Strategic Plan Examples: 5 Real City and Health System Plans

Most published strategic plan examples show the document. These five also show the review system behind it, which is where ClearPoint data says plans stall: half of all measures have never received a single actual value. The plans are Germantown Forward 2030, Fort Collins' biennial plan, Press Play Fort Lauderdale, Durham's Got It! and Carilion Vision 2025.

Key takeaways

• Across 118 cities and counties on ClearPoint, the median local government holds 80 objectives, about 460 measures and 177 initiatives (September 25, 2026). In the January 10, 2026 snapshot, 48.8% of local government measures had never received an actual value.
• The median plan has 5 objectives and the mean is 7.2 (8,316 plans). There is no evidence in the data that capping a plan at 4-6 objectives improves results.
• Two examples narrowed their top-level measures: Fort Collins went from more than 400 metrics to fewer than 200 primary metrics, and Carilion Clinic narrowed its top-level scorecard from 70 measures to 7 while growing to approximately 300 scorecards.
• Three of the four cities built their plans with resident input: Fort Lauderdale collected 1,562 ideas, and Germantown handed plan development to a 30-member steering committee.
• Ownership changes follow-through: initiatives with a named owner are 2.5× as likely to be marked complete (21.5% vs. 8.7%), yet 77.6% of objectives have no named owner.

The examples come from published ClearPoint case studies; the benchmarks come from anonymized platform data covering 21,000+ strategic plans. If you are still settling on what strategic planning is, start with that guide.

What does every good strategic plan example have in common?

Every plan worth copying connects five layers: a vision with a small set of priorities, objectives under each priority, measures that each have a named owner, initiatives funded to move those measures, and a review cadence that brings the owners together on a fixed schedule. Each example below shows at least one layer done well.

How big is a typical local government strategic plan?

The median local government on ClearPoint holds 80 objectives, about 460 measures and 177 initiatives, counting every plan and scorecard it runs. That benchmark covers 118 cities and counties (87 municipal, 31 county) as of September 25, 2026. 48.8% of those measures have never received an actual value (January 10, 2026 snapshot).

Government plans also run heavier than private-sector ones. Government and public sector organizations (197) carry a median of 67 objectives, 376 measures and 139 initiatives; private and other organizations (206) carry 54.5 objectives, 153.5 measures and 47 initiatives.

Named owners change whether work gets reported and finished. At any given time, only about 1 in 10 objectives carries a current status, and 77.6% of objectives have no named owner. Initiatives with a named owner are 2.5× as likely to be marked complete (21.5% vs. 8.7%), and objectives with a named owner are 2.4× as likely to have received a status in 2025 (15.9% vs. 6.6%). Owners also go quiet: in government organizations, 47.2% of people assigned as owners have no update on record since late 2023.

Is there an ideal number of goals?

No. Across 8,316 plans with at least one objective (348 organizations), the median plan has 5 objectives and the mean is 7.2. Common advice caps plans at four to six. There is no evidence in our data that capping a plan at 4-6 objectives improves results. I would rather see twelve owned objectives than five nobody reports on.

Plan sizes spread widely: 37.2% of plans hold 1-3 objectives, 28.5% hold 4-6, 11.5% hold 7-9, 11.4% hold 10-14 and 11.4% hold 15 or more.

Reviewing your city's plan against these numbers? Download 8 Key Elements Missing in Your City's Strategic Plan, a free guide to the elements a city plan needs, from vision to objectives to leadership.

Germantown, TN: how did a 15-year, resident-built plan help win a Baldrige award?

Germantown Forward 2030 is a 15-year strategic plan whose development the Board of Mayor and Aldermen approved in 2015 and handed to a 30-member steering committee from the community. The city runs it through quarterly department reviews and a public Community Dashboard, and in 2019 it won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Germantown's plan at a glance

• Plan: Germantown Forward 2030
• Horizon: 15 years (development approved in 2015)
• Focus areas: quality-of-life issues, fiscal responsibility, strong public safety, community engagement
• Measures: action plans and measures built on nine key performance indicators
• Review: the City Administrator meets each department director every quarter
• Public reporting: a Community Dashboard powered by ClearPoint

How Germantown built it

In 2010, City Administrator Patrick Lawton returned from a conference set on pursuing excellence through the Baldrige framework. The city adopted a corporate model: citizens became customers, city services became products, and outcomes became the primary focus. For parks, for example, it concentrated on what citizens wanted from them: spaces to form community bonds, exercise and congregate.

The Board then handed plan development to a 30-member steering committee diverse in age, race, gender and neighborhood, with city staff facilitating a year-long process. A town hall with over 200 citizens reviewed the vision, and citizen task forces built action plans and measures based on nine key performance indicators. Community members invested approximately 2,000 hours in the plan.

What Germantown measures

Before ClearPoint, the city relied on Excel and disconnected tools. With one platform, leaders moved from debating data accuracy and formatting to asking "How much did it cost?", "How long did it take?" and "Did it have the impact we wanted?"

How Germantown keeps it alive

Every quarter, the City Administrator reviews key metrics with each department director using "Business Plan" reports. The Community Dashboard shows residents progress on strategic initiatives. After earning top honors from the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence, the city applied nationally in 2019 with a 55-page application. Of 26 applicants, 12 received site visits, and Germantown became one of only four municipalities nationwide ever to receive the award. It is now updating its dashboard for Germantown Forward 2035.

"It is all about storytelling. If you can't explain to your customers, residents or your neighbors how the data affects them, and what it means to their daily life, you will not be able to grab their interest." Stacey Ewell, Assistant to the City Administrator, City of Germantown

What to copy from Germantown

• Write each priority as an outcome for residents, the way Germantown framed parks around spaces to exercise and congregate.
• Hold one quarterly review with every department director, in the same report format each time.

Read the full City of Germantown case study.

Fort Collins, CO: how do you review 7 outcomes without drowning in metrics?

Fort Collins organizes its biennial strategic plan around 7 Outcomes with 38 top-level metrics. The city narrowed more than 400 metrics to fewer than 200 primary ones, then added monthly Strategy MAP meetings of 40 to 50 minutes, alongside its quarterly reviews, that cover every Outcome over the course of each quarter.

Fort Collins' plan at a glance

• Plan: biennial strategic plan
• Priorities: 7 Outcomes, for example "Safe Community" and "Economic Health"
• Objectives: 5 to 9 strategic objectives per Outcome
• Measures: 38 top-level metrics; 3 to 4 metrics linked to each objective
• Initiatives: programs and services linked to the objectives and funded in the budget
• Review: Quarterly Service Area Reviews (QSARs), plus monthly 40 to 50-minute Strategy MAP meetings added alongside them

How Fort Collins built it

Fort Collins started with a pyramid of metrics: the 38 tied to its 7 Outcomes at the top (the metrics on its Community Dashboard), a larger layer supporting budget requests, and foundational operating metrics at the bottom. The first reviews put the executive team and every department head in one room, which proved costly. Reviews moved to quarterly Service Area meetings with the City Manager, Deputy City Manager and Chief Financial Officer, but adding budget metrics pushed the count above 400. Asking department heads for their 3 to 5 most important metrics narrowed meetings to fewer than 200 primary metrics.

What Fort Collins measures

In addition to the QSARs, Budget Director Lawrence Pollack pushed for a more strategic executive review centered on Outcomes. Each Outcome's 5 to 9 objectives are reviewed through their 3 to 4 linked metrics and through the budget-funded programs and services behind them: what is the city delivering with the funding it allocated? It is a working model for linking budget to strategy.

How Fort Collins keeps it alive

In the Strategy MAP (Metrics, Analysis and Performance) meetings, different Outcomes come up each month so all are covered each quarter. Two ClearPoint reports, one for metrics and one for initiatives, go out as pre-reading, so meeting time goes to successes and to action plans for underperforming items. A review calendar sets data-entry deadlines, and department heads can modify or replace metrics during the year. The case study reports that Fort Collins no longer sees initiative statuses slipping as the year goes on.

"Standardization of the material is key, as far as having people be able to read and review all the content in these reports." Lawrence Pollack, Budget Director, City of Fort Collins

What to copy from Fort Collins

• Ask each department head for their 3 to 5 most important metrics before you design any meeting.
• Review by outcome and rotate outcomes so each is covered every quarter.
• Send the same pre-reading format every time so meeting time goes to action plans.

Read the full City of Fort Collins case study.

Fort Lauderdale, FL: how did 1,562 resident ideas become a five-year plan?

Fort Lauderdale's case study dates from about 2013, when the city was building its first-ever strategic plan. It is the most detailed example here of turning a community vision into plan structure: 1,562 resident ideas fed a five-year plan with 12 goals, 38 objectives, 191 initiatives and 142 key performance indicators.

Read it as a record of how the plan was built at that time.

Fort Lauderdale's plan at a glance

• Vision: "Fast Forward Fort Lauderdale," a community vision for 2035, adopted unanimously in April 2013
• Plan: "Press Play Fort Lauderdale," the five-year strategic plan, approved unanimously by the City Commission in September 2013
• Structure: 12 goals, 38 objectives, 191 initiatives, 142 key performance indicators
• Strategic areas: six cross-functional "Cylinders of Excellence"
• Review: monthly FL2STAT meetings for department heads

How Fort Lauderdale built it

After the recession, the city cut its departments from 15 to 9, and City Manager Lee Feldman created the Office of Structural Innovation to oversee strategy. The vision plan, two and a half years in the making, drew on interviews, open houses, telephone town halls and a social website. The city then defined six cross-functional strategic areas, and employee teams drafted objectives and indicators and recommended dropping initiatives that no longer served the strategy. The first five-year plan incorporated 42% of the ideas from the 2035 vision plan.

"Aligning a preliminary strategic plan with developing the vision plan has to be iterative. We update as we go, but we're also being very systematic about it, making sure that community priorities are reflected." Amy Knowles, assistant to the city manager for Structural Innovation, City of Fort Lauderdale

What Fort Lauderdale measures

With little trend data and few baselines, the city blended International City/County Management Association (ICMA) benchmarks with staff-developed indicators. It favored indicators that would drive behavior and mean something for the vision plan, the strategic plan, the budget and departmental scorecards at once.

How Fort Lauderdale keeps it alive

The first management system, a meeting every two months with over 100 staff in the room, produced limited collaboration and frustration. The city restructured around Strategic Initiative Teams intended to report monthly progress. Monthly FL2STAT meetings, based on Baltimore's CitiSTAT model, hold department heads to the plan, and the commission's action plan initiatives are reported from ClearPoint, which removed duplicate reporting to elected officials. In June, the case study reports, the city won the National Civic League's All-America City Diversity and Inclusiveness Award for its visioning outreach.

What to copy from Fort Lauderdale

• Track how many resident ideas you collected and what share made it into the plan, and say so publicly.
• If a meeting format is not working, change it mid-plan, as Fort Lauderdale did with its 100-person meeting.

Read the full City of Fort Lauderdale case study.

Durham, NC: how did a city restart a performance program that stalled?

Durham's first strategic plan, "Durham's Got It!," was approved in April 2011 around five goals and over 500 performance measures. The first rollout stalled when departments went back to Excel for their own tracking. The 2014-2015 reset makes it a useful example: a dedicated performance office, directors who own their measures, and data required in budget requests.

Durham's plan at a glance

• Plan: "Durham's Got It!," approved by the Durham City Council in April 2011
• Goals: 5 (a strong and diverse economy; a safe and secure community; thriving and livable neighborhoods; a well-managed city; stewardship of the city's physical assets)
• Measures: over 500 performance measures across departments
• Cycle: a three-year strategic planning cycle
• Adoption: from two initial users to over 100 trained employees
• Public reporting: public dashboards published through ClearPoint, currently showcasing the Sustainability Plan

How Durham built it

In 2008, new City Manager Thomas Bonfield set out to make Durham an organization that used data to inform decisions. It was the city's first formal strategic planning effort, shaped through visioning sessions, surveys and focus groups. The first implementation struggled. Limited resources for software management affected training and process design, there was no clear ownership of the performance program, and staff were not held accountable for updating measures or told how their data was used. By 2012, most employees had reverted to Excel for department performance tracking, though "the citywide strategic plan continued to be managed successfully in ClearPoint." In the 2014-2015 reset, a cross-sectional team ran an RFP and selected ClearPoint again with a revised approach, and the city created the Office of Performance and Innovation.

What Durham measures

Measures now carry defined methodologies, department directors own their measures, and budget requests include linked performance measures. That link produced concrete decisions: the city avoided unnecessary hiring of 4-5 communication officers annually after data showed a 95% emergency response level already achieved. Metcalfe credits the move from 22 Excel files with over 100 tabs to a single system with eliminating confusion and improving data quality.

If your own plan still lives in a stack of spreadsheets, that is the problem strategic planning software is designed to solve: the plan, its measures, their owners and the reports in one place.

How Durham keeps it alive

Performance Manager Shari Metcalfe and her team of two run a three-year cycle. The citywide plan is created in the first nine months of Year 1, departments execute business and fiscal plans in Years 1 and 2, and Year 3 is a deep evaluation focused on "measures that are missing methodology." City and county both use ClearPoint and have produced six joint initiatives, including a CPR defibrillator training program that won the Alliance for Innovation's 2013 Award for Excellence in Local Government. Durham also received the ICMA Center for Performance Measurement Certificate of Distinction Award (2012) and maintained a triple-A bond rating through economic challenges.

"We wanted to make sure that data was not just being collected but being used to make decisions. We heard from our employees that there was a lot of hard work going into the data collection process, but they had a hard time seeing the results of that effort." Shari Metcalfe, Performance Manager, City of Durham

What to copy from Durham

• Name who owns the performance program itself before you name owners for individual measures.
• Require performance data in budget requests so staff can see their data being used.

Read the full City of Durham case study.

Carilion Clinic: what can a health system's plan teach a city?

Carilion Clinic, a not-for-profit healthcare organization based in Roanoke, Virginia, with approximately 13,000 employees, is the non-government example on this page. Its program began in 2007 with one leadership scorecard of 70 measures. About 13 years in, when the case study was written, the clinic scorecard tracked 7 measures aligned with the Carilion Vision 2025 plan, across approximately 300 scorecards.

Carilion's plan at a glance

• Strategic plan: Carilion Vision 2025
• Scorecards: approximately 300, in four categories (clinic, department, section and provider)
• Measures: 7 on the clinic scorecard, down from 70 on the original leadership scorecard
• Cycle: a seven-month scorecard process each year, with a three-year outlook, targets and roadmaps
• Accountability: 20% of provider compensation tied to performance management

How Carilion built it

Carilion's former CEO had his leadership team study "The Balanced Scorecard" by Drs. David P. Norton and Robert S. Kaplan, still the foundation of its approach. ClearPoint's founders worked with Kaplan and Norton; our Balanced Scorecard example shows the framework in full. Carilion began with a senior leadership scorecard, then added provider scorecards to link compensation to patient-centered care.

What Carilion measures

Scorecards cascade from the system to the individual provider. The clinic scorecard uses metrics such as "time from scheduling to time from service for new patients," department scorecards use "surgical site infection rate," and section scorecards carry patient experience metrics such as "physician kept you informed."

How Carilion keeps it alive

Each year, a seven-month process with department Chairs and Section Chiefs defines and cascades the measures and sets a three-year outlook with targets. ClearPoint distributes reports to 1,000 providers and pulls data through an API, and a "tier payment" system ties 20% of provider compensation to performance.

"Having that refined list of only the most important measures and ensuring they link to your organization's strategy was a big lesson learned for us." Darren Eversole, Director of Finance, Carilion Clinic

What to copy from Carilion

• Cut the top-level scorecard to the few measures that link directly to the strategic plan.
• Attach a real consequence to the measures. Carilion uses compensation; Durham uses budget requests.

Read the full Carilion Clinic case study.

Which other city plan is worth studying?

Coral Springs, Florida, is a strong sixth example for public reporting. The city has been recognized with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Sterling Award. Its strategic plan, developed with community input, is closely linked to the budget, and it publishes a Community Dashboard through ClearPoint for public view.

When I interviewed Nicole Giordano, Performance Management Manager, she named two primary contributors to the city's success with ClearPoint: automation and customization. Read the City of Coral Springs case study, and see how public dashboards work.

How do the five strategic plan examples compare?

The five plans cover very different horizons, from Fort Collins' biennial plan to Germantown's 15-year plan, and very different measure counts, from Carilion's 7-measure clinic scorecard to Durham's over 500 performance measures. What they share is a fixed review rhythm and a named audience for the plan's results. The last column benchmarks them against the median local government on ClearPoint.

How do you use these examples for your own plan?

Use the examples as a checklist. Map your current plan to the five layers, fix the weakest one first, and set the review cadence before you launch. Most lessons above concern what happens after adoption: who owns each measure, how often it is reviewed, and where results go.

1. Pick a horizon and a cycle. Pair a long-range vision with a shorter working plan, as Fort Lauderdale did with its 2035 vision and five-year plan.
2. Build it with the people who will live with it. Residents shaped the plans in Germantown, Fort Lauderdale and Durham.
3. Keep the top level small. Ask each department for its 3 to 5 most important metrics. Use the strategic objective examples, the KPI library and the city KPI benchmarks for candidates.
4. Name an owner for the program and for every measure. Durham's first rollout stalled with no clear owner of the performance program; its reset gave directors responsibility for their measures.
5. Design the review before you launch. Fort Collins developed an internal review calendar with data-entry deadlines and sends standard pre-reading before each meeting.
6. Test whether people can explain it. People need to be able to explain your strategic plan back to you in very simple terms. A really good example of this comes from a STAT meeting I sat in on. I saw that someone from the fire department, who wasn't the fire chief, was presenting. He was third or fourth in command. He explained how the department fit within the strategic plan of the city in very simple terms, demonstrating a strong knowledge of the subject.

Writing the plan from scratch? Follow the strategic planning process first, and start from a strategic plan template or our 8 free strategic planning templates. Once the work shifts to reviews, owners and reports, a strategy execution platform keeps that rhythm in one place.

Frequently asked questions

What is an example of a strategic plan?

Fort Lauderdale's "Press Play Fort Lauderdale" is a clear example. Built in 2013 from a community vision that collected 1,562 resident ideas, the five-year plan set 12 goals, 38 objectives, 191 initiatives and 142 key performance indicators, and incorporated 42% of the vision plan's ideas. Germantown, Fort Collins, Durham and Carilion Clinic show other structures.

What should a local government strategic plan include?

A local government strategic plan should include a long-range vision, a small set of priorities, objectives under each priority, measures with named owners, initiatives tied to the budget, and a review cadence. The strongest city examples add resident input when the plan is built and public reporting once it runs, as with Germantown's and Coral Springs' Community Dashboards.

How many goals should a strategic plan have?

Across 8,316 plans on ClearPoint, the median plan has 5 objectives and the mean is 7.2. Set as many objectives as your owners can report on consistently. Durham's plan has 5 goals, Fort Collins has 7 Outcomes and Fort Lauderdale's plan has 12 goals.

How long should a strategic plan be, and how long should it cover?

The examples show a range. Germantown Forward 2030 is a 15-year plan, Fort Lauderdale set a five-year plan under a 2035 vision, Durham works on a three-year cycle, and Fort Collins runs a biennial plan. Keep the document short enough that staff can explain it simply.

How do you keep a city strategic plan on track?

Give every objective, measure and initiative a named owner, and put reviews on a fixed calendar with standard pre-reading. Fort Collins covers every Outcome each quarter in 40 to 50-minute meetings; Germantown reviews each department quarterly. Objectives with a named owner are 2.4× as likely to have received a status in 2025 (15.9% vs. 6.6%).

Where does this data come from?

Customer examples come from ClearPoint case studies. ClearPoint powers 21,000+ strategic plans for 450+ organizations. Each chart states its own sample and date. Figures come from anonymized, aggregated ClearPoint platform data (element-level snapshot of January 10, 2026; organization counts as of September 25, 2026), excluding demo and internal accounts. ClearPoint never sees the content of customers' plans; we analyze structure and activity only.

Next step

If you are reviewing your city's plan, start with 8 Key Elements Missing in Your City's Strategic Plan, a free guide to the elements a city plan needs.

When you are ready to run the plan in one system, see how ClearPoint's strategic planning software and strategy execution platform support strategic planning for local governments. For the broader discipline, read our guide to strategic planning.

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