Helping Harvest Fresh Food Bank has announced the release of its Long-Range Strategic Plan 2026-2030, a comprehensive roadmap designed to guide the food bank’s growth, impact and sustainability through the end of the decade. The plan, developed over a series of strategic planning sessions with the Helping Harvest Board of Directors and leadership team earlier this year, outlines core strategies that will shape how the organization serves its communities, strengthens its operations and grows its support base across Berks and Schuylkill counties.
The strategic plan reflects a sharpened focus on Helping Harvest’s mission to provide nutritious food to people facing hunger in our communities, and a renewed vision in which every person facing food insecurity has access to the food they need. Its long-range strategies address the full scope of the organization’s work:
Targeted and relational community service: Helping Harvest will become more intentional in how it serves and impacts different communities within its service territory, beginning with a Service Area Assessment to identify community needs and ensure partners have the capacity to meet them.
Supply chain efficiency and effectiveness: The food bank will conduct a comprehensive process review, incorporating LEAN supply chain strategies, to strengthen logistics, inventory management and distribution operations across the entire Helping Harvest network.
Stewardship as a defining value: The organization will formalize and launch a comprehensive Stewardship Program to deepen relationships with financial and food donors, volunteers, agency partners, board members, public officials and employees, recognizing that the people behind the mission are as important as the mission itself.
Maximizing the Community Kitchen: Opened in April 2025, the Helping Harvest Community Kitchen has already produced more than 100,000 nutritious heat-and-eat meals. The strategic plan calls for fully leveraging this unique asset, developing targeted nutritional interventions for specific populations and exploring expanded meal service to shelters and congregate meal programs.
Building a culture of storytelling: The plan places a significant emphasis on marketing, communications and community engagement, including a new website, expanded video content, an annual report and deeper outreach to schools, colleges and volunteer groups across both counties.
“As we look ahead to 2030, this plan reflects both where we are and where we know we can go,” said Helping Harvest President Jay Worrall. “We have an extraordinary team, a powerful new asset in our Community Kitchen and a community that has shown us time and again that it believes in our mission. This plan gives us a clear path to do more—to reach more neighbors, serve them better and build an organization that is strong and sustainable for years to come. Hunger is a solvable problem, and we are committed to being an innovative leader in solving it here in Berks and Schuylkill counties.”
“This strategic plan represents the collective vision of a Board and leadership team that is deeply committed to Helping Harvest’s mission and to the communities and neighbors we serve,” said Helping Harvest Board Chairwoman Jeanne Boyer Porter. “We have seen tremendous growth over the past several years, and this plan gives us a clear, thoughtful framework to build on that momentum responsibly. I am excited about what the next five years will bring for this organization, as well as our communities and neighbors.”
The planning process included an online SWOT survey of the Board of Directors and a series of in-person planning sessions held in March and April 2026. The resulting plan identifies six key issue areas: growth and scale, funding and sustainability, operations and infrastructure, leadership continuity and community awareness and partnerships, and establishes specific 2026-2027 operational objectives and action steps for each strategy.