Two Weeks before Firing Bisch, Executive Team Voted No Confidence in Yolo Food Bank Board of Directors

The Davis Community was stunned to learn this week of the firing of Michael Bisch as Executive Director of the Yolo Food Bank.  A letter has now surfaced dated May 20, about two weeks before the termination, where Bisch along with seven members of the executive team signed a letter of no confidence in the board.

Here is the letter in its entirety:

We, the Executive Team of Yolo Food Bank (Food Bank), have composed this letter to express our profound disappointment and distress with the current Board of Directors of Yolo Food Bank.

As members of the Food Bank’s Executive Team, we are deeply committed to ensuring that the food insecure residents of Yolo County are represented by leaders who have an unwavering dedication to building an equitable and sustainable local food system.

We submit this letter only after much discussion, as an expression of our “Vote of No Confidence” in the Food Bank Board of Directors and their ability to function as the volunteer leaders of the Food Bank. We understand the severity of this decision and did not arrive at it hastily.

The majority of the members on this Board participated in the near demise of the Food Bank in 2018. It took an extraordinary staff-led effort, including a renewed successful 5.1 million dollar second capital campaign, to save the Food Bank. In recent years, we’ve navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, expanded services three-fold to serve additional communities facing food insecurity as a result of the pandemic, professionalized our workforce, raised staff compensation to living wages, grew the Food Bank donor base, and expanded the Food Bank’s influence and community support.

While the aforementioned has been successful, more recently, we have been disheartened and have had grave concerns regarding the Board of Directors’ professionalism and leadership especially regarding trust, integrity, collaboration, decision making, and vision. The most appalling activities include the Board of Directors’ lack of self governance over conflicts of interest, as well as the Boards’ denigration of staff members’ reputation in communication with community members and elected officials.

A number of board members’ decisions, comments, and actions have been utterly at odds with the organization’s mission and values, and the interest of those we serve. The Board of Directors has shown they are not able to refrain from interfering with the necessary Food Bank operations by placing the interests and personal relationships of individual board members above feeding our community.

The Executive Team has created many opportunities to course correct the relationship between the Board of Directors and Executive Team through ongoing board training and workshops. The Executive Team has failed to see any change. At the most recent Board of Directors meeting on April 27th, some members of the Executive Team witnessed tremendous regression of basic etiquette, respect, curiosity, and trust. In addition to this regression, the Board of Directors broke several Yolo Food Bank policies in their transgressions and failed to uphold our organizational values which are: bold, collaborative, compassionate, creative, curious, genuine, grateful, introspective, nimble, resourceful, visionary.

For the reasons outlined above, we believe the Board of Directors lack a sincere desire to seek meaningful change in improving food security in Yolo County. And we remain concerned about Board retaliation against the Food Bank’s staff members.

In closing, we would like to remind you that we are executive team members of one of the most successful organizations in Yolo County. Our steadfast dedication to the people we serve gives us courage to write this very difficult letter. We implore you to fulfill your duty by working with the Food Bank’s law firm to expeditiously replace the current board with a new board so that we can continue our mission uninterrupted.

Signed by Michael Bisch, Steve Loya, Corkey Mapalo, Maria Segoviano, Valerie Dennis, Katie Schroeder, Genevieve Pyeatt, and Zane Hatfield