A native of North Dakota, Melissa Cherney took over as CEO of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank in August, 2025. She replaced longtime CEO Andrew Schiff, who’d been at the helm for nearly two decades. Cherney has plenty of experience, having previously served as CEO of the Great Plains Food Bank.
During her brief tenure, Cherney has been forced to help the Food Bank respond to a significant increase in food insecurity and a drop in donations. Her own experience with hunger has fueled a strong passion for her work. She spoke with Ocean State Media political reporter Ian Donnis about that passion and the challenges of serving the community at a time when need is high and resources are scarce.
Interview highlights
On increasing food insecurity in Rhode Island
Melissa Cherney: I have been here now seven months. When I started in Rhode Island, the food bank was serving about 89,000 individuals. Now we’re over 102,000 every single month. We have jumped that high in just a few months. That’s a lot of additional people. We’re seeing it primarily because of the SNAP changes. Change to SNAP benefits doesn’t mean that people stop eating. It might mean that they’re getting less benefits than they have before. It may mean that they have been cut off of benefits, but they still need food. And so they’re turning to us and they’re turning to our network of member agencies in droves.
We’re doing everything that we can to keep up and we now see ourselves as sort of the safety net of the federal safety net. And I wish I could tell you that we’re able to keep up, but we’re not. As food banks, we are doing more and serving more people with less resources. So we’re getting less food donated than we ever have before. We’re stretching, making sure that no one is going hungry, that they’re getting some food, but that’s getting harder and harder for us to do every day. So we’ve really had to evolve how we work.
On the reduction in food donations
Cherney: Instead of relying primarily on donated product, which is what we used to do, we’re purchasing food, and that’s a new trend in food banks. We’re purchasing about 40% of our inventory. It’s certainly more expensive to do that work, but it’s also an opportunity for what we think of as hunger prevention. How do we invest in our local farmers, our local fishers, make sure our local economy is doing well, so that we can keep them out of our lines as well?
On the rise in food prices
Cherney: You know, every time I like to think we’re going to go back to how it was, we never do. I’ve been talking with my team and even with within Feeding America, we are really learning to accept that this is probably the new normal every single day. We’re hearing people’s stories and there’s one that sticks with me that recently happened. It was a senior who is living independently and has a dog at home and they get Meals on Wheels. They also are able to go to their local food pantry and get food. There are times when, at the end of the month, there may not be enough food to stretch.
The phone call I got was from a woman who said, “You know, I just got my Meals on Wheels. I don’t have any dog food in the house. And so I shared my meal with my best friend.” That’s her companion and her friend. We don’t often think about how caring people take care of others before themselves, and that’s a reminder to us that people are going through tough times and they’re making tough choices.
I also know that she was saying, “My medications says ‘Take with food.’ I don’t have food, so I’m not taking my medication.” When you hear those things, it breaks your heart, and I think that’s the call to action with everyone right now. If you can donate food, donate food. If you can, donate funds, donate funds. This is an issue that affects every single one of us every single day.
