Feeding Southwest Virginia Case Study

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: STRATEGIC PLANNING

Feeding Southwest Virginia

Celebrating four decades in the fight against hunger, Feeding Southwest Virginia looked to the future by placing emphasis on strategic priorities, leadership succession, and long-term organizational sustainability of the organization.

Challenge

For the last four decades Feeding Southwest Virginia’s mission has remained the same: to eliminate hunger in the region.

Still under the leadership of its visionary and founder, today FSWVA provides over $33 million worth of food and grocery related products, which are channeled through a network of 380 partner feeding programs in their 26-county, 9 city service area.

As Feeding Southwest Virginia proudly commemorated 40 years of fighting hunger, they also contemplated the strategic priorities of the organization, leadership succession, and long-term organizational sustainability.

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We found opportunities to help through:

Leadership Development

Organizational Development

Results

Developed a strategic plan that clearly articulates Feeding Southwest Virginia’s mission, guiding principles, core values, and specific goals, with focused strategies to achieve them
Conducted board training with a focus on best practices, roles and responsibilities, and the specific activities within the board life cycle
Created a succession plan to address the transition of a long-time founder and tenured leadership along with a process for retaining and developing high-potential, high-performing team members

Approach

Our multi-step process began with developing an organizational assessment based on stakeholder conversations and surveys, environmental scan, and planning sessions with Feeding Southwest Virginia board and staff leadership. The information gathered through these efforts was used to provide recommendations to enhance organizational capacity, sustainability, and effectiveness. Working with the strategic planning committee, we then developed strategic priorities and initiatives to achieve them.

With the founder still at the helm to provide support and institutional knowledge, we then embarked upon a succession planning process to prepare for the next generation of leadership. This work included conversations with current leadership team members and managers, and the implementation of best practices and tools to identify, develop, and retain talent within the organization.

To support the full adoption of this work, we provided training to the board that clarified their roles and responsibilities and provided guidance for board member identification, recruitment, engagement, assessment, and succession.

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Our expertise in these fields led us to success.

Organizational Assessment

Strategic Planning

Succession Planning

Retreats, Training & Coaching

Execution

Equipped with a clear focus and path forward, Feeding Southwest Virginia leaders set out to implement their strategic plan and utilize new people management processes to sustain the pipeline of their most valuable resource. Our facilitation of and partnership in this process allowed Feeding Southwest Virginia to leverage their expertise and focus on what they do best: nourish neighbors, engage community partners, develop solutions to address food insecurity, and build a robust infrastructure that is equipped to support their work.

“Armstrong McGuire worked with us to complete our new strategic plan. It was great to work with two experts who actually know our industry and the challenges that food banks face. Armstrong McGuire, you rock!”

Pamela Irvine

CEO

Unlock Your Potential

The need to set your strategic direction or address the transition of a long-term leader should not be a daunting event for your organization. With expertise in strategic planning, proactive processes around succession and talent development, and strong governance practices, our team can help guide this crucial work so you and your team can keep focused on serving your mission.