FAQs about the S.A.M. tool

Why was the S.A.M. tool created?

The S.A.M. Tool was designed in the Fall of 2023 by RMI in response to a need for an alternative to the traditional manual, time-consuming (and often tedious!) options for carrying out stakeholder analysis and mapping — a critical element of stakeholder management. This element is especially important in the context of hundreds of clean energy and infrastructure projects that will conduct community engagement as part of seeking the “social license” to develop and deploy projects in host communities around the U.S. and around the world.

Lack of community buy-in or outright opposition can result in extremely permitting delays or denials that rack up costly overages which can result in project cancelations, derailing the project’s progress towards the critical milestone of reaching F.I.D. (final investment decision).

Getting to F.I.D. is a major milestone in any project’s lifecycle as it signals a greenlight on long-term feasibility, viability, and expected returns from the project’s investors and key decisionmakers.

A nationwide survey of utility-scale solar and wind projects found that one of the main reasons for these delays and denials is the lack of community support and buy-in during the siting and permitting process.

An effective strategy to mitigate this risk is for developers to proactively identify, analyze and engage key stakeholders to inform siting decisions and derisk permitting processes that require community buy-in.

However, to date, the options for effective stakeholder management have been limited.

Key decision makers from developers and investors, to community leaders and policymakers, have all expressed experiencing challenges in efficiently conducting stakeholder analysis and mapping, which is traditionally done by manually updating massive spreadsheets (which can become unwieldy, and may be complicated to update easily across the entire set of stakeholders when relationship(s) change in real-time).

The limited range of commercial stakeholder mapping tools,are not tailored to track, analyze, and map the specific types of stakeholders in clean energy and infrastructure projects (e.g., offtakers, utilities, regulators, low-income and minority communities etc.).

What does the S.A.M. tool do?

The S.A.M. Tool is an innovative, user-friendly, interactive, digital stakeholder analysis and mapping tool.

The concept for S.A.M. was first published in a 2024 RMI report, Delivering Equitable and Meaningful Community Benefits via Clean Hydrogen Hubs, which was launched virtually on February 1,2024.

S.A.M. offers preset options for selecting categories of stakeholders (pre-set as primary, secondary, tertiary, or quaternary types as defined by the author of the tool). The tool allows users to allocate relationship types based on their own research and understanding of the historical and local context underlying stakeholder relationships.

S.A.M. simplifies the process of creating easily digestible, at-a-glance visualizations of complex stakeholder relationships and localized power dynamics for all kinds of projects across sectors, communities, and regions.

Who is the S.A.M. tool designed for?

S.A.M. is designed to help community and labor stakeholders, project developers, policymakers, regulators, NGOs, academics, and others who are actively engaged in advancing or supporting the clean energy transition and have the responsibility of conducting community engagement or leading (or supporting) effective stakeholder management.

The S.A.M. tool is specifically designed to support subjective analysis of local power dynamics and interrelationships between all the varying stakeholders and ecosystem partners that are involved in every project’s landscape. It is very likely that different users within the same project’s landscape will come up with different versions of the final “map” based on their unique perspectives, analysis, and lived experiences of the underlying historical and present-day power dynamics.

What is stakeholder mapping?

Stakeholder mapping is an individual or group activity with a three-step process that involves: (1) identifying all (relevant)* stakeholders in a project’s landscape; (2) researching and analyzing the historical to present-day context of the relative power (or lack thereof) possessed by each stakeholder to understand whether they are “high,” “medium,” or "lower" power in the context of the project (and their ability to influence outcomes); and (3) assessing how each stakeholder relates to other stakeholders in the landscape based on the historical and/or present-day context, whether that engagement is one-way or two-way, frequent or intermittent, and has the characteristics of an alliance or active conflict (i.e., notating the “type of relationship,”).

The end result of any stakeholder mapping exercise is typically a “map,” that allows one to visualize the full landscape of stakeholders (or players) in a project or community’s ecosystem.

*Relevance is a subjective determination. However, for all types of clean energy and infrastructure projects, residents and labor groups that are or may be impacted by the project now or in the future, would be considered relevant stakeholders.

Why is stakeholder analysis and mapping important?

Effective stakeholder management requires inclusive, meaningful, two-way community engagement which in it of itself is an essential element for securing the critical social license for project development and derisking siting and permitting processes.

This necessitates comprehensive stakeholder identification and analysis of interrelationships between all the many key stakeholders unique to the local, place-based context of each project. Thus, a digital tool like S.A.M. is enormously valuable for streamling stakeholder management and derisking a project’s progress to the critical milestone of reaching final investment decision (F.I.D.).

[Learn more about the Justice-40 Initiative and Community Benefit Plans (CBPs).]

How do I use S.A.M.?

For detailed step-by-step instructions (with screenshots), please visit the S.A.M. Tool User Instructions page.

What are the underlying assumptions for the S.A.M. tool?

Assumption 1: Currently, there are 33 pre-set options for types of stakeholders that appear the drop-down menu for the mandatory field of “Choose Stakeholder.”

We recognize that there are many, many types of stakeholders, so if you don’t see a pre-set category in the drop-down list of the 33 pre-set types, please select “Other” to make your own. When selecting the “Other” option, you will also have the ability to assign “high,” “medium,” or “lower,” power to that stakeholder.

Assumption 2: The definitions for the (fixed) "type” (primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary) linked to each category of stakeholders (e.g., community-based organizations, labor unions, offtakers, regulators) are summarized at the bottom of the tool’s interface, and also detailed in the “S.A.M. Tool User Instructions,” and “FAQs about the S.A.M. Tool.”

The designation of a particular stakeholder as primary, secondary, tertiary, or quaternary was a subjective determination based on the most common and recurring scenarios in clean energy and infrastructure project landscapes.

Definitions explaining each type, and the most common types of stakeholders under each type, are available at the bottom of the interface, as well as in the User Instructions and FAQs pages.

What are the current limitations of the S.A.M. tool?

Users of the v-1 of the S.A.M. tool would have to save and download a PDF of the end result (i.e., the end visualization of stakeholders’ analysis and mapping) as the current version does not offer users the ability to save individual stakeholder analysis or maps.

[Note: we are working on the ability to create user-accounts to enable saving and editing mapping-in-progress.]

What were important findings and learnings from the beta testing period (August to December 2024)?

Please visit: S.A.M. Tool: Learnings from the Beta Launch of RMI’s Stakeholder Analysis and Mapping Tool

Who do I contact with questions or feedback about S.A.M.?

RMI will continue to update new features and capabilities for the S.A.M. tool as they are developed. Please contact Hadia Sheerazi, Manager (hadia.sheerazi@rmi.org), to express interest in collaborating on S.A.M. Tool 2.0, request troubleshooting help, or share feedback about your experience of using the S.A.M. tool (beta).