The Laura Lester Legacy Fund

For 13 years, Laura Lester has been a driving force behind Alabama's fight against hunger. The Laura Lester Legacy Fund was created to honor that service and carry it forward.

When she became Feeding Alabama's founding CEO, the organization was a single part-time staffer with a bold idea. Today, thanks to her vision and relentless work, Feeding Alabama is a $5 million organization that has secured more than $40 million in funding for food banks across the state — resources that have put food on tables in every corner of Alabama.

But Laura's impact can't be measured in dollars alone.

She built something rarer and more durable: a network that works together. Under her leadership, Alabama became a national model for stretching every hunger-relief resource as far as possible, from disaster response to Summer EBT. She insisted that agencies, schools, food banks, and community organizations stop working in silos and start working as one.

A Legacy of Wins

Her fingerprints are on nearly every major anti-hunger win in recent Alabama history:

• Bringing the Summer Food Service Program, CACFP afterschool meals, and the Child and Summer Food Program to families statewide
• Advancing Community Eligibility Provision and Summer EBT implementation across Alabama
• Co-founding and co-chairing Hunger Free Alabama and helping launch End Child Hunger in Alabama
• Creating statewide workgroups spanning SNAP, Child Nutrition, WIC, and Summer EBT that unite nearly 50 partners across state agencies, schools, and community organizations

As Laura retires, we have a chance to ensure the work she started never slows down.

The Laura Lester Legacy Fund will honor her extraordinary service by sustaining the advocacy, coordination, and capacity-building that defined her tenure — so that Alabama continues to lead, continues to collaborate, and continues to feed its neighbors for generations to come.

Laura gave 13 years to building a stronger, better-fed Alabama. Will you help protect that legacy?

Every gift ensures her life's work continues long after her final day in office.