Case highlight 3 — Drive Electric Ohio and Drive Electric USA
Program innovation and national replication
Drive Electric Ohio was a statewide program built around several integrated pillars: a broad EV stakeholder task force, consumer education delivered through a network of semi-autonomous locally-based EV groups across Ohio, utility and regulator engagement, policymaker education, car dealer outreach, and technical assistance to fleets. It wasn’t a single initiative so much as a coordinated ecosystem, bringing together the full range of actors needed to make electric vehicle adoption practical and accessible statewide.
A few years after launching DEO, Clean Fuels Ohio partnered with the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition to build Drive Electric USA. This national program was modeled on DEO’s framework, expanding the network-of-state-groups model to multiple states under a unified structure, with a national project advisory committee of industry stakeholders. Because CFO had reached its federal grant capacity as a prime applicant at the time, we helped ETCF develop and submit the winning federal application. When the award came through, we created a first-of-its-kind role within the CC&C network — what we called a “super-sub” — taking on significant responsibility for reporting, financial management of other sub-grantees, and program administration, while simultaneously teaching ETCF how to perform those functions themselves. ETCF subsequently stepped into the super-sub role in their own right, building lasting capacity for both their organization and the network as a whole.
Drive Electric Ohio and Drive Electric USA together illustrate something central to how GoForth Partners works: programs designed not just to deliver impact, but to build the organizational and network capacity to sustain and replicate that impact over time.
