LURA led a comprehensive strategic planning process to shape the Oshawa Strategic Plan (OSP) for 2024-2027 in partnership with the City of Oshawa. This process engaged over 6,900 participants through various methods, ensuring the final plan reflects the needs and aspirations of Oshawa’s diverse community. Twenty-nine (29) direct engagement events, including council interviews, staff workshops, and public presentations to advisory committees, were held.

Public outreach was further expanded through high-traffic pop-up events, such as the Oshawa Generals Game, which attracted 5,726 participants, and the Fabulous 4th Fridays seniors’ event, which engaged 153 attendees. Online engagement played a significant role, with 635 participants contributing through a feedback form. The City’s efforts reached 14,000 residents through community events like the Bright & Merry Market and the Santa Claus Parade. Feedback from these engagements highlighted what residents value most about Oshawa, including access to shopping, restaurants, green spaces, waterfront parks, and active transportation options.

LURA was responsible for fully developing the strategic plan, including crafting a new aspirational vision and mission and identifying priorities, goals, and actions. One of the key features of the new strategic plan is an emphasis on developing a performance metrics system that will allow the City to track progress on the plan over time.

LURA guided the creation of a comprehensive strategic plan for the City of Toronto’s Parks, Forestry, and Recreation (PF&R) Division through four focused sessions with department leads. The process began with an in-depth discussion with senior leadership to identify the key environmental forces, drivers and influences shaping PF&R’s service delivery. This first session explored political, economic, environmental, social, and financial factors affecting the department, reflecting on lessons learned over the past two years and opportunities for the future. Internal and external influences were considered to provide a holistic understanding of the landscape.

In the second session, the focus shifts to setting direction as participants collaborate to define the key objectives for PF&R and identify the most significant shared and branch-specific priorities for the years ahead.

LURA hosted two subsequent sessions to ensure the final strategic plan resonated with department leads and was implementable during the planning horizon. LURA worked closely with the City to develop tailored agendas, facilitate discussions, provide supporting materials, and ensure feedback is captured effectively. Through this structured and collaborative approach, the strategic plan aligns with current challenges and future opportunities, creating a roadmap for sustainable and impactful PF&R service delivery.

To inform the development of the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan, from April through June 2023, Northumberland County led a collaborative process to establish a shared vision for the future of Northumberland that Council, staff, and community members sought to cultivate together and to identify core priorities and related actions for the next four years that will set the path to achieving the vision. LURA was retained to lead the internal and external community engagement, including meeting facilitation (virtually and in-person), survey question development, discussion guide development, analysis, and reporting.

Through this process, over 910 people were directly engaged, and a conservative estimate of 50,000 people were reached through marketing and communications efforts. Engagement activities included a County Council and senior leadership team workshop, County Roadmap Employee Working Group meetings, working-group-led staff discussions, a digital ideas board activity, community conversation pop-ups, and roundtable sessions with stakeholder groups, including youth and community development industries.

The Township of Scugog retained LURA twice to develop and refresh strategic plans and priorities. First, in 2019 and then in 2022, the views and perspectives of new Councillors and residents were considered. LURA collaborated with Council and staff to refine a vision and mission, define and confirm core values, establish objectives, analyze current conditions, identify themes, develop goals and actions, identify priorities and define implementation frameworks that include tangible performance measures.

Engagement activities included a community survey to gather resident insights, a public information session to present the project and seek feedback on strategic directions, and a two-day retreat/workshop with Council and senior management to present the project process and key considerations from background materials and public feedback, check in on vision, mission and values and discuss/confirm strategic directions and the path forward. The outcome of the process was a refreshed strategic plan, vision, mission, values, and strategic directions. 

In 2013, St. Lawrence College (SLC) retained LURA to help develop a new strategic plan. Our Future: St. Lawrence College’s 2014 – 2019 Strategic Plan was built on the accomplishments of the College’s previous strategic plan and outlined SLC’s aspirations for the next five years. LURA worked with the College Executive Team to design and implement a strategic planning process that integrated an extensive campus and stakeholder engagement program. The engagement program was designed to draw on the wisdom of the entire college community through multiple conversations about the College’s future with the Board of Governors, Community Council, College Leadership Team, College Foundation, faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The collaborative strategic planning process was implemented over nine months and engaged over 500 individuals.

In 2018, LURA was retained again to work with the College Leadership Team to craft an updated strategic plan to identify new strategic directions and multi-year objectives that support SLC’s vision and mission. Over 1,300 individuals provided input through an extensive engagement process to help shape the plan which was finalized and approved by the College in April 2019.

Both 5-year strategic planning processes engaged hundreds of participants (including over 1,300 in the most recent strategic plan) through the most extensive engagement programs in the College’s history. Multiple opportunities for participation and feedback enabled the entire College community to shape SLC’s new vision, mission, values, and strategic directions.

The engagement program was designed to draw on the wisdom of the entire SLC community through multiple conversations about the College’s future with the following groups:

Board of Governors
Community Council
College Foundation
Student Government
Faculty & Staff
Students, alumni, retirees and business and community partners
Engagement activities inspired participation and feedback through face-to-face and web-based interactive tools such as world cafés, discussion guides, and an online survey. In addition to providing consultation and facilitation services, LURA also authored the 2014-2019 strategic plan.

The City of Hamilton aimed to spark a meaningful, community-wide conversation about the City’s future. To achieve this, the City partnered with LURA to develop and implement an ambitious engagement strategy, targeting over 50,000 residents in a collaborative effort called Our Future Hamilton.

LURA worked closely with the City to design, advise, and deliver an extensive community engagement and communications initiative. The project included a diverse array of activities: a high-profile launch event featuring astronaut Chris Hadfield, participation in local events, pop-up booths at shopping malls and markets, community presentations, focus groups, online surveys, social media campaigns, a dedicated project website, media outreach, and a series of workshops and summits. Residents could engage directly through a dedicated project phone line, email, and mailing list, supported by broad advertising efforts.

The result was a resounding success, with over 54,000 residents participating in the development of Our Future Hamilton. The vision created through this process, facilitated by LURA, has since guided the City’s strategic plan and will continue to influence decision-making by both the City and community partners for years to come.