Food Rescue Engagement Manager

Food Rescue Engagement Managers are responsible for executing the Food Rescue engagement strategy developed in coordination with the Director of Food Rescue Initiatives. Food Rescue Engagement Managers manage day-to-day relationships with a network of nearly 400 retail donors throughout Cook County and work collaboratively across departments to ensure that the partners who participate in the Community Food Rescue program experience successful relationships with retail donors.

The person in this role will need to work diplomatically to ensure that the needs of partners and retailers are effectively represented in conversations with retail donors.

• Manage a portfolio of donors actively engaged in the Community Food Rescue program.
• Perform quarterly stewardship visits to donors within their assigned portfolio to ensure continued engagement with the Community Food Rescue program. At each visit, provide store-level donation reports that outline the performance of each store department to identify gaps in donation programming.
• Provide assigned donors with a monthly donation report summarizing donations from stores under their banner, in collaboration with teammates who may manage overlapping portfolios.
• When needed, train store donation teams on their company’s and the Food Depository’s donation guidelines to maintain a high standard of food quality and food safety.
• Develop strong working relationships with store teams and corporate leaders to improve acquisition outcomes and ensure a high level of customer service. Attend district meetings, where appropriate.
• Visit lapsed donors to rebuild relationships and reengage them in the Community Food Rescue program.
• Maintain a database of prospective donors and develop strategies to educate them on the benefits of donating through the Community Food Rescue program, prioritizing donors accessible to partner organizations in areas of high unmet need.
• Review and analyze donor performance, providing a monthly report to the Director of Food Rescue Initiatives categorizing donor performance to prioritize deployment of Food Rescue engagement resources. Work collaboratively across teams to develop strategies for improvement of donor performance within low-performing stores.
• Support Meal Connect reporting for partner organizations connected to donors within their portfolio, in collaboration with the Partner Relations team.
• Support Food Rescue activities at select food industry trade shows:
  • Serve as the primary onsite contact for show staff.
  • Coordinate with the Volunteer Experience team to recruit volunteers and manage volunteers on the day of the event.
  • Coordinate with Transportation, Ops, and partner organizations to manage logistics and equipment for the event.

• Collaborate with the Community Impact team to guide partners through the process of onboarding to Community Food Rescue programs, ensuring they are well‑positioned to perform Community Food Rescue.
• Working in conjunction with the Training and Compliance team, curate a calendar of regularly scheduled Community Food Rescue trainings for partners interested in joining the program, or for those in need of retraining. With the Training and Compliance team, optimize training offerings in alignment with team goals.
• Working alongside the Procurement team data analyst and the REBA team, identify opportunities to evaluate partners’ performance in the Community Food Rescue program.
• Oversee Meal Connect reporting for partner organizations who participate in the Community Food Rescue program. Lead cross‑departmental collaboration efforts to ensure timely and accurate reporting each month, working closely with the Community Impact team to troubleshoot missing reporting.

• Support the development and implementation of the Food Depository’s Food Sourcing Strategic Plan, in collaboration with the Procurement team.
• Manage the Starbucks Food Share program, including:
  • Act as the liaison between the Food Depository, Feeding America, the 3PL provider, and Starbucks to ensure smooth program execution.
  • Coordinate with Ops and Supply Chain to ensure consistent flow of product from…