Ohio Air Quality Development Authority

The Ohio Air Quality Development Authority (OAQDA), which marked its 50th anniversary in 2021, is a dedicated partner to Ohio businesses and provides opportunities that lead to new investments and jobs in Ohio. Over the past five decades, OAQDA has worked with companies of all sizes to help finance their clean air projects and, more recently, began supporting the business community’s goals centered around sustainability.

Inspire worked collaboratively with OAQDA in 2022 to develop a visual annual report that highlights not only the achievements of the previous year, but also looks at the overall impact of the agency for this special anniversary edition.

The objectives for the report were to create a visual brochure highlighting the impact of OAQDA’s financial assistance programs as they strive to meet business where they are, as well as helping to increase visibility and raise overall awareness for the agency among key stakeholders.

To kick off the planning, Inspire held a brainstorming session with the OAQDA team in January 2022 to begin identifying the theme for this year’s annual report along with potential titles and formatting ideas. Inspire helped identify individual case studies from OAQDA’s signature programs to highlight and suggested developing them to read more like news articles. Inspire also encouraged engaging a photographer to ensure a visual and consistent look to the report.

Inspire began developing an outline for the report which included a joint introductory message from the director and her board chair, a map of all active projects, a 2021 overview, individual program descriptions and case studies, a solar investments overview, tips for lenders interested in working with OAQDA and a look ahead.

Following the approval of the outline, Inspire began developing content and working with the inhouse graphic designer on the layout. Inspire also developed the memo letter that accompanied the report to share with legislators.

Inspire worked to ensure there were multiple touch points to reach OAQDA’s key audiences. Inspire provided suggestions to OAQDA to pull out the case studies as individual client successes to be more easily viewed on the website. Additionally, individual infographics were developed that were shared with OAQDA’s audience on social media. The full report was shared in the April 2022 newsletter to stakeholders.