Forest loss and land use changes associated with agricultural expansion, urban development and bioenergy production are key concerns for many governments and forest-dependent communities around the world. Several strategies exist to address forest loss, including market-based mechanisms that promote good forest governance such as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation program that includes enhancements in biodiversity and livelihoods (REDD+) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. Many positive outcomes result from forest governance programs like REDD+ and FSC, including payments, increased stakeholder participation, and dissemination of knowledge among forest dependent communities. However, the distribution of and satisfaction with these outcomes is highly contextualized and variable at the community level. The objective of this paper is to analyze and understand the ways in which REDD+ and FSC program design and implementation impact the distribution of, and satisfaction with, program benefits at the community level. Specifically, this paper analyzes three study sites in Southeastern Tanzania implementing these programs. Our study finds that forest conservation programs have the opportunity to either exacerbate or ameliorate underlying disparity caused by spatial asymmetry in rural communities in Southeastern Tanzania. Different benefit-sharing and implementation mechanisms are shown to exhibit varying levels of success in overcoming baseline inequalities, and appear to be more important in determining community level benefits, participation, and knowledge sharing than inherent programmatic differences between REDD+ and FSC.