Community Benefits Snapshots

These snapshots examine development projects that incorporated different types of project agreements, such as community benefits agreements and good neighbor agreements, as well as projects which did not sign such an agreement, but still incorporated community engagement and delivered community benefits. The snapshots complement the WRI and Data for Progress' Database of Community Benefits Frameworks Across the US and are meant to provide in-depth analysis of how communities and developers came to negotiate a project agreement, what community engagement processes looked like, what kinds of benefits communities won, how project agreements were monitored and enforced, and more. Semi-structured interviews with a few project developers, community organizations and other stakeholders, as well as a review of academic papers, grey literature and other sources on each project, helped inform each snapshot. 

These snapshots aim to help key stakeholders, including community-based organizations, developers, and public officials, as they seek to negotiate different types of project agreements, carry out community engagement and secure localized benefits from development projects. By closely examining the strengths and weaknesses of past agreements, these snapshots are meant to help stakeholders learn and build stronger agreements and provide best practices for future engagement. 

WRI has collaborated with Great Plains Institute on the development of transmission-focused snapshots in this series. WRI has collaborated with Data for Progress on the development of other snapshots in this series.

Over the next year, we will continue to add snapshots to this page. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out: uscommunitybenefits@wri.org

_{Cover image by Dennis Schroeder / NREL}