Community colleges, who are dependent on state and federal funding directly and through need-based student grants, have limited power in higher education. Similarly, public universities continue to lose decision-making authority as the neo-liberal philosophy permeates higher education broadly. This is an opportune time for public community colleges and universities to enhance inter-institutional partnerships. To this end, we, a team of community college employees and university-based researchers, conducted anti-oppressive, grant funded research collaboratively. In this article, we detail the five key elements to successful anti-oppressive community college and university research including transparency, efficiency, respect, sharing resources, and trust. We argue that community colleges and their constituents should not be relegated to passive role of subject in research. Rather they should be valued as co-creators of knowledge to enhance research findings and build coalitions across public institutions of higher education.