Sudbury Resident Wins The Greater Boston Food Bank Kip Tiernan Award

SUDBURY, MA — A Sudbury resident and longtime Greater Boston Food Bank booster has been awarded one of the nonprofit's highest awards. Dianne Bevin has served the food bank in a number of roles, from volunteering in the warehouse to organizing a charity golf tournament.

Here's more from the Greater Boston Food Bank:

The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB), the largest hunger-relief organization in New England, honored Sudbury resident Diane Bevan with the Kip Tiernan Award as part of its annual Partner Appreciation Awards.

The award, renamed this year after GBFB Founder Kip Tiernan, recognizes an individual or organization that demonstrates extraordinary leadership in philanthropic and human services and exemplifies GBFB’s mission through outstanding involvement, dedication, and leadership in working with others to help end hunger in the community.

Since 2003, GBFB’s Partner Appreciation Awards have celebrated the individuals and organizations who collaborate with the food bank to end hunger across Eastern Massachusetts. Awardees represent those who partnered with GBFB to advance its mission through food donations, volunteerism, advocacy, philanthropic support, and in-kind donations; empowering the 1 in 3 Massachusetts residents facing food insecurity in Eastern Massachusetts to access nutritious meals.

Bevan, who served as chair of GBFB’s Innovative Development Council (IDC), was honored for her unwavering leadership and support of GBFB since 1999. She has made a lasting impact on GBFB in several capacities, including leading the IDC and its members through the challenges of the pandemic, organizing fundraising efforts such as a women’s golf tournament and GBFB’s Thank-a-Thon, making donor calls, volunteering at the warehouse, and participating in a lifetime of charitable giving.

“To me there is no greater cause than ensuring that no one in Eastern Massachusetts goes hungry. Period,” said Diane Bevan. “GBFB is an amazing organization.”

This Kip Tiernan Award, previously known as the Founder’s Award, was renamed in honor of GBFB Founder Kip Tiernan, commemorating 50 years since she began distributing food out of the back of her station wagon in 1974 – an operation that would later become the wide-scale hunger-relief organization that is GBFB. In honor of Tiernan's life of selflessness and advocacy, this award celebrates a leader carrying out GBFB’s mission in her legacy.

A nationally renowned advocate and trailblazer, Tiernan felt called to a life of social justice and advocacy. In 1968, she left a comfortable life operating an advertising agency to dedicate herself to advocating for housing and hunger-relief across Greater Boston. She also founded Rosie’s Place, the nation’s first shelter dedicated to helping homeless women and their children.

Fifty years later, the face of hunger has changed considerably, but the underlying issue persists. While the state’s public awareness, legislative solutions and food distribution system have progressed tremendously, one-third of Massachusetts adults continue to struggle with food insecurity, and that number is on the rise. Even middle-income families are struggling to feed their families in an increasingly divided and inequitable socioeconomic landscape, as evidenced by the stark county- and identity-based disparities in hunger found in GBFB’s annual study on food access. GBFB expects sustained inequities in the next installment of its annual study, to be released later this spring.

In Tiernan’s memory, GBFB works with an array of partners in its mission to end hunger for all those facing food insecurity across Eastern Massachusetts, while championing the structural solutions needed to ease this burden for future generations.

“Diane Bevan truly embodies the legacy of our founder, always leading with generosity, altruism and a dedication to actionable hunger-relief,” said GBFB CEO Catherine D’Amato. “Few can say they have been engaged with GBFB for as long and in as many ways as Diane, who consistently goes out of her way to advocate for our mission and those in need. Fifty years after our humble beginnings, we are lucky to have an outstanding leader like Diane to champion our efforts and carry on Kip’s history of innovation and selflessness.”

Ten other awards were given to GBFB’s network of food distribution partners, volunteers, public officials, donors and advocates who have shown dedication to mitigating the food insecurity crisis and providing wide-ranging contributions to hunger-relief. See the full list of honorees here.