Building Your F2S Program
Marketing Your Program
- Elementary School Lunch Menu (for parents) from Berkeley Unified School District: Beautiful monthly menus that include a letter home to parents, the district’s wellness policy, recipes, and more.
- Farmer Trading Cards: A Unique Promotional Tool, David Eddy, Growing Produce, 2013. Reminiscent of baseball cards, farmer trading cards help people know about local farms and encourage them to buy local.
- Local Food is Good Food Poster from the Massachusetts Farm to School Project: A fun, colorful poster that features local food and local farmers.
- Menus, Calendars, and Recipes from Minneapolis Public Schools attractive and informative resources are an example of how beautiful design and clever marketing can make healthful, local foods seem even more appealing.
Funding Your Program
- Action for Healthy Kids – School Grants for Healthy Kids: Lists funding resources to implement health and wellness activities in schools.
- Farm to School and School Garden Expenses: Memo SP 06-2015 – This November, 2014 memo clarifies that funds from the nonprofit school food service account can be used for many school garden and farm to school expenses as long as the activities are supporting the school meal programs.
- Farm Raisers – Farm-raisers are an alternative fundraising method that brings healthy, farm-fresh foods to schools, raises funds for school programs, and supports local family farms. Highlighted in this brief resource are some examples of farm-raisers that emphasize a direct connection with farms and schools.
- Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools Grants – Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools is a comprehensive grassroots public health initiative to mobilize and engage stakeholders at the local, state and national level to support and fund salad bars in schools.
- National Farm to School Network “Funding Farm to School” Fact Sheet – Tips for acquiring funds for your farm to school program through grants, donations, and special events.
- USDA Grants, Loans, and Support – This webpage lists over two dozen programs at USDA that can help build local and regional food systems.
- USDA Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass, a guide to help stakeholders navigate USDA resources and efforts related to local and regional food systems.
Evaluating Your Program
- Evaluation for Transformation: A Cross Sectoral Evaluation Framework for Farm to School, National Farm to School Network. This framework offers common language, guidelines and metrics to evaluate the impact of farm to school. The framework is organized around four key sectors – public health, community economic development, education, and environmental quality.
- Bearing Fruit: Farm to School Program Evaluation Resources and Recommendations, Urban and Environmental Policy Institute. This comprehensive resource introduces readers to different types of farm to school evaluations, and the tools and resources available for measuring program impacts.
- Colorado’s Farm to School Evaluation Toolkit, Colorado Farm to School Task Force and the Spark Policy Institute, provides clear, easy instructions on how to implement an evaluation of farm to school activities. The toolkit contains many resources for selecting outcomes and measurement tools to evaluate student, community, food service, producer, parent, school leadership, and community impacts. It includes a five-part webinar series as well as written materials.
- Evaluation of the Davis Farm to School Program, University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program at Davis, example of an in-depth evaluation of four farm to school related goals: 1) increase farm fresh food in school offerings; 2) reduce solid waste through a comprehensive district recycling program; 3) provide education opportunities to promote a healthy lifestyle and develop the whole child; and 4) engage the community and evaluate programs to provide information to the community.
- Farm to School Evaluation Toolkit, National Farm to School Network and the University of North Carolina, a collection of survey instruments and other evaluation tools aimed at assessing several different farm to school-related outcomes.
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