Diana Aviv, one of the country’s highest-profile nonprofit leaders, said Friday she has left the anti-hunger charity Feeding America after a little more than two years as CEO. She joined the organization in late 2015 after 12 years leading Independent Sector, the nation’s major advocacy association for nonprofits and foundations.
Ms. Aviv said in an interview with The Chronicle that the departure was voluntary. She declined to say when she notified the board of her decision. In a statement released late Friday afternoon, the organization described her departure as “effective immediately.” Keith Monda, chair of the charity’s board, could not be immediately reached for comment.
In the statement, the Board of Directors wished Ms. Aviv well and said the organization remains committed to ending hunger in the United States.
“Feeding America has an extraordinary group of leaders who will step up to fulfill the organization’s mission and our new strategy,” Mr. Monda said in the statement. “We will use this period of transition to advance the important work we do in communities across the country.”
Big Demands
Ms. Aviv told The Chronicle that the reasons for her departure were largely personal. The job includes extraordinary demands, she said, including extensive travel. She noted that she lives in Washington, and Feeding America’s national office is in Chicago.
She described the top leadership team and the board as a “first-rate group of people.”
“I think that they are positioned to do great things, and I am very supportive of them,” Ms. Aviv said, but added that she wants to move in a different direction.
‘Not a Fix-Me-Up Situation’
Ms. Aviv started in the CEO job at the anti-hunger charity in October 2015. It is one of the biggest nonprofits in terms of fundraising — it was fifth on The Chronicle’s 2017 ranking of charities that raise money from private sources, with $2.3 billion raised, more than a 10 percent increase over a year earlier. Most of the donations are in the form of food that the network distributes nationwide.
Previously, Ms. Aviv spent 12 years as the top lobbyist for nonprofits, as president of Independent Sector, a national nonprofit membership organization in Washington.
When she started at Feeding America, Ms. Aviv said, she knew it was a well-functioning organization.
“It was not a fix-me-up situation,” she said.
Among the things the charity already did well, she said, was building and sustaining relationships with corporate donors.
Opportunities for Change
But there are big opportunities for Feeding America to attract more individual donors, she said, adding that she worked to make major-gift fundraising a priority, including hiring a new chief development officer with a “big vision.”
She also focused on bringing in more donations online, she said.
In an interview with The Chronicle a year ago, Ms. Aviv said she planned to get Feeding America actively involved in fighting government policies that could hurt its mission, and she said she expected the Trump administration to bring new challenges. She won praise from Capitol Hill aides for her policy work at Independent Sector. But while there she also earned a reputation as a tough and demanding boss, and some nonprofit advocates criticized her for focusing advocacy too narrowly on protecting charitable deductions when big federal spending issues were at stake.
Ms. Aviv has been outspoken about the need for nonprofits to change. When she left Independent Sector, she told The Chronicle that nonprofits must adapt to demographic and technology changes or risk ending up in the “ash heap.”
Asked about possible next steps professionally, Ms. Aviv said that she is not done working. She has not stopped working since she started at age 22, she said, noting she will take a “brief break” to consider what’s to follow.
“But I am very excited about the possibilities. This is a very challenging time for the charitable sector. There are so many ways to add value,” Ms. Aviv said. “But my deep, deep commitment is to social justice.”