Collaborations are increasingly common between support agencies, such as national or international research organisations, and dedicated extension agencies. Taking the CONSERFORH project in Honduras as a case study, this paper explored the features associated with successful links and highlighted the key lessons to developing effective, adaptive, participatory and sustainable collaborations between support and extension agencies. Collaborators are advised to assess potential partnerships systematically, to formalise the collaboration in a memorandum of understanding and a set of action plans, to hold regular structured meetings among specially trained staff members, and to make active efforts to integrate project beneficiaries in the evaluation and development of the collaboration.