Drawing on the authors' experiences initiating and directing a community partnership program, this article illustrates how graduate students who lead engagement programs can be caught between forces that pull them toward tactical partnerships unaffiliated with the university and strategic partnerships incorporated into university departments. Conceived as distinct models by philosopher de Certeau (1984) and extended in Mathieu's "Tactics of Hope" (2005), tactics and strategies theorize the impact of integrating with powerful institutions or remaining independent. Using narrative illustrations from their own graduate-founded engagement program, the authors argue that the dichotomous framework of tactics and strategies does not provide the complexity necessary to successfully maneuver within institutional and community dynamics. Instead, tactics and strategies is reconceptualized as the basis of a decision-facilitating heuristic for graduate-student led community initiatives to increase students' agency to navigate institutional forces.