New England Dairy staff, delegates, directors, and guests gathered together virtually on November 5 and 6 for our 2020 Annual Meeting.
Staff shared highlights and results from our work throughout the year and shared a first look into our plans for 2021 as we continue to work on your behalf building dairy trust and sales. View presentation recordings and slides from Annual Meeting here.
Five Key Takeaways for our 2020 Annual Meeting
1. We protected 563,000 lbs. of milk per week by providing school districts with portable coolers and needed equipment to ensure cold milk was served with every emergency school meal.
New England Dairy has provided school meal programs with nearly $255,000 in total grants and equipment to date. Together, the programs we’ve supported are serving about 1 million meals and milks per week.
2. This spring, we adapted quickly to work with community partners to get 658,000 lbs of milk into the hands of those who needed it most.
So far this year, we have led or provided support to 12 dairy donation events helping to move over 76,000 gallons of milk. Our role in each event differed depending on the needs and strengths of our partners. Our team coordinated press and outreach for donations, volunteered during distributions, organized event logistics, and brought partners together to ensure impactful donation events.
- Our May Give A Gallon campaign reached more than 5 million people leading to more than $22,000 in donations or about 6,000 gallons of milk to local food banks in New England.
- We relaunched the Give A Gallon campaign this fall with an updated video to continue driving donations to get milk those in need.
3. We reached almost 3 million consumers with positive stories about dairy farming, nutrition, and sustainability through over 100 broadcast, online and print media stories.
See the following examples of stories we pitched:
- Hadley dairy farm provides milk to families in need
- Patriots player helping to get food, milk to families in need in Worcester
- Vermont dairy farmers donate excess milk during free giveaway
4. We utilize local and national consumer research to stay relevant and bring dairy experiences to our audiences in unexpected ways, such as through our strong online and virtual presence, the Mobile Dairy Bar, and partnering with NFL player Chase Winovich.
We built out our content library to include innovative and engaging content:
- Dairy Good for Your Health video targeted for middle and high school students
- Five live virtual farm tours for health professionals, the general public, and students
- Frozen Yogurt Bark Recipe demonstration on our Instagram Live
We ran a month-long campaign with MassLive to share the benefits of fueling your day with dairy and to debunk current dairy myths. Watch the campaign video:
5. Our national and international partnerships with foodservice chains (Domino’s, KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) continue to drive trust and sales nationally while promoting sustainability and wellness messages that NED amplifies regionally.
In 2019, over 9.8 billion milk pounds of dairy were sold through foodservice partner chains. Our partners invest $1.8 billion of their own funding in dairy focused advertising annually and are category leaders who inspire competitors to follow their lead.