Cooking Matters Help Desk

Note About Cooking Matters Transition: Salesforce will be accessible until September 30, 2024. During this period, users can enter information and retrieve reports and historical data. However, Share Our Strength no longer requires organizations to enter information in Salesforce. 

As online programming is new, and so much is still being figured out by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the various state agencies, and Cooking Matters, it is essential that any partner conducting online programming have a conversation with their state agency about the following:  

• whether the programming is considered direct education 
• how to differentiate the format, in terms of number of sessions and the length of each session 
• what constitutes an unduplicated participant  

You will need to understand your state’s thoughts on these issues in order to successfully complete your EARS form, as well as any required monthly or quarterly reporting. We already know that state agencies are handling the tracking and reporting in different ways, so what follows are considerations or potential scenarios, not guidelines. Furthermore, we have made some initial changes to Salesforce to accommodate the new programs, but your tracking and reporting needs may extend beyond the current structure of our reporting capabilities. This is an iterative process and we sincerely look forward to learning more from you about your reporting needs. 

There are three curricula that we consider viable for online programming: 

• Cooking Matters at the Store—all tours should be entered into Salesforce as Tour records and use the Cooking Matters at the Store survey. These should always be recorded as single-session programs on the EARS form. 
• Cooking Matters at Home—this collection of eight lessons should be assigned the Other Educational Activity program record type in Salesforce (program records will begin with an E).  From a participant experience perspective, there is currently flexibility to select one lesson and offer it as a single session or to combine any number of lessons into a series. Salesforce is not currently structured to support tracking this curriculum as a series, however, as we are waiting for more participant and partner feedback about whether the series option is desired.  Some workarounds for tracking the curriculum as a series are offered below, but you’ll need to clarify your state’s reporting requirements before choosing the option that works best for you. 
• Cooking Matters for Child Care Professionals-- this collection of seven trainings should be assigned the Other Educational Activity Program Record type in Salesforce unless a partner is implementing at least 6 hours of training that is required for all participants, and in this case enter as a Course in Program Record type. A series of trainings can be coordinated for a center or a regional early childhood partner. Ensuring that online trainings are accredited for professional development clock hours will boost participation. 

For the remainder of this document, we are assuming that online programming will be reported on EARS using the direct education fields. In Item 4 on the EARS form, there are four different direct education format types: single lesson, series of 2-4 sessions, series of 5-9 sessions, series of 10 of more sessions.  Within each format type, you have to indicate the number of sessions offered for each of five pre-determined lengths of time (0-30 minutes; 31-60 minutes; 61-90 minutes; 91-120 minutes; and over 120 minutes).  

Key point of consideration: When it comes to tracking unduplicated participants (EARS Items 2 and 3), we have heard that some states distinguish between programs based on the number of lessons/lesson lengths, while others consider the content of the lessons to be what makes them a different experience for a participant. Determining how you will describe the Cooking Matters online programs ultimately dictates how you will track unduplicated participants. 

Here is a scenario to help illustrate this issue.  Beth’s son attends a local Head Start that serves as a host organization for Cooking Matters. Beth is very involved and over the length of the federal fiscal year, she participates in the following activities: 

• One single session Cooking Matters at the Store tour that lasted 65 minutes. 
• One single session of Cooking Matters at Home (Hack Your Snack) that lasted 35 minutes. 
• A two-week Cooking Matters at Home series on saving money (Money-Saver Alert and Making Recipes Work for You), where each lesson lasted 60 minutes. 
• A five-week Cooking Matters at Home series focusing on feeding young kids (Kids Say Yes to Fruits and Vegetables, The Family Kitchen, No More Mealtime Madness, Drink to Your Health, and Feeding in the First Year, where each lesson lasted 60 minutes. 

Q: Can we only count Beth one time as an unduplicated participant? 

A: Different states will give different answers! 

If your state decides that content is what differentiates your programs: 

• She attended nine different lessons and could be counted nine times 
• If Cooking Matters at Home with its eight lessons is considered one curriculum by your state, then it was just two different curricula, and she could be counted twice. 
• If your state is counting by the programs used to deliver the content then she could be counted four time, once for each activity grouping where she is engaging with unique content 

If format (or, “dosage”) is how your state differentiates programs, it would be structured like this, and she could be counted as a participant four times: 

• One single session, 61-90 minutes 
• One single session, 31-60 minutes 
• One series of 2-4 sessions, 31-60 minutes 
• One series of 5-9 sessions, 31-60 minutes 

There are a few other considerations we need to share: 

• The demographic data that you need to provide for SNAP-Ed has historically been generated from the participant surveys. Currently the Cooking Matters at Home survey is not designed for series use (i.e., it is not in a pre-post format that allows you to easily collect demographic information from participants, whether or not they attend multiple lessons). Additionally, the return rate on implementing the survey as part of an online experience is proving to be quite low. We strongly encourage you to consult with your state agency on acceptable alternative strategies for reporting demographic data. 
• The Cooking Mattes at Home survey is the same for all eight lesson options, which means the intention to change data cannot be tied to particular content. 

If you included Cooking Matters at Home lesson series in your SNAP-Ed plan, we strongly urge you to get the clarity described above, and then consider some of these options for recording the series in Salesforce: 

We have added a "program session" function in the other educational activity program record type to help schedule a bundle of Cooking Matters at Home sessions that are meant offered as a series with the same participants expected to come for each session.  The new session attendees field allows you to indicate how many new participants came to each of a session bundled in a series, for use when you are expecting the same participants for each session (but may still have new participants joining part way through).  

Guidance on when to create a single other educational activity record with multiple program sessions nested within that record, versus when to create multiple other educational activity records, each with their own single program session: