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 millions of dollars of Justice-40 Initiative-covered federal grants that require inclusive and meaningful community engagement, as well as developing and implementing community benefit plans (CBPs) to ensure that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, and other investments flow to disadvantaged communities that have been historically marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.

Key decision makers across stakeholder groups have all spoken to the challenge of efficiently conducting stakeholder analysis and mapping, often done by manually updating massive spreadsheets (which can become unwieldy, and may be complicated to update easily across the entire set of stakeholders when the relationship(s) of one or more stakeholders changes) and/or commercial stakeholder mapping tools, which are not tailored to track, analyze, and map the specific types of stakeholders in clean energy and infrastructure projects (e.g., utilities, regulators, fenceline communities etc.).

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

The S.A.M. Tool is an innovative, user-friendly, interactive, web-based 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.

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 projects in all 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?

Inclusive, meaningful, two-way community engagement is a foundational pre-requisite for achieving success in efforts to negotiate community benefits plans (or host community agreements, project labor agreements, etc.), that ideally lead to binding agreements between communities and project developers.

Effective community engagement in turn necessitates comprehensive stakeholder identification and analysis of interrelationships between all the many key stakeholders unique to the local, place-based context of each project.

Presently, effective tools for conducting stakeholder analysis and mapping are valuable because developers seeking, or have been awarded, hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding covered by the Biden administration’s Justice-40 Initiative are required to carry out inclusive and meaningful community engagement activities, and co-create responsive community benefit plans (CBPs) with communities to ensure that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, and other investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.

[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 organization, labor unions, 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.]

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 the RMI team () to request troubleshoot help, suggest improvements, or share feedback about your experience of using the S.A.M. tool (and thank you in advance for using and helping us improve S.A.M!).

How should I cite/reference S.A.M. Tool in publications, online use etc.?

What is the Justice40 Initiative?

The “Justice40 Initiative,” (or “J40 Initiative”) was established by President Joe Biden in Executive Order 14008 on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad with a goal that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal investments in climate change, clean energy and energy efficiency, clean transit, affordable and sustainable housing, training and workforce development, remediation and reduction of legacy pollution, and the development of critical clean water and wastewater infrastructure flow to disadvantaged communities (DACs). Formal guidance (memo M-21-28) for federal agencies. Since then, the J40 Initiative has been expanded to cover hundreds of additional federally funded programs in over 20 federal agencies.

The new J40 Initiative required community benefit plans from applicants to certain federal grants (along with certain federal loans, credit, guarantees, or direct spending/benefits). The US Dept. of Energy (DOE) requires Community Benefits Plans (CBPs) as part of all Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) and loan applications.

These plans are based on a set of 4 core policy priorities: (1) Engaging communities and labor; (2) Investing in America’s workers through quality jobs; (3) Advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility through recruitment and training; and (4) Implementing Justice40, which directs 40% of the overall benefits of certain Federal investments to flow to disadvantaged communities.

A successful CBP is built on the foundations of conducting inclusive, two-way engagement with communities and labor, which in turn will require comprehensive stakeholder identification, analysis, and mapping of interrelationships between key stakeholders unique to the local, place-based context of each clean energy project.

Learn more about Community Benefit Plans (CBPs) and related FAQs from the US Department of Energy’s website.