This U.S. Department of Energy Focus Series  highlights the BetterBuildings for Michigan program’s community readiness assessment tool.

This paper first details industry best practices for contest administration, including tips for developing an overall contest plan and timeline, product sponsor recruitment, building a dynamic informational website, maximizing customer participation, selecting the winning home, seamless installation management, capturing and documenting project results, conducting a high profile media open house and facilitating customer workshops that educate homeowners and strengthen trade ally relationships. This paper then presents results and key lessons learned from more than 20 contests supported with funds from local community sustainability programs, utility energy efficiency programs, and U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds between 2008 and 2012.

This Focus Series interview discusses the semester-long, employer-assisted partnership between BetterBuildings for Michigan and Grand Valley State University (GVSU). This successful partnership involved an early adopter outreach campaign and served as a model for other program partnerships.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the challenges, strategies and advantages of  operating as a prime contractor.

This report explores the approaches and research needs identified in the Building Retrofit Industry and Market (BRIM) Initiative through in-depth discussion with residential energy upgrade experts including a discussion of Marketing & Outreach and the program/contractor interface.

This peer exchange call summary focused on sales training assistance programs for contractors.

Presentation on how Michigan Saves realigned its incentives to encourage more projects with significant energy savings potential.

This peer exchange call summary focused on how programs are devising plans for creating a contractor revenue stream and potential fee structures.

This case study discusses BetterBuildings for Michigan's targeted outreach campaigns which applied varying incentives and outreach strategies to neighborhoods with a goal to understand which rebates and strategies work best in the target communities.

As part of its "intentional learning" process, Charleston WISE collects information from homeowners that helps the program systematically test assumptions and implement continuous improvement.

This report summarizes the results of five neighborhood sweeps, covering more than 2,000 households in Michigan.