Table 2.

Realisations and learnings from outreach with immigrant service provider organisations (ISPOs)

Realisation	Learnings
Immigrant service provider organisations
ISPOs appreciate the importance of research	Through our engagements, we observed the desire of ISPOs to be part of research activities that aligned with their mandates. We also observed that a number of larger ISPOs have been hiring research-trained personnel to develop operational portfolios. ISPOs have also used hybrid funding opportunities to support social enterprise and innovation.
There is a lack of understanding of working styles and deliverables between academics and ISPOs	ISPOs are required to work in a fast-paced environment, whereas academics tend to work at a relatively slower pace to maintain the methodological rigour of valid knowledge creation; this difference is also driven, to some extent, by differences in the deliverables expected from these two groups. ISPOs need to execute programmes to serve the people in need, whereas academics need to deliver on teaching, training and publishing.
ISPOs are overburdened by requests to collaborate	ISPOs are consistently approached to collaborate on academically generated research projects. ISPOs respond to those requests based on topic alignment and their relationship with the academics. There is little clarity on how they decide on collaboration requests; it seems to be based on personal leadership decisions made spontaneously based on the factors predominant at a given moment.
Academics fail to maintain post-project follow-up	A common complaint from ISPOs pertained to the general lack of commitment from academics to follow-up with ISPOs or involve them in dissemination activities. The parachute in and out approach of data collection should be avoided.