Southern Growth Policies Board provides policy guidance to member states by identifying goals and objectives that will create a higher quality of life in the region. These goals and objectives are collectively adopted by Southern Growth's trustees and are published as their strategic plan for the region. The plan is refreshed annually through deliberation among members of Southern Growth's four advisory councils, and Southern Growth tracks indicators that measure individual state progress in achieving the objectives.

Vision
All citizens of the South will experience an exemplary quality of life made possible by a dynamic, diversified, growing, sustainable, and competitive Southern economy (Adopted June 25, 2000).

Goal 1
Create a culture of learning throughout the South, in which the acquisition, creation, and application of knowledge is viewed as central to our health, happiness and prosperity (Adopted June 24, 2001).

• Objective 1.1—Make P-12 education efficient and effective in educating our children.
  
• Objective 2.1—Make post-secondary education effective in continually raising the level of education achievement in the South.
  
• Objective 1.3—Elevate the value placed on education and significantly increase the percentage of Southerners actively engaged in the process of lifelong learning.
  
• Objective 1.4—Overcome the skill shortages in the following fields: science, engineering, information technology (IT) and math.
  
• Objective 1.5—Educate those left behind in the knowledge economy, targeting minorities, immigrants and their children.
  
• Objective 1.6—Ensure basic competency in the tools of the Information Age.

Goal 2
Encourage and support innovation and entrepreneurship (Adopted June 24, 2001).

• Objective 2.1-Infuse an entrepreneurial culture throughout the South
  
• Objective 2.2—Increase significantly public and private R&D in the South
  
• Objective 2.3—Ensure access to capital and technical and management assistance at all stages of business development, paying particular attention to underserved groups.
  
• Objective 2.4—Take advantage of the growing commercial and intellectual potential in the global community.

• Objective 3.1—Use Wise Growth principles to ensure that a high quality of life accompanies economic progress.
  
• Objective 3.2—Build on the potential strengths inherent in our cultural diversity by overcoming our historic racial and cultural divisions.
  
• Objective 3.3—Increase the South's levels of civic engagement.

Goal 4
Create the talent pool needed to meet the ongoing market needs and opportunities of the emerging, knowledge-based economy (Adopted June 9, 2002).

• Objective 4.1—Create seamless workforce systems that maximize client control over the outcomes.
  
• Objective 4.2—Identify and develop underutilized sources of workers and talent.
  
• Objective 4.3—Create a self-directed workforce with the attitudes, learning habits and decision tools necessary for making wise career choices throughout life.

Goal 5
Build the civic capacity of Southern communities to respond to emerging opportunities and challenges with new models of leadership, engagement and social capital (Adopted June 1, 2003).

• Objective 5.1—Build a broader base of people willing and prepared to assume leadership roles in Southern communities, including those from traditionally underrepresented populations.
  
• Objective 5.2—Develop courageous, accountable leaders who are guided by ethics, informed by knowledge of economic and cultural change and insistent upon inclusive approaches to community action.

• Objective 6.1—Eliminate the gap between the export performance of Southern businesses and the national average.
  
• Objective 6.2—Internationalize P-16 and adult education to respond to evolving business and community challenges.
  
• Objective 6.3—Achieve a shared sense of community by drawing upon the strengths, talents and interests of all residents.

Goal 7
Encourage and support the practice of economic development activities that are strategic, innovative, comprehensive, responsive to citizens and organized regionally (Adopted June 12, 2005).

• Objective 7.1—Manage economic development as a set of interrelated activities designed to create new enterprises, support the success and expansion of existing enterprises, and encourage other enterprises to locate within the South.
  
• Objective 7.2—Support the creation of Regional Prosperity Alliances (RPAs) within areas defined by regional economies, as outlined in the 2005 Report on the Future of the South. RPAs would include all organizations and individuals engaged in economic development as well as the business community, the educational community, and other public entities providing support and infrastructure. RPAs would provide a forum for the participation of all communities within the region in the creation of a vision for the region’s future and an active, dynamic strategic plan to fulfill that vision.

Goal 8
Because an innovation-driven economy requires a singular commitment to building and maximizing the flow of knowledge to and among the citizens, businesses and institutions of the South, states and regions should organize to achieve the following objectives (Adopted June 4, 2006).

• Objective 8.1—Increase the creation of knowledge in the South.
  
• Objective 8.2—Increase the accumulation of knowledge in the South.
  
• Objective 8.3—Increase the application of knowledge in the South.