on the right foot.

One of the biggest challenges was the real possibility that we might not secure any partnerships at all. We did not want to assume that we were entitled to these relationships, so we focused heavily on building a sustainable process rather than centering the project around a specific outcome. That way, even if we failed to acquire partnerships, future clinic members would have clear documentation on what approaches had been tried and where the sticking points were.

Another challenge came later when we began thinking about sustainability. Many of us would not be continuing with the clinic next semester, and these relationships were still new and somewhat fragile. To prevent the partnerships from collapsing as soon as we left, we put the organizations in direct contact with the clinic’s director and drafted email templates that would help new members maintain communication without having to start from scratch. We also wrote detailed documentation on each organization including how they preferred to communicate, what they valued most, what concerns they raised, and what stage of partnership we had reached with them. This allowed next semester’s team to inherit a clear roadmap rather than a list of disconnected leads.

Beyond the partnerships themselves, the most significant outcome was the foundation we created for the clinic. We now have a researched understanding of the local ecosystem of end of life organizations and a structured outreach process that future teams can use and adapt. We documented communication strategies, common concerns, and the reasons certain outreach methods worked better than others. As a result, even organizations that did not formally partner with us still left the conversation with a stronger awareness of the clinic’s purpose and might end up referring clients to us informally over time.

Working on this project taught me how important it is to lead with curiosity rather than persuasion when building partnerships. The most productive conversations happened when I focused on understanding the institution first, including its pressures, boundaries, and staff capacity, and then explored how our clinic might be able to help. Approaching the work in this way made the conversations feel more collaborative and less like we were trying to convince anyone of anything.

Coordination across teams was also essential. Translating my research into something that matched our client communications workflow required regular communication and a willingness to revise our strategy as we learned more. This experience reinforced how relationship building is almost always a slow process, and that careful documentation and continuity planning matter just as much as the initial outreach.