The Governance Charter: a free template for research collaborations

The Governance Charter is a signed working document that records who decides what, what each party contributes, how the parties meet, and what happens when a decision stalls. It's for the people who run a university-industry research project week to week, the principal investigator, and each partner's project lead, and for the executive sponsor of each party who signs above them. It works for a two-party sponsored project and for a consortium of many, with or without a public funder.

What the charter is

The charter is a working agreement about governance. It names the governance body, assigns accountability for the decisions that come up in every research collaboration (scope changes, budget moves, publications, patent disclosures, adding a partner, funder approvals and reports, in-kind contributions, and materials, prototypes, and data transferred for testing), sets the meeting cadence at four levels, and writes down the escalation path before anyone needs it.

Seven sections, ten tables (partner, funding, in-kind and materials registers, the three archetypes, the governance body, a RACI, the cadence and escalation tables, and named roles by party), and a signature block for each party's project lead and executive sponsor.

Three things it's not:

1. It is not the research agreement, the contract still governs money, intellectual property and termination, and the charter says so in its own text: it does not amend the research agreement or any funding agreement, and where they conflict the agreement governs.
2. It is not legal advice. Helikon Labs is not a law firm, and the charter should be read alongside your agreement by the people who negotiated it.
3. And it is not fixed. Because it sits beside the agreement rather than inside it, the parties can amend it at a review meeting without reopening the contract.

Why keep a document the contract doesn't require? Because the contract rarely says who answers a question on a Tuesday. Stoppels and colleagues (Project Management Journal, 2026) describe steering committees as the link between the permanent organizations and the temporary project, staffed by senior managers who represent the stakeholder groups. The charter gives that link names, a cadence, and a clock. When the APLU interviewed people at 22 universities and 16 companies for its report on university-industry partnerships, misaligned goals and incentives was the most frequently mentioned barrier, ahead of limited capacity to pursue and maintain relationships. The charter's purpose statement, the one sentence every signatory signs, exists to catch that misalignment in the first month rather than the eighth.

When to complete it

Complete it at kickoff, within 30 days of signature, with every signatory in the room or on a call. Nothing is contested yet, so the escalation windows and the RACI assignments get agreed as administration rather than negotiated as a dispute.

It can also be used mid-project. If decisions keep getting deferred, if a partner cannot say what the project's status is, or if the quarterly meeting has slipped twice, the collaboration has drifted, and a charter session is the shortest way to clarify expectations for each party. Complete it again at renewal, when the people, the scope, and the budget are all changing.

The seven sections, and the key field in each

1. Parties and scope. The key field is the one-sentence purpose statement every signatory signs. If the PI and each partner's R&D lead can't describe the same purpose, nothing further down the charter will hold. Section 1 also records every funding source and the terms that flow down to all parties, with a named compliance owner, the in-kind contributions each party makes, with their valuation and what happens to them at the end, and the materials, prototypes, and data transferred for testing, with the governing instrument and who approved each transfer.
2. Governance archetype. Steering committee, liaison, or advisory board. The key field is the one you pick and the rationale beside it. Steering committee is the default, the liaison model is the one the NSF IUCRC program uses, where each member firm names one representative to an industry advisory board that elects a chair, reviews the portfolio and votes on project selection. Where three or more organizations are party, a consortium block records the coordinator, voting basis, quorum, decision threshold, reserved matters, and the admission and exit of members, with the defaults of the DESCA model consortium agreement beside each field.
3. RACI for decision authority. For each decision class (statement of work amendments, budget reallocations, publications, patent disclosures and licensing, adding or removing parties, stage-gate decisions, breach and termination, funder approvals and reports, in-kind contributions, materials transfers in and out, jointly generated foreground, publication coordination), the key field is the single accountable party. One label per row.
4. Four-level communication architecture. The key field is the four cadences: operational (weekly to monthly), management (quarterly), strategic (semi-annual) and executive (annual), each with its attendees and its decision authority.
5. Escalation protocol. The key field is the three clocks. Our default: one week to project leads, by the end of week four to the steering committee, by the end of week eight to executive sponsors, with the clocks running from the date the issue is raised in writing. Tailor the windows to your collaboration and write the agreed figures in the table, with the named roles for each party beneath it.
6. Review and amendment. The key field is the review date, set as a recurring calendar event with all signatories, plus the trigger events (executive sponsor change, scope amendment, award amendment or audit finding, a change in any party's in-kind contribution, partner addition or exit) that bring the review forward.
7. Relationship to the agreement and signatures. The charter states that it does not amend the research agreement or any funding agreement, that the agreement governs where they conflict, and that work continues while an issue moves through the escalation path. Then each party's project lead and executive sponsor sign, with a block added for each party. A charter signed only by the people who wrote it binds no one above them.

How to use it with the Helikon platform

On the Helikon platform a project is a shared record that every partner sees. Store the signed charter in the project's files with a contracts tag, log the review date as a milestone with an assignee so milestone reminders reach the right person, and request the quarterly meeting linked to the project, so every participant gets a calendar invite once a time is confirmed. The NDA, IRB and contract dates sit on the same project, with expiry tracking and a link to the evidence document.

Download the template

Enter your name and email and the download starts here: the charter as a Word document and a PDF. We'll send one email to confirm your address. The Word file has fill-in prompts that disappear as you type, and you can add rows, parties, and signature blocks.

The template is free to use and adapt within any organization, and to share with your partner organizations. Please keep the attribution line: Multi-Stakeholder Governance Charter Template, Helikon Labs, helikonlabs.com. It may not be resold.

After you download

Set up the project first. The tutorial at /help/set-up-an-industry-sponsored-project walks through creating your project, inviting each partner's lead, and logging the milestones and the contract dates. You can start free. Then read the pillar guide, How to manage a university-industry research collaboration: the plain guide, which covers the rest of the Steward phase: stage gates, status reporting, and what to do when a milestone slips.

If the agreement itself is still being negotiated, the free Contract Red Flags Kit covers the clauses that slow it down, including grant flow-down, multi-party, in-kind contributions, and materials-transfer terms.

Teams that would rather build the charter together with our help can book our Stewarding the Partnership workshop ($2,500). Every partner attends, and you leave with the charter signed rather than drafted.