Logic model example: a free clinic

What it shows

A logic model in six columns, read from left to right: resources (inputs), activities, outputs, short-term outcomes, long-term outcomes and impact. A line under each heading says what belongs in that column.

The columns are filled in for the Mytown Free Clinic, the running example in the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Logic Model Development Guide (2004). The clinic sets out to cut uninsured residents’ use of the hospital emergency room.

How to read it

1. 1

   Read across: the resources make the activities possible, the activities produce outputs, and the outputs are expected to lead to outcomes and, in time, impact.

2. 2

   Outputs count what the program delivers, such as patient visits per year. Outcomes are changes in the people it serves, such as patients seeing the need for a medical home.

3. 3

   The timeframes are Kellogg’s: short-term outcomes within 1 to 3 years, long-term outcomes within 4 to 6 years, impact in 7 to 10 years.

4. 4

   Each column is a list. Items in the same row of different columns are not linked to each other.

The example, column by column

• Resources: first-year funding, a donated clinic facility, and equipment including 5 exam tables.
• Activities: hire an executive director, recruit and train volunteers, run a public relations campaign.
• Outputs: patients enrolled, patient visits and medical volunteers serving, each counted per year.
• Short-term outcomes (1 to 3 years): space agreed, patients see the need for a medical home, more annual physicals and follow-up visits.
• Long-term outcomes (4 to 6 years): a medical home for 500 uninsured patients, 300 volunteer medical professionals, 90% patient satisfaction.
• Impact (7 to 10 years): less inappropriate emergency room use, an endowment supporting 35% of operating funds, 900 patients served per year.

Ways to use it in teaching

• Hand out the blank six-column layout and have students fill it in for a program they know, such as a campus tutoring service.

• Ask students to sort a mixed list of items into outputs or outcomes; a common mistake: the guide notes grantees often report outputs as though they were results.

• Pair it with the theory of change diagram for the same clinic and ask what the logic model leaves out: the assumptions.

Sources

• Logic model. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 19, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_model
• W. K. Kellogg Foundation. (2004). Logic model development guide. https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/sites/static/files/2015-09/documents/logic-model-development-guide.pdf