Community Partnership Case Study: Beth Am Synagogue

In 2023, Neighborhood Sun began a partnership with Beth Am Synagogue to help spread the word about community solar. Since then, the partnership has come a long way thanks to the community’s passion and dedication to the climate cause.

“Beth Am synagogue couldn’t have asked for a better partner than Neighborhood Sun for our Community Solar Farm project. Neighborhood Sun reps attended our Board meeting, explained procedures, patiently answered questions, developed a custom webpage, supplied us with T-shirts for special events, created a color handout, arranged a solar farm tour, and assisted individual households with their sign-up. We’ve recruited 100 households and earned $10,000 for our general fund. Most importantly, by switching from coal to solar, we are helping to repair the world.”

-David Saunders, Subscriber Since 2021 & Beth Am Community Member

Beth Am has successfully engaged its constituents thanks to top-down participation and targeted efforts to recognize and celebrate successful enrollments. Below, we see the factors that most contributed to Beth Am’s success in advocating for its constituents to participate in community solar. 

Getting support and participation from community leaders

Solar advocates in Beth Am’s community formed a committee to lead the charged within the organization and come up with creative ways to encourage people to subscribe to community solar. 

The committee created a recognition board in the form of a painting (see photo to the right) with the names of subscribers on each sun ray. They have been so successful with over 100 enrollments that they ran out of rays to write names on and will need to start another board.

Most importantly, being creative and having fun

Beth Am’s community solar committee came up with a very fun way to tie in modern technology, community solar, and an important Jewish cultural celebration. For Purim this year, community members dressed up to act out a play that was written by Chat GPT to tell the story of community solar in the voice and tone of the Lorax and other characters, making the audience guess the style of writing.