MANNA FoodBank's Director Kitty Schaller retires
Posted 06/29/10
ASHEVILLE – Under Kitty Schaller’s leadership, MANNA FoodBank increased its warehouse space as well as its advocacy – all to make sure people in Western North Carolina had food in their cupboards.
But after 11 years of raising the issue of hunger in WNC, Schaller is stepping down as of spring 2011. A search committee will find Schaller’s replacement. The board plans to seek input from the community and member agencies before putting together a list of attributes the new executive director needs to have.
“She’s a passionate, articulate spokesperson for MANNA and for those who are in need for food,” said Marsha Bromberg, president-elect of the board of directors. “She certainly understood the issues and could articulate them to the community in an engaging way. She was able to draw other people in.”
Like her predecessor, Toby Ives, who retired in 2004, Schaller believes it is time for new leadership. She is looking forward to visiting family in coastal Maine, or spending time with her children and grandchildren. Up to now, the job has been a “hugely consuming job.”
“I think it’s been a good run, but it’s time for somebody who is younger with more energy,” Schaller said. “It’s the right time for me and the right time for MANNA. It is a time when MANNA is stronger, more hopeful and more determined.”
Bromberg believes it’s a good time for the nonprofit since it is in “great shape” in terms of finances, staff, volunteers and board members. “For all of those reasons,” Bromberg said, “she’s leaving a very strong organization.”
Supporters and board members describe Schaller as “extremely knowledgeable,” a self starter who takes initiative and who believes in bringing the mission of MANNA food bank to life.
“I feel like our community will be losing a strong advocate,” said Allison Jordan, executive director of the Emma Resource Center. Emma Family Resource Center operates a food pantry for residents of the Emma community. The majority of its food comes from MANNA. “I think that Kitty will be a loss to the agency, it will be a loss to the community.”
Schaller has spent more than 30 years working to end hunger through advocacy or fundraising. She has spent the last 28 years working with members of Feeding America, the nation’s food bank network, including 17 years with Community Food Bank of New Jersey in 1982.
Under Schaller’s leadership, MANNA embarked on a $1.4 million capital campaign to purchase its volunteer center and warehouse. The opportunity to purchase the warehouse next to the administration building was unexpected, but in the long run it made distributing food more efficient.
Additional accomplishments include:
- Food Nutrition Services, or food stamps, outreach has become important for the nonprofit because it alleviates the stress on individuals who are frequent visitors at pantries and on member agencies throughout the region. It will continue to identify and sign up people who are eligible for these benefits further out in the region.
- Together with board member Terry Latanich and several other people from agencies statewide, they are one step closer to making the state association of food banks a “strong presence” in Raleigh. The group is interviewing candidates for its executive director position. The association will have an impact on how much money the state allocates to food banks statewide, including WNC.
“She’s really been one of the driving forces,” Latanich said. “She’s one of the founding mothers, if you will, of the state association. She will be missed, but she’ll leave quite a legacy with the work that she’s done at the association.”
As a college student at Iowa State University, Schaller studied food science. She jokes that she ended up in a very different part of the industry.
For years, she tried very hard to avoid a community nutrition class but she ended up taking it her senior year. It involved visiting new mothers. That class changed her life. During those visits, she saw there was often no food in the homes.
“And it makes a really powerful impression.
“There are still many mountains to climb, but I think people have begun to see that it is so much more than a charitable response,” she said. “It does take the government. It does take the community. It takes people rolling up their sleeves and putting on their thinking caps, too, to make real change.”
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