Matt Unger will step down June 30 as CEO of the Des Moines Area Religious Council after leading the organization through unprecedented growth in food insecurity and navigating the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization announced today.

Unger became the first layperson to lead the interfaith organization, which has a network of 14 food pantry sites, multiple mobile food pantry locations and a home delivery program.

Before joining DMARC in 2019, Unger served at the Food Bank of Iowa. Before that he spent more than a dozen years working on political campaigns and in state government, including serving as chief of staff for then-Lt. Gov. Patty Judge.

During his tenure, Unger kept DMARC’s doors open as he managed the pandemic and the growth in food insecurity that followed, and led the “Food Today, Change Tomorrow” capital campaign for the expansion and relocation of DMARC to its new facilities at 100 Army Post Road. The project brought its warehouse operations, administrations and DMARC’s first-ever on-site food pantry under one roof.

In a conversation with the Business Record, Unger said his decision to step down is based in part on a philosophy he has about the need for a change in leadership every few years to assure fresh perspectives and ideas are introduced.

“Some of that is born out having spent 12 years of my career in politics and getting used to change every two or four years,” he said. “I really believe we miss a lot of opportunities sometimes to evolve an organization and be able to get fresh perspectives and fresh eyes.”

Unger said Des Moines does a great job of developing people and training them to be leaders.

“But then we don’t have roles for them to fill,” he said, adding that too often people stay in leadership roles too long.

“So my commitment to myself and the commitment I made to the organization was that I want the experience, so it’s going to be a five- or six-year thing for me,” Unger said.

And that six years has been full of changes to meet the evolving challenges of the organization as it navigated the pandemic and the surge in food insecurity that followed.

When Unger joined DMARC, it helped nearly 43,000 people each year. In 2024, DMARC assisted more than 75,500 people.

The pandemic arrived just months after Unger joined DMARC, and he said the initial challenge was to continue to provide food to people when everything was shutting down.

“You can’t provide food to people remotely very well, so it had to be an in-person proposition,” he said.

He said DMARC relied heavily on its mobile system to meet those needs during the pandemic.

According to Unger, most of the people needing assistance were new to food insecurity and didn’t know how the assistance programs worked or were in that “cyclical cycle of poverty that they are kind of always going to have a need for a little bit of existence.”

Many people who had relied on food pantries before the pandemic started receiving direct payments, emergency SNAP payments and higher unemployment benefits and didn’t need food pantries as much.

“People actually had what they needed to be able to get by with the other income they had,” Unger said.

He said he is disappointed that “we haven’t capitalized on looking at that and how everybody was in an at least surviving space and allowed some people to thrive and not capitalizing on lessons we could have learned to redesign some of these programs that they’re really doing what they are designed to do.”

But when those pandemic benefits began to end, “that’s when everything took off for us and took off fast,” he said.

DMARC will begin a search for Unger’s successor immediately with plans to announce a new CEO in mid-April. Unger will work with his successor in the interim to assure a smooth transition before he steps down at the end of June.

“For Matt, it’s clear this role has always been about more than just what goes on inside these four walls,” DMARC board of directors President Rachel Collier Murdock said in a news release. “Under Matt’s leadership, this organization has found tremendous success in meeting the basic needs of so many of our neighbors during an incredibly strenuous period.”

According to the release, under Unger’s leadership DMARC has continued to advocate for system-based changes and policies that shorten lines at food pantries. DMARC has also been a leader in promoting food and nutrition programs and advocated for the passage of summer food aid for children.

“Together, DMARC’s network of food pantries has expanded access to food at a time when financial resources are strained,” said DMARC board President-elect Lendie Follett in the release. “Rising food costs and our day-to-day operations have been challenging. Yet still, our community continues to step up to meet the need. We are so grateful to Matt for leading by example and setting our organization up for success in the future.”

Unger said he’s not sure what’s next in his career.

“I would like to do something completely different,” he said. “My whole career has been dedicated to service, and I can’t see not in some way still being involved and trying to make the world a better place. Finding problems and fixing them. I don’t know what that looks like yet. I would like to be able to take a little time off and think about what that might be.”

Unger said one area of DMARC’s work that is often overshadowed by its work on food insecurity is the work the nonprofit does in interfaith diversity.

“The one thing that doesn’t get talked about much is faith diversity and it’s probably the most common diversity we have,” he said. “I think we’re the only game in town for helping people understand different faith traditions.”

He said DMARC has up to 200 faith partners from as many as eight different world faiths.

“They have stark differences in the things they believe, but the sort of common thread that connects them is helping our neighbor and they’ve chosen to focus on that thread that connects them instead of the things that divide them,” Unger said. “If we could just get our politics to function that same way, I think we could really get to some of the systemic things that need to change to solve some of these issues.”

As he prepares to step down, Unger said he’s not sure what the future of food insecurity will look like, and that he is worried that no matter what the message is or what efforts are made, a true change won’t come until more people are affected.

“I think it will change when more people experience it firsthand,” he said. “I think if we continue on this same trajectory people are going to start having this hit a lot closer to home and they’re going to start asking more questions and understand the issue a little bit better. I wish we didn’t have to wait for that to happen, but it seems like that is usually the catalyst for change.”