Grant supports research to establish an evidence base for community engagement practices that strengthen community agency and build durable social license for clean energy projects.
WASHINGTON, DC—The Giving Green Fund has awarded Good Energy Collective a $200,000 grant to advance research on community engagement practices for nuclear and geothermal energy projects. The award will support GEC’s development of a rigorous, quasi-experimental research program designed to compare engagement approaches across multiple community sites and determine which practices actually build community agency in energy infrastructure decisions, filling a gap in the field where empirically validated best practices do not yet exist.
The award is part of $1.94 million in grants announced by the Giving Green Fund in February 2026 under its Unleashing Clean Energy in the U.S. philanthropic strategy, which focuses on meeting growing U.S. energy demand with clean, reliable, and affordable energy.
The grant builds on more than two years of community engagement fieldwork GEC conducted as part of a Department of Energy initiative on collaboration-based siting for spent nuclear fuel storage. Working in Jackson, Wyoming; Vernon, Vermont; and Cameron, Texas, GEC’s research team identified patterns in how communities negotiate complex infrastructure proposals and what communities need in order to exercise genuine agency in infrastructure decisions. The new program will test those findings across a wider range of communities and projects.
GEC’s research team will use quasi-experimental methods and structured community research to measure how well different engagement practices work across key indicators such as breadth of participation, community influence on decision-making, and effectiveness of issue resolution. The goal is to validate which community engagement practices reliably produce their intended outcomes, understand how those practices build community agency, and determine whether their effects persist. This evidence does not currently exist, leaving practitioners unable to say with confidence which approaches work, under what conditions, or why.
This research will also inform GEC’s work on federal permitting reform, helping to ensure that clean energy projects advance more quickly, with stronger community involvement and more durable support.
“This grant reflects growing recognition that the success of clean energy deployment depends on how well we engage the communities that host these projects,” said Erik Funkhouser, Executive Director of Good Energy Collective. “Our work is building the evidence base that policymakers, regulators, and developers need to work with communities in ways that genuinely earn community trust.”
In its grantee spotlight, Giving Green notes that GEC fills “a unique niche by enabling and accelerating the deployment of advanced nuclear reactors” through its community engagement work. Giving Green also highlights how GEC has expanded its collaboration-based siting work into a broader social science program that is shaping both policy and practice.
Good Energy Collective holds a 4-star Charity Navigator rating and has been recognized by Giving Green as a grantee of the Giving Green Fund in both its 2024 and 2026 grant cycles.
For more information about the Giving Green Fund’s February 2026 grants, visit Giving Green’s announcement.
