This call for action addresses the high-level benefits of adopting a university-wide policy regarding research data management. It identifies the various university stakeholders and suggests that the library initiate a conversation among them in order to get buy-in for a proactive, rather than reactive, high-level policy for responsible data planning and management that is supported and sustainable. The intended audience for this call for action is library directors, not because they alone can make this happen, but to encourage them to initiate the conversation. They are invested, because the library may be the recipient of data in need of curation and of requests for guidance, but more importantly, library staff have significant skills and experience to contribute to the discussion. This is an opportunity for the library director to play an entrepreneurial role in furthering the mission of the larger enterprise. Now that universities have a few years experience preparing data management plans required by grant funding agencies, desirable outcomes are beginning to become apparent. Universities in Australia, which have no funder mandates for data management plans, have been proactively creating them simply because it is good practice. Making datasets available can support validation of results and the reproducibility of research. Data can be repurposed in ways not foreseen by the originating researchers, inspiring collaborations and new areas of research. Planning for data management early on will make curation activities much easier throughout the data lifecycle. Efficiencies can be achieved when data curation activities are not treated as one-off occurrences.