Building on its long history and extensive presence in the golf industry, during the mid-2000s nonprofit Audubon International saw a market need to influence at the community level, whether via public sector with small and mid-size towns and cities or private sector with mixed-use developments such as residential golf communities and four-season ski resort destinations. As founding manager of the organization's Sustainable Communities Program, IPA Founder Peter Bronski led development of the program's metrics-based certification standards (including benchmarking against best practice examples), literally wrote the (guide)book for the program, established ongoing member communications, spoke as a subject matter experts at industry conferences such as the American Planning Association, and ultimately certified its first cohort of "green communities."