Career Opportunity

Feeding Southwest Virginia seeks a mission-rooted, relational, and strategic leader to serve as its next President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The ideal candidate will be a visible ambassador and confident fundraiser who can honor a remarkable legacy while strengthening internal culture, empowering a talented leadership team, deepening partnerships with external stakeholders, and guiding a complex, multi-site hunger-relief organization into its next chapter.

Feeding Southwest Virginia’s Mission: Nourish neighbors. Engage community partners. Develop solutions to address food insecurity.

Reporting Structure: The CEO reports to a board of 15 directors and leads an executive team including the Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Development Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Director of Human Resources, and Executive Affairs Director.

Total Staff and Budget: Approximately 65 staff members and an FY2026 operating budget of approximately $7.92 million.

Compensation: The salary range is $215,000-245,000. Feeding Southwest Virginia offers employer-subsidized health and dental insurance, basic vision coverage, optional enhanced vision and supplemental insurance, employer-paid life and disability coverage, and access to a 401(k) retirement plan.

Working Environment/Location: Based in Salem, Virginia, Feeding Southwest Virginia operates through around 350 agency partners across a 26-county, 9-city service area, with major distribution hubs in the Roanoke and Abingdon, Va. areas.

Key Responsibilities of the CEO

Strategic Vision, Mission Stewardship, and Regional Impact

• Work with the board, staff, and community partners to clarify a next-chapter vision that builds on Feeding Southwest Virginia's trusted mission and success while positioning the organization as a regional leader in food security, health, and community-based solutions.
• Translate the organization’s strategic plan into clear priorities, measurable outcomes, and disciplined decisions about what to start, stop, scale, or strengthen.
• Advance equitable, dignified access to nutritious and culturally responsive food for our neighbors in need across rural and urban communities throughout our service area.
• Balance innovation with practicality, ensuring new initiatives are mission-aligned, sustainable, funded, measurable, and operationally feasible.

External Leadership, Fundraising, and Advocacy

• Serve as the organization’s lead ambassador and advocate with donors, civic leaders, public officials, volunteers, partner agencies, food donors, health systems, media, and Feeding America and statewide food bank networks.
• Strengthen diverse revenue streams through major donor cultivation, broad-based grassroots giving, corporate and foundation partnerships, planned giving, grants, public funding, and board fundraising engagement.
• Strengthen engagement with former board members, donors, and community advocates while building new relationships across the service area.
• Advocate for public policies and national and regional solutions that address food insecurity, nutrition program stability, rural access, health outcomes, and the economic drivers of hunger.

Partnerships, Programs, and Systems Change

• Deepen strategic partnerships with healthcare, education, workforce development, local food systems, government, peer nonprofits, and around 350 agency partners.
• Support a broad program portfolio including partner distribution, mobile and community distributions, children's and senior programs, Healthy Pantry, Food Is Medicine/Food Farmacy, Mobile Marketplace, Hunger & Help Line, disaster relief, and the Community Solutions Center.
• Move selected partnerships from transactional to transformational by convening partners, sharing data, strengthening agency capacity, and aligning around broader regional outcomes.
• Champion data-informed evaluation that measures not only pounds distributed, but also access, dignity, health, partner strength, and program sustainability.
• Modernize systems, policies, and management practices applying industry best practices.

Internal Leadership, Culture, and Talent Development

• Build trust through accessible, transparent, and consistent communication with staff across all sites.
• Empower and align the executive team, clarify decision rights and accountability, and promote cross-functional collaboration across departments.
• Strengthen middle-management capacity, succession planning, internal promotion pathways, and retention of institutional knowledge.
• Cultivate a culture that honors the organization's family-like commitment.

Operations, Financial Stewardship, and Board Partnership

• Ensure strong fiscal, compliance, technology, facilities, risk management, and operational systems for a logistics-heavy, federally funded, multi-site enterprise.
• Partner with the leadership team to manage food sourcing, warehousing, distribution, reimbursement timing, federal and state funding streams, and program economics.
• Maintain and strengthen audit-ready financial practices, operating reserves, donor stewardship, and data discipline.
• Work in close partnership with the Board of Directors to advance governance, strategy, fiduciary oversight, CEO support and accountability, board composition, and board engagement in fundraising and advocacy.

The Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal CEO candidate will possess the following qualifications:

• Demonstrated commitment to hunger relief, rural communities, poverty alleviation, public health, or a related human services mission, with the ability to understand Appalachian and Southwest Virginia identity and the lived realities of the neighbors we serve.
• Senior executive leadership experience in a nonprofit, food bank, health or human services organization, community development organization, public-sector entity, or similarly complex, mission-driven enterprise.
• Successful fundraising and resource development experience, including innovating new revenue streams and maintaining ongoing relationships with major donors, institutional funders, corporate partners, public funding, planned giving, and Board fundraising.
• Track record of effective advocacy for the candidate’s organization, securing both awareness and support at the community, state and/or federal tiers of government.
• Exceptional relationship-building skills; visible, humble, politically astute, and able to build trust with staff, donors, partner agencies, volunteers, public officials, and community leaders.
• Strong financial and operational acumen, including experience with budgets, compliance, risk, data-informed decision-making, and geographically dispersed operations.
• Proven change leadership and culture-building skills, including the ability to listen deeply, communicate transparently, empower staff, build accountability, and modernize without diminishing legacy.
• Collaborative systems thinker who sees the mission of food banking as part of a larger ecosystem of health, education, workforce, transportation, economic mobility, public policy, and community well-being.
• Alignment with Feeding Southwest Virginia's mission and values of trust, effectiveness, and innovation.

About Feeding Southwest Virginia

Feeding Southwest Virginia is a trusted regional leader in hunger relief, serving 26 counties and 9 cities from distribution centers in Salem and Abingdon, VA. and through a Community Solutions Center in Roanoke, VA. Affiliated with Feeding America, the organization functions as a hub for around 350 agency partners, including pantries, meal programs, mobile distributions, schools, health partners, food donors, volunteers, and community-based organizations.

With a clear mission to nourish neighbors, engage community partners, and develop solutions to address food insecurity, Feeding Southwest Virginia has evolved from traditional food distribution toward a broader and more inclusive role in nutrition, health, and community-based solutions. Recent work includes Food Is Medicine/Food Farmacy partnerships, mobile access strategies for rural communities, fresh and healthy food distribution, senior and child nutrition programs, disaster relief, and partner capacity-building. The organization distributed approximately 20.5 million pounds of food in FY2025, including more than 5.4 million pounds of fresh produce, and is positioned to deepen its impact in the next chapter.

Want to know more? Visit https://feedingswva.org/.

Benefits

Eligible employees receive a total compensation package that includes employer-subsidized health and dental insurance, basic vision coverage, optional enhanced vision and supplemental insurance, employer-paid life and disability coverage, and access to a 401(k) retirement plan. Feeding Southwest Virginia also provides generous paid time off, paid holidays, bereavement leave, and other savings benefits that support employees’ financial security, health, and work-life balance.

Feeding Southwest Virginia is an equal opportunity employer and embraces a philosophy that recognizes and values diversity. Our goal is to attract, develop, retain, and promote a talented diverse workforce in a culture where all employees will contribute to their fullest potential.

How To Apply

Join Feeding Southwest Virginia at a pivotal moment and help lead a bold next chapter of innovation, partnership, and lasting impact for neighbors across Southwest Virginia.

To apply, click on the link for this position at https://jobs.armstrongmcguire.com/. You will see instructions for uploading your compelling cover letter, resume, and salary requirements. Cover letters should be responsive to the mission of Feeding Southwest Virginia as well as the stated responsibilities and qualifications.

Please provide all requested information to be considered. In case of any technical problems, contact talent@armstrongmcguire.com. No phone calls, please, and no applications will be accepted by email or directly from third-party posting sites.