Community Calendar Submission Guidelines & Instructions

Family Fun Twin Cities curates our calendar for families with children. To this end, we welcome submissions of events for families with kids. Inclusion in the family fun calendar is FREE for events that fit our mission. PLEASE READ OUR GUIDELINES BEFORE SUBMITTING AN EVENT. We have created these Community Calendar Submission Guidelines & Instructions to help explain our goals for this calendar. However, If an event is not right for our calendar, it may still be appropriate elsewhere on our site, feel free to contact us to ask. Our main goal is to connect families to fun around the Twin Cities.

Fill out the form at the bottom of this page or click the envelope icon to email Joy with calendar submissions. → .

Community Calendar Submission Guidelines

We reserve the right to decide what events are appropriate for inclusion. Our goal, in keeping with FFTC’s mission, is to provide families with the best options for affordable and fun activities to do together. By observing the usage by our readers and reviewing analytics, we have created the following guidelines to help us decide which calendar entries will best serve families:

1. Affordable. Our goal is to have mostly free and low cost events on this calendar. A good guideline is $7/pp. We will rarely share something on the calendar that costs over $10/pp. While these events interest our readers, they require more time to plan than the calendar affords. For events outside of this guideline, contact Gianna, and she can help you decide how to best share your event with our readers. →
2. Family Friendly. We require calendar entries to be events for the whole family. Drop off events and adult-only events don’t fit our mission. If you want to share these events with our readers, contact Gianna for our advertising packages. →
3. Simple. While we do share events that require registration, our readers may see your event too late to sign up. Contact Gianna if you would like to discuss other ways to share an event that requires pre-registration or tickets. →
4. One-Time Commitment. This calendar is also not the place to share events that require a long-term commitment, like classes or camps. However, we will share free preview classes as long as they fit our other parameters. We often share classes and camps in article formats.
5. No Purely Shopping Events. We do not include events that are purely shopping events. However, if the event includes elements of family fun – such as crafts for kids, story times, or educational elements, we will share at our own discretion. FFTC reserves the right to make the final call on these events based on our own experience as parents who have shopped with children. (See #7)
6. No Training Necessary. We do not include sporting events, such as races, that require some element of training to prepare. We do have a separate page for sporting and fitness events. Feel free to send them as a calendar submission, if appropriately family friendly, we’ll get them in the right place.
7. Kid-Friendly. If an event centers around alcohol, gambling or other adult-oriented activities, we ask that you sell the “kid-friendly” to us – so we can pass that information on to our readers. “Kids allowed” does not necessarily equal “family-friendly”. Remember kids are crazy, unpredictable, curious and energetic. Family-friendly means that is okay.
8. Theater Performances and Concerts. Please submit family-friendly performances. If appropriate, we will list them on our Performing Arts page and, if they meet calendar parameters 1-7, we will list them on the calendar as well.
9. Our policy on virtual events is evolving. As parents we are tired of virtual events and we believe the majority of our readers feel the same way. On the other hand, we’ve had some wonderful online opportunities over the last few years that we never would have imagined. We are limiting virtual events to exciting opportunities offered by local organizations and companies that also fit the first 7 submission guidelines.

Other Considerations

While we do everything we can to get all appropriate events on our calendar, sometimes, even when an event fits all our parameters, we are not able to get to it on time. Early requests that provide all the pertinent information help us out. Necessary information includes:

1. Event Title
2. Date
3. Start and End Times
4. Event Address.
5. Links are helpful for our use in case we need additional information.

What we Don’t Include:

1. Images: At this time, Google does not allow us to share images in our calendar. If you have an image to share, we could add it to your directory entry and link there.
2. Free Links: Because this is a public google calendar that anyone can download or copy, links outside our site are not part of our free entries. We do offer an upgraded package if you would like to add a ticket link or some other direct link. We think this is a fair policy given the amount of work that goes into maintaining this public calendar.