Work With Us

Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities is an independent 501(c)(3) coalition of parents and health care providers. That independence is what lets us drive change across sectors that a single agency cannot reach alone: government, health care, lactation support, business, faith communities, childcare and schools. We bring a tested framework and years of lived experience. The plan, the partners and the ownership stay in your community.

What we bring

• A framework that doubles as a needs assessment. The Ten Steps to a Breastfeeding Family Friendly Community tell a community where it stands, what to do next, and how to hold itself accountable. A self-appraisal at the start becomes the skeleton of your plan.
• Proof from real communities. Breastfeed Durham, our pilot, grew from a $200 volunteer start in 2018 to roughly $150,000 in annual programming, with dozens of public welcome installations, hundreds of recognized breastfeeding friendly businesses, hundreds of trained first responders, municipal proclamations and a county strategic plan for human milk feeding. Carrboro, North Carolina became the first community to complete all Ten Steps. Franklin County shows what the model looks like in a rural county with no hospital. See our work.
• Emergency-tested infrastructure. The same relationships built in blue-skies time became the backbone of the Hurricane Helene infant feeding response through our SAFE Infant Feeding Team. Preparedness is built into every step.
• Ready-made tools. Our NACCHO Blueprint implementation tool shows local health departments how to put the Ten Steps to work. Through SAFE we maintain the IYCF-E county policy adoption toolkit, proclamation and lactation policy templates, business and childcare recognition criteria, and first responder training materials that any community can adapt. Browse the templates.
• A peer network. Communities we coach join the Implementation Leaders Collaborative Round Table, where coalition leads from across the country compare notes on what is working.

Four ways to work together

Each option builds on the one before it, so a community can start where it is ready and scale up as partners and funding come on board. Every option is designed around one goal: for the work to become your community’s own.

1. A single presentation

One customized presentation or training for an audience of your choosing: health department staff, WIC, hospitals and clinics, emergency management, childcare providers, municipal leaders, or a coalition meeting. The right choice when one audience needs one topic and no follow-up.

2. A learning series

Six customized presentations or trainings over twelve months, roughly one every other month, each with a planning call, content adapted to your community, and a recording you can share. We strongly recommend pairing each session with individualized follow-up: emailing the people who raised their hands, answering questions one on one, and helping a county or a hospital figure out its next step. In our experience the follow-up is where capacity actually gets built; the presentation is what opens the door.

Session menu to choose from: the Ten Steps as a self-assessment; infant and young child feeding in emergencies policy for states and counties; proclamations and municipal engagement; first responder and shelter training on infant feeding; breastfeeding friendly business and childcare recognition; coalition building and sustaining volunteer energy; using the NACCHO Blueprint locally; and lessons from Durham.

3. Coalition coaching

This is how we work with Franklin County, North Carolina: a standing twice-monthly coaching call with your core team, where we bring what has worked in other communities and help you decide what to try next. Coaching includes everything in the learning series, plus:

• A Ten Steps gap assessment completed with your team in the first quarter, producing a prioritized action list that becomes the skeleton of your plan.
• A shared partner board, built and maintained by BFFC, where every partner organization owns its own list of commitments and marks its own progress. It makes the work visible, gets tasks out of one person’s head, and lets each organization lead its own piece instead of waiting on the coalition.
• Templates adapted for your community: a proclamation, an IYCF-E policy drawn from the SAFE county toolkit, and business and childcare recognition criteria.
• Guidance and review while your team drafts its own plan.
• Email and phone support between calls, and a seat in the Implementation Leaders Collaborative Round Table.

4. An implementation partnership

This is the scale at which we work with Durham and Guilford Counties, and the option that moves a plan on paper to work happening in communities within the year. A partnership includes everything above, plus:

• BFFC co-authors the community or state plan with your team.
• Facilitated planning convenings for your partners: a kickoff and a mid-year working session.
• Launch support for pilot sites, including local coaching, help recruiting and orienting community health workers or coalition leads, and the first round of proclamations, welcome signage and business outreach.
• An IYCF-E training series for emergency management, shelter staff and first responders, adapted from the training used during Hurricane Helene.
• An evaluation framework built on the Ten Steps self-appraisal, a twelve-month progress report suitable for funders and elected officials, and a year-two sustainability plan.
• In-person visits, with travel billed at cost.

How engagements work

Work is delivered virtually unless we agree otherwise. Contracts and payments are with Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities, invoiced monthly or quarterly to fit your process. Our standard technical assistance rate is $105 per hour, sliding by organizational capacity, and parent-led groups get a few hours free. Any option can be expanded during the term, and an engagement can be split across funding sources or fiscal years. We are glad to supply budget narrative language for a grant application or an internal request.

Recordings, templates and materials produced together may be shared freely within your community. BFFC keeps the right to reuse its own frameworks and tools.

Start the conversation

The most useful first step is a strategy call with your colleagues. We will walk through these options, adjust the scope to what your community needs, and turn the selected option into a short scope of work. Reach out through our contact form and tell us where you are starting from.

Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities welcomes everyone. No one is denied participation in any of our programs or activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, or any other characteristic. Every family deserves a seat at the table.

Related: Our Work · Community Self-Appraisals · Financial Transparency