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MODULE 4Develop recreation plan and documents

People presenting a plan in a forest setting

Strategy and Planning Templates

Work with the steering committee to implement the visioning framework, set priorities, and choose an appropriate plan scale.

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Activity Plan Worksheet
Strategies Worksheet

Creating a strong outdoor recreation economy starts with a clear and thoughtful planning process. Every community has unique goals, resources, and challenges, so it’s important to choose a planning approach that fits your local context.

This tool is designed to help your community:

Outdoor recreation planning can take many forms, from analyzing the economic impacts of tourism to master planning a regional trail system. The right approach depends on several factors, including:

To tailor the outdoor recreation planning process to the unique needs of each community, this tool provides a two-step process to evaluate your community’s outdoor recreation opportunities, challenges, and goals.

Step One: Vision Framework Guidance

The goal of this section is to help the steering committee evaluate existing public feedback to identify the specific type of planning work needed to strengthen the community’s outdoor recreation amenities and economy.

Before choosing a plan, it’s essential to understand how your community uses outdoor spaces, what residents value, and what needs still exist. Step One provides tools for evaluating public input as a steering committee and translating it into a shared vision. This step helps you:

  • Engage the public to learn what types of recreation matter most to them
  • Assess the quality and accessibility of current outdoor recreation options
  • Identify opportunities, gaps, and priorities
  • Build a clear, community-informed foundation for planning

Step Two: Plan Templates

The goal of this section is to provide structured plan options for the steering committee to choose between, based on the public feedback evaluation of Step One.

Once your community vision is established, Step Two offers a set of plan templates that reflect different scales and focuses of outdoor recreation planning. These templates are designed to match your community’s goals, capacity, and readiness. They help your steering committee:

  • Choose a plan type that fits your local needs
  • Apply the feedback and visioning work from Step One
  • Apply the Rec Ready NH toolkit toward an outdoor recreation plan that suits your community

This two-step approach ensures your community’s outdoor recreation planning is rooted in local input and tailored to your available resources. Whether you're aiming to assess current conditions or prepared to develop a full outdoor recreation master plan, this tool will guide your community in effectively using the Rec Ready NH toolkit to reach your goals.

Vision Framework Guidance and Worksheet

To plan outdoor recreation in your community, you will need to turn the community’s ideas into a vision framework, which will help guide your work going forward. This worksheet will guide you and your fellow steering committee members to create a vision for local outdoor recreation. It will also help you review and prepare strategies to share with the public at the next community meeting.

What is a vision framework?

A vision framework is a tool that helps decide the goals and direction of outdoor recreation planning in your community.

A good vision framework should:

It should explain what the community believes is the best plan for its outdoor recreation, if all challenges and opportunities were perfectly addressed.

A vision framework includes:

  1. An activity plan that discusses how to include different types of recreation in the community
  2. A list of key qualities that describe the kind of outdoor recreation scene that the community wants

This vision should reflect a variety of views in the town and should get people excited about the future of outdoor recreation in the community. Unlike a short vision statement, a vision framework gives more details and paints a bigger picture of what the public envisions for local outdoor recreation.

The activity plan and the list of key qualities should work together. They do not have to say the same thing, but they should support each other. The activity part explains how local outdoor recreation supports various activities and user groups. The key qualities give short words or phrases that describe the future of outdoor recreation in more detail. Together, they help show what the community values most.

What do I need to do?

Fill out this worksheet to help create a shared vision for your community's outdoor recreation plan. The Activity Plan and Strategy worksheets are both available to download.

Use what you know about existing outdoor recreation opportunities and what you have heard from the community so far. See the Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance for more information on gauging public input on local outdoor recreation and see the Outdoor Recreation Activity and Asset Inventory for collecting information on local outdoor recreation opportunities. You’ll also list issues, needs, and ideas that came up during earlier meetings. These may not be part of the vision itself, but they help shape the draft strategies for outdoor recreation planning.

These draft strategies are ideas for how we might move toward the vision. The community will review and rank these ideas at the next workshop. This worksheet is your chance to help shape the vision and strategies that will be shown to the community for their input on prioritization.

As a member of the steering committee, you’re both:

Share both your personal thoughts and what you’ve heard from others in town. If your views are different from what the rest of the community thinks, that’s okay, just make note of these divergences in your comments.

Each steering committee member can fill out the worksheet on their own at home and share their answers at the next meeting. Or, the steering committee can work through it together as a group.

Man standing in a gymnasium looking at three information boards set up on easels for a community event.

DownloadActivity Plan Worksheet

Use this worksheet to outline the recreation activities, user groups, and amenities that will support your community’s outdoor recreation vision.

Download Activity Plan

DownloadStrategies Worksheet

This worksheet helps the steering committee organize draft strategies that align with the community’s priorities and guide next steps.

Download Strategies Worksheet

Choosing a Plan

The visioning framework guidance and draft strategies will help your community establish the opportunities and needs around outdoor recreation in your community. Choose the outdoor recreation plan type that is best suited to address the goals and strategies established by your steering committee and community.

Large-scale community recreation planning

Recreation Analysis

A study to learn how people currently use outdoor recreation areas, what resources and trails the community already has, and how they are managed. This will help find ways to improve and build on the strengths of local outdoor recreation and the outdoor economy.

When to use this plan:

When you want to look at what is already in place, find out what is working well, and figure out what problems need to be fixed.

  • A recreation analysis can be a helpful first step in outdoor recreation planning. It can guide decisions about where to spend time and money.
  • Depending on community capacity, a recreation analysis may also be an initial stage in a broader recreation planning initiative.
  • A recreation analysis can also be useful as an initial stage after identifying new financial sources or new partnerships to best use these resources
What this plan contains: Modules 1, 2, 6
Module 1: Assess Inventory and Existing Conditions
  • Use the Outdoor Recreation Activity and Asset Inventory to understand what outdoor recreation opportunities already exist in your community, who uses these local recreational assets, and why.
  • Next, map these outdoor recreation assets and areas to better understand where they are and how they connect to one another. See the Maps of Outdoor Recreation tool for free or low-cost mapping tools to help you do this.
  • You can also add important local features to your map, like environmental data, scenic spots, popular trail connections, local businesses, and other points of interest that support tourism or highlight natural beauty. The Environmental Data on Maps tool and Local Tourism Economy tool can help you explore these layers.
Module 2: Perform Stakeholder and Public Engagement
  • Use the Steering Committee Guidance to meet with your steering committee and talk about the current state of recreation in your community. Work together to set goals, conduct public outreach, and form focus groups to keep the conversation going over time.
  • Hold a public meeting or open house to talk with community members about local recreational areas. Ask for their ideas on what’s working well and what could be improved. The Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance offers details on designing a public vision for local outdoor recreation.
  • Create surveys to gather public feedback and share them through flyers, newsletters, social media, and other ways to reach people. See the Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance for more information on public outreach strategies, as well as the Survey Topic Framework and Survey Question Bank for more survey guidance.
  • Once you collect the results, share them with the public and hold a discussion about what the feedback shows. This helps build trust and keeps the community involved in the planning process. Module 2’s downloadable Vision Workshop Template can help guide this process.
Module 6: Economic Impact and Community Development
  • Collect data on how people use outdoor recreation areas to understand not just where these places are, but also how often and in what ways they are being used. The Trail Counting tool offers one means of collecting usership information.

Recreation Master Plan

A big-picture plan that looks at all the available outdoor recreation areas in a community or region. The goal is to connect these places and make sure they work well together.

When to use this plan:

When you want to understand what is already there, find what is missing, point out what is working well, and set goals for the future.

  • It creates a long-term plan for local outdoor recreation by building on what already exists and helping fill in the gaps to support the community’s vision.
  • If your community already knows what recreation areas it has and where they are, this plan can guide future improvements.
What this plan contains: Modules 1-5
Module 1: Mapping Inventory, and Existing Conditions Assessment
  • This entirety of Module 1 can be used as the first step in the master planning process. It helps identify and show the current locations and conditions of local recreation areas.
  • Use the Outdoor Recreation Activity and Asset Inventory to understand what outdoor recreation opportunities already exist in your community, who uses these local recreational assets, and why.
  • Next, map these outdoor recreation assets and areas to better understand where they are and how they connect to one another. See the Maps of Outdoor Recreation tool for free or low-cost mapping tools to help you do this.
  • You can also add important local features to your map, like environmental data, scenic spots, popular trail connections, local businesses, and other points of interest that support tourism or highlight natural beauty. The Environmental Data on Maps tool and Local Tourism Economy tool can help you explore these layers.
Module 2: Public and Stakeholder Engagement
  • Use the Steering Committee Guidance to meet with your steering committee and talk about the current state of recreation in your community. Work together to set goals, conduct public outreach, and form focus groups to keep the conversation going over time.
  • Hold a public meeting or open house to talk with community members about local recreational areas. Ask for their ideas on what’s working well and what could be improved. The Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance offers details on designing a public vision for local outdoor recreation.
  • Create surveys to gather public feedback and share them through flyers, newsletters, social media, and other ways to reach people. See the Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance for more information on public outreach strategies, as well as the Survey Topic Framework and Survey Question Bank for more survey guidance.
  • Once you collect the results, share them with the public and hold a discussion about what the feedback shows. This helps build trust and keeps the community involved in the planning process. Module 2’s downloadable Vision Workshop Template can help guide this process.
Module 3: Natural Resources, Education, and Interpretation
Module 4: Recreation Plan and Document Development
  • Use step one of this tool to organize and connect community goals in so far as they relate to trails.
  • Determine the details of the project and estimate the costs involved with the Recreation Improvement Database.
Module 5: Project Implementation and Construction

Recreation Economy Plan

A town-wide or region-wide plan that focuses on growing the economy and tourism through outdoor recreation. This can include plans like a strategy for maximizing the economic impact of outdoor recreation, a study of how outdoor recreation affects the economy, or a program that supports trail-friendly businesses.

When to use this plan:

When you want to understand how outdoor recreation helps the economy and find ways to increase those benefits.

  • This type of plan helps make sure that both current and future recreation areas are planned in a way that maximizes the financial benefit to the town and supports local businesses.
  • It is a good fit for communities that already know what recreation areas they have and want to learn how those areas affect the economy. It also helps towns create strategies to grow the local economy through outdoor recreation.
  • This plan is also helpful for towns that are planning new outdoor recreation areas and want to make sure these projects help local businesses and attract outside investment.
What this plan contains: Module 6
  • Apply the Economic Impact Analysis tool to collect economic impact data on why recreationists visit the community, how they contribute financially, and how this contribution might be maximized.

Trail-specific planning

Trail Master Plan

A system-wide plan that focuses on building, connecting, designing, planning, and taking care of trails across a community or region.

When to use this plan:

When you want to check what trails already exist, find gaps, point out what is working well, and set goals for the future.

  • A Trail Master Plan creates a long-term plan for a complete and well-connected trail system. It builds on what already exists by filling in gaps and matching the community’s vision
  • If your community already knows what trails it has, this plan helps identify where new connector trails, trail extensions, or improvements to trail surfaces and structures should go.
What this plan contains: Modules 1-5
Module 1: Mapping Inventory, and Existing Conditions Assessment
  • This entirety of Module 1 can be used as the first step in the master planning process. It helps identify and show the current locations and conditions of local recreation areas.
  • Use the Outdoor Recreation Activity and Asset Inventory to understand what outdoor recreation opportunities already exist in your community, who uses these local recreational assets, and why.
  • Next, map these outdoor recreation assets and areas to better understand where they are and how they connect to one another. See the Maps of Outdoor Recreation tool for free or low-cost mapping tools to help you do this.
  • You can also add important local features to your map, like environmental data, scenic spots, popular trail connections, local businesses, and other points of interest that support tourism or highlight natural beauty. The Environmental Data on Maps tool and Local Tourism Economy tool can help you explore these layers.
Module 2: Public and Stakeholder Engagement
  • Use the Steering Committee Guidance to meet with your steering committee and talk about the current state of recreation in your community. Work together to set goals, conduct public outreach, and form focus groups to keep the conversation going over time.
  • Hold a public meeting or open house to talk with community members about local recreational areas. Ask for their ideas on what’s working well and what could be improved. The Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance offers details on designing a public vision for local outdoor recreation.
  • Create surveys to gather public feedback and share them through flyers, newsletters, social media, and other ways to reach people. See the Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance for more information on public outreach strategies, as well as the Survey Topic Framework and Survey Question Bank for more survey guidance.
  • Once you collect the results, share them with the public and hold a discussion about what the feedback shows. This helps build trust and keeps the community involved in the planning process. Module 2’s downloadable Vision Workshop Template can help guide this process.
Module 3: Natural Resources, Education, and Interpretation
Module 4: Recreation Plan and Document Development
  • This module provides an important step in spotting areas that need improvement and setting achievable goals.
  • Use step one of this tool to organize and connect community goals.
  • Determine the details of the project and estimate the costs involved with the Recreation Improvement Database.
Module 5: Project Implementation and Construction

Single Trail Plan

A detailed plan for designing, building, and taking care of one specific trail or a new trail connection within a larger trail system.

When to use this plan:

This plan is used to create a new trail where there is a missing connection or a chance to improve the recreational experience.

  • This plan is used to create a new trail where there is a missing connection or a chance to improve the recreational experience.
What this plan contains: Modules 2-5
Module 2: Public and Stakeholder Engagement
  • Use the Steering Committee Guidance to meet with your steering committee and talk about the current state of trails in your community. Work together to set goals, conduct public outreach, and form focus groups to keep the conversation going over time.
  • Hold a public meeting or open house to talk with community members about local trails. Ask for their ideas on what’s working well and what could be improved. The Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance offers details on designing a public vision for a local trail system.
  • Create surveys to gather public feedback and share them through flyers, newsletters, social media, and other ways to reach people. See the Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance for more information on public outreach strategies, as well as the Survey Topic Framework and Survey Question Bank for more survey guidance.
  • Once you collect the results, share them with the public and hold a discussion about what the feedback shows. This helps build trust and keeps the community involved in the planning process. Module 2’s downloadable Vision Workshop Template can help guide this process.
Module 3: Natural Resources, Education, and Interpretation
Module 4: Recreation Plan and Document Development
  • Use step one of this tool to organize and connect community goals in so far as they relate to trails.
  • Determine the details of the project and estimate the costs involved with the Recreation Improvement Database.
Module 5: Project Implementation and Construction

Locally-Scaled Recreation Planning

Community Park Plan

A site-specific plan for building, maintaining, and connecting recreational features within one specific park.

When to use this plan:

When you want to identify, expand, or improve recreation options at a single park.

  • Unlike larger plans that cover a whole region or community, a Community Park Plan focuses on what can be done inside the space of just one park or outdoor recreation area. It identifies what the park already has and makes a long-term plan to improve its recreation opportunities.
What this plan contains: Modules 1-5
Module 1: Mapping Inventory, and Existing Conditions Assessment
  • The entirety of Module 1 can be used as the first step in the master planning process. It helps identify and show the current locations and conditions of local recreation areas.
  • Use the Outdoor Recreation Activity and Asset Inventory to understand what outdoor recreation opportunities already exist in your community, who uses these local recreational assets, and why.
  • Next, map these outdoor recreation assets and areas to better understand where they are and how they connect to one another. See the Maps of Outdoor Recreation tool for free or low-cost mapping tools to help you do this.
  • You can also add important local features to your map, like environmental data, scenic spots, popular trail connections, local businesses, and other points of interest that support tourism or highlight natural beauty. The Environmental Data on Maps tool and Local Tourism Economy tool can help you explore these layers.
Module 2: Public and Stakeholder Engagement
  • Use the Steering Committee Guidance to meet with your steering committee and talk about the current state of recreation in your community. Work together to set goals, conduct public outreach, and form focus groups to keep the conversation going over time.
  • Hold a public meeting or open house to talk with community members about local recreational areas. Ask for their ideas on what’s working well and what could be improved. The Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance offers details on designing a public vision for local outdoor recreation.
  • Create surveys to gather public feedback and share them through flyers, newsletters, social media, and other ways to reach people. See the Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance for more information on public outreach strategies, as well as the Survey Topic Framework and Survey Question Bank for more survey guidance.
  • Once you collect the results, share them with the public and hold a discussion about what the feedback shows. This helps build trust and keeps the community involved in the planning process. Module 2’s downloadable Vision Workshop Template can help guide this process.
Module 3: Natural Resources, Education, and Interpretation
Module 4: Recreation Plan and Document Development
  • This module provides an important step in spotting areas that need improvement and setting achievable goals.
  • Use step one of this tool to organize and connect community goals.
  • Determine the details of the project and estimate the costs involved with the Recreation Improvement Database.
Module 5: Project Implementation and Construction

Asset Plan

A plan for building, designing, and taking care of one specific recreational feature, like a picnic area or a river access spot.

When to use this plan:

When you want to identify, expand, or improve recreation options at a particular site.

  • This plan is used to create a new recreational feature where there is a missing option or a chance to improve the outdoor recreation experience.
What this plan contains: Modules 2-5
Module 2: Public and Stakeholder Engagement
  • Use the Steering Committee Guidance to meet with your steering committee and talk about the current state of recreation in your community. Work together to set goals, conduct public outreach, and form focus groups to keep the conversation going over time.
  • Hold a public meeting or open house to talk with community members about local recreational areas. Ask for their ideas on what’s working well and what could be improved. The Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance offers details on designing a public vision for local outdoor recreation.
  • Create surveys to gather public feedback and share them through flyers, newsletters, social media, and other ways to reach people. See the Community and Stakeholder Engagement Guidance for more information on public outreach strategies, as well as the Survey Topic Framework and Survey Question Bank for more survey guidance.
  • Once you collect the results, share them with the public and hold a discussion about what the feedback shows. This helps build trust and keeps the community involved in the planning process. Module 2’s downloadable Vision Workshop Template can help guide this process.
Module 3: Natural Resources, Education, and Interpretation
Module 4: Recreation Plan and Document Development
  • This module provides an important step in spotting areas that need improvement and setting achievable goals.
  • Use step one of this tool to organize and connect community goals.
  • Determine the details of the project and estimate the costs involved with the Recreation Improvement Database.
Module 5: Project Implementation and Construction

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