A university-wide coalition at Michigan State University called Families and Communities Together (FACT) offers a model for university-community engagement that is responsive to increasing public demand for relevance in higher education through a novel institutional arrangement that drives scholarship, catalyzes multidisciplinary collaboration, and addresses pressing social issues and community needs. In implementing this model, the coalition is working through challenges and issues related to effective community engagement, such as identifying new avenues for linking faculty and communities, supporting diverse outreach methods, addressing faculty rewards and incentives, maintaining long-term institutional commitment, and developing meaningful roles for communities that sustain their involvement. This article examines how the coalition is addressing these issues and offers our lessons learned from putting this engagement vision into practice.