Yet, partnerships can present significant challenges, often requiring a great deal of effort to build and sustain.  Even with a growing encouragement of partnerships, the BLM faces administrative challenges when formalizing and sustaining a partnership. These challenges comes from the original mission, as well as influence from legislative bodies, user groups, and the public.  To help the SRM membership understand the structure and function of the BLM partnerships, we will explore the following legal and administrative challenges:  donation policy guidelines, grants.gov, cooperative agreements, and other financial assistance tools used by the BLM to support partnerships.  We will also discuss technical assistance tools developed to help overcome these challenges: the WestCAN Mentoring Program, partnership training efforts, and the Department of Interior Partners and Cooperation Team that was established to overcome internal agency barriers impacting our work with partners.