Incorporating National Family Meals Month™ into your Programming

September is for back-to-school and time for families to establish new routines. It is the perfect time to position your organization as an essential ally for busy families to create healthy habits, and leverage the new school year to make family meals an integral part of their new routine. By reminding families why and how your association is investing in providing solutions for every family, you’ll build community loyalty and generate awareness for your cause.

Looking for ways to change up your existing campaigns? The simplest way to build on the power of Family Meals Month™ is to incorporate it into your existing programming.  The next several pages contain activation ideas and thought starters to do just that.  Don’t forget to let the FMI Foundation know what you’re planning!

On Your Website

• Create a Family Meals Month™ “landing page” where you discuss the health impact of consuming one more meal together, as a family, and link to your organization’s resources that will help make sharing one more meal at home per week a possibility for all families in your community.
• Blog about Family Meals Month™ during September.
• Include Family Meals Month™ content in your newsletters.
• Use your web site to drive action, movement, commitment, and engagement to your mission and to the mission of creating more opportunities for family meals in the community.
  • Conduct a “Round-Up” campaign in September as part of Family Meals Month™, during which you ask members if they’d like to round-up their donations, dues, or registration fees to the next dollar to benefit a local food bank.
  • Pledge $1 for each individual joining your mailing list during the month of September to devote to programming to help your audience enjoy one more meal together each week as a family.

    On Social Media

• Spread the family meals message in September with #familymealsmonth.In September, and throughout the year, share research and quick statistics with your customers about the many ways the whole family can benefit from eating meals together at home. Hashtag #familymealsmonth to let your audience know you’re in support of family health and Family Meals Month™.

• Encourage your audience to celebrate Family Meals Month™ in September by incorporating one more family meal at home per week into their new school year routines. Spark conversation with your audience to share how they’re making more family meals happen at home, more often.
• Use the Raise Your Mitt To Commit™ logo provided in the toolkit as a call to action for your audience. Encourage them to engage on social media during Family Meals Month™ by posting oven mitt selfies and taking the pledge to share one more family meal per week.
• Conduct contests designed to promote user-generated content and reward participants with prizes.Weekly contest idea: Each week during Family Meals Month™ ask your audience to share photos of their favorite home-cooked family meal—breakfast, lunch or dinner—and conduct a drawing for a grocery gift card among those who participate.Contests can also call for recipes, videos, a favorite family meal memory, or a fun fact about the impact that having regular family meals has had in their health and well-being.Other prizes are a cash reward, a donation made in their name, or a branded oven mitt.Be creative!
• Partner with a grocery retailer chain and/or local stores to share family meals-themed promotions that highlight meal strategies to help busy consumers honor their pledges to share one more family meal at home per week. Knowing that many won’t decide what they’re eating for dinner until the hours immediately preceding mealtime, consider afternoon reminders, recipes, and prepared meal ideas.
• Partner with grocery retailer chains and/or local grocers to record recipe demonstrations to share on your Facebook and Instagram pages, or broadcast via Facebook Live or an Instagram Live Story etc.Repurpose videos on social media by editing and sharing parts of the recipe demo; time-lapsing the demonstration; and/or adding captions and graphics.
• Share Family Meals Month™ recipes and strategies from your Web site to help families share one more meal at home per week.
• Partner with other Family Meals Month™ partners to host a Twitter chat, or series of chats, designed to raise the awareness of the importance of family meals, share recipes/resources, share networks, and generate dialogue with the public.
• Amplify social media content across multiple platforms including, but not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, SnapChatYouTube, Yummily, and Periscope.Add Yummily plug-ins to Family Meals Month™ content.
• Encourage followers and fans to share facts, contests, recipes, and other content with their network, and across social media platforms, to showcase the importance and impact of family meals.Loop these activities into a contest for a cash reward, grocery gift card, a donation made in their name, or a branded oven mitt.
• Establish blogger relationships or leverage bloggers in your existing network to write about Family Meals Month™ and link back to recipes, programs, contests, etc.
• Participate in FMI Thunderclap to kick off Family Meals Month™, designed to unite all participants and initiatives.

For Staff

• Snap a group photo of your employees raising their oven mitts in commitment to helping families share one more family meal at home per week. Share their commitment with your customers using hashtag #familymealsmonth.
• Encourage your employees to Raise Your Mitt to Commit™ to share one more meal at home per week with their families by taking the social media, oven mitt selfie pledge. Host an internal contest for the most committed employee participant.
• Gather employee testimonials about what one more family meal per week means to them. Share these testimonials with your organization’s network on social media.

For Public Figures

• Ask celebrity supporters and government officials to join in the Family Meals Month™ celebration with hashtag #familymealsmonth. Encourage them to take the social media oven mitt selfie pledge to demonstrate their commitment to family and community. Remind them that family meals make families stronger, and strong families make healthy communities.
• Invite a government official, like a mayor or local member of Congress in the communities your organization works in, to share a message using hashtag #familymealsmonth about the importance of family meals in his or her own family.

Partnerships

In the first several years of Family Meals Month™ implementation, FMI has noted trends in implementation excellence.  One of these is joining forces to collaboratively develop and execute programs for Family Meals Month™.  The whole is greater than the sum of the parts! 

• Partner nationally with retailers and food manufacturers.
  • Plan ahead to cross-promote your mission, Family Meals Month™ programming, and resources to all partner networks.
  • Use your website and social media platforms to feature a different grocer and/or manufacturer every week, highlighting their offering (such as: ready-to-eat nutritious meal selections, frozen foods, meal kits, etc.) that help families in your community participate in more family meals per week, despite their time constraints.
• Partner locally with organizations and businesses.
  • Partner with local grocers to conduct cooking classes in the community.Feature “graduates” on social media raising their mitts to commit to one more family meal a week.
  • Engage the community through partnerships with apartment complexes, homeowners associations, community centers, schools/PTA, youth sports clubs, etc.
  • Create print resources to place in community centers, apartment complexes, doctor’s offices, and fitness facilities that emphasize the important health, emotional, and societal benefits of family meals, inviting individuals and families into your community for more information and resources. Let your members and community know why you’re investing in family meals and that you’re part of a community-wide movement dedicated to bringing shared mealtime back home to the family table.

• Partner with your audience. 
• Throughout Family Meals Month™ feature “Family Meal of the Week” promotions that highlight families who have utilized strategies from your website or social media.

Employee Wellness

• Utilize the Family Meals Month™ movement to engage your staff

• Host a Lunch & Learn for your employees during Family Meals Month™ to educate them on the benefits of family meals and share best practices in making family meals happen.
• Host a Family Meals Month™ kickoff dinner for staff and their families and provide information on the benefits of family meals.
• Host a contest for staff who submit Raise Your Mitt selfies with hashtag #familymealsmonth to be entered into a raffle for a prize.
• Host a contest for staff who submit photos of a recipe they have made from the Family Meals Month™ recipe toolbox.

Media/Paid Advertising

• Distribute a press release sharing your organization’s commitment to families and their health and how partnering to extend the Family Meals Month™ movement is good for the community and the audience you serve.
• Go small or go big: simply place the Family Meals Month™ icon in the appropriate sections of your online and print ads, or devote a Sunday insert to Family Meals Month™. You’ll help bring national attention to the benefits of family mealtime while positioning your organization as a committed supporter of the health and well-being of families and community.
• Sponsor a television and/or radio ad showing the many benefits of enjoying meals together as a family.

Best Practices

• Tag FMI in social media content for easy recognition and incorporation into Family Meals Month™ metrics. 
• Whether simply posting or hosting an online chat, use audience feedback prompts.  Examples include: “Share a memory of your favorite family meal” or “Where is the most foreign or most unusual place your family has shared a meal?”
• Share success stories from current and previous Family Meals Months™.
• Feature visually engaging content including photos and videos.
• Feature user-generated content. 
• Feature real people and families (e.g., followers, fans, organizational staff).
• Incorporate an interactive component into your programming, such as contests. 
• Integrate omni-channel campaign tie-ins across social media and advertising platforms.  
• Apply for a Gold Plate Award.