Great Advice from Longtime Board Members

To the casual observer, a community bank’s board of directors is a group that convenes several times a year, reviews reports and votes on resolutions. In reality, they carry the long view for an institution that might have served the same town for generations. The board’s agenda might include hiring and evaluating the CEO, approving strategy, overseeing risk and protecting the bank’s capital. It also serves as a bridge between the bank and the community it supports.

Most community bank boards have between seven and 15 members, depending on asset size and complexity. They often include a mix of local business owners, attorneys, accountants and former executives who bring outside perspective to management’s plans. Some include internal members, such as the bank’s president or CEO, who connect board strategy to day-to-day operations. Directors might chair audit, risk or compensation committees or act as sounding boards for new initiatives and expansion plans. All share fiduciary responsibility for the bank’s safety, soundness and long-term direction.

The board’s responsibility has grown heavier over the past two decades. Directors now face tighter bank regulatory scrutiny, faster technology cycles and more complex cyber and fraud threats than their predecessors did. At the same time, they must keep one eye on succession and the other on growth.  

Their roles extend beyond the boardroom and out into the bank’s markets, where directors often serve as ambassadors, listeners and informal advisers before issues hit any formal agenda. 

“To be an effective community bank board member, you need to have a sincere interest in the betterment of your community,” says Duke Thurs, director at $732 million-asset Dairy State Bank in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. “Secondly, you need to get out there where the community is.”

Thurs spent 34 years of his career with Purina Mills in the feed business, working closely with dairy, cattle and hog operations across northwestern Wisconsin. When he retired in 1993, Allen Cronk, the CEO of Dairy State Bank and its holding company Dairy State Bancorp, recruited him to the board, in part because that ag industry perspective was underrepresented at the time. Twelve years later, Thurs joined the Dairy State Bank board of directors.

Thurs, who had been a Dairy State Bank customer for years before he became a director, says his background in ag helps him understand the needs of the bank’s agricultural borrowers and their communities.

“A community bank is here to serve its surrounding area on a firsthand basis,” says Thurs, who views that community presence as a core part of a board’s responsibility. “We stay involved, and we ask our employees to stay involved in activities across our branch markets and our home market. That involvement has helped us remain a prominent bank in the markets we serve.”

The importance of staying up to date

Staying informed is a key part of the role for community bank board members, especially as the pace of change in banking and finance accelerates. Regulatory guidance shifts, fraud schemes evolve and technology continues to reshape how customers interact with their financial institutions. What felt cutting edge just a few years ago now feels routine.

For board members who don’t work in banking every day, that pace requires extra effort. Thurs says the work starts outside the boardroom. He attends chamber of commerce events in Rice Lake and Menomonie, Wisconsin, and stays visible in the markets the bank serves. As a board member, he says he likes to “keep his ear to the ground” to understand local business community developments and where the bank might need to step in to assist current and potential customers.

Thurs also keeps up with developments through regular review and independent reading. He follows business trends online and in newspapers and studies the materials that Clark Yolitz, Dairy State Bank’s CEO, circulates before every meeting. 

“I’ll often review loan requests and the applicant’s financial information before the board convenes to assess whether an approval makes sense,” Thurs says. 

Travis Hardwick, a member of the Texas First Bank board, approaches staying current from a different angle. He’s served on the board of the $2.2 billion-asset bank in Texas City, Texas, since 2012. Before that, he served on the board of Houston Business Bank, where he gained early exposure to community bank governance. Outside the boardroom, Hardwick runs a flooring and tile company that works with apartment builders nationwide.

Early in Hardwick’s tenure as a board member, he attended formal director training programs, including courses at Southern Methodist University that were sponsored by the bank. He also participated in hands-on sessions that walked directors through topics such as asset-liability management and the CAMELS rating system. 

“Those sessions helped me understand what to look for when reviewing loans and evaluating overall bank performance,” says Hardwick.

Today, his committee work helps him keep up with the fast pace of change in banking. Hardwick has served on audit, loan and strategic committees, where discussions range from examiner findings and BSA oversight to growth initiatives and IT investments. 

That work keeps board members like Hardwick close to shifting regulatory priorities, new risks and emerging opportunities rather than relying solely on high-level board presentations. 

“The industry evolves and changes a lot,” he says, “and whatever’s hot today isn’t going to be hot tomorrow.”

From the inside looking out

Not all long-term board members serve from the outside. Some sit at the board table while also working inside the institution. Tim German of $331 million-asset Frontier Savings Bank, an office of Glenwood State Bank in Council Bluffs, Iowa, is one of them. He’s served on community bank boards for roughly 25 years across several Iowa institutions and joined the Frontier board when he came on as market president eight years ago.

As president of the community bank’s Council Bluffs branch, German fills the dual role of executive and board member. In that position, he has an insider’s view of loan activity, compliance matters and local market strategy before those points ever reach a formal board agenda. The role also requires discipline as German shifts between managing operations and exercising independent oversight. 

“Even though we’re internal, our meetings are just like normal bank board meetings,” he says. “You still have to remember your responsibility as a director.”

Even with German’s proximity to day-to-day operations, he says keeping up with industry and external factors is, and always has been, a central challenge for board members. 

“That requirement hasn’t changed much in the last 25 years since I started doing this,” says German, pointing to technology shifts, fraud trends and regulatory change as some of the top-of-mind issues right now. To stay in front of them, he reads industry articles, reviews ICBA materials and participates in director education.

Ultimately, German says the core responsibility of a community bank board hasn’t changed much over the past couple of decades. 

“Your number-one responsibility as a board member is to protect your deposit customers,” he says. “Yes, banks want to grow and make money, but your ultimate goal is to ensure deposits are safe.”

When it’s time to pass the baton

Long board tenure brings perspective. It also requires self-awareness. After more than two decades on community bank boards, Thurs recently decided this will be his final year at Dairy State Bank. The decision, he says, wasn’t about ability. It was about relevance. 

“I still feel that I’m capable of doing what I’m doing and representing the stockholders,” Thurs says. “However, I’m not in the business world anymore, so I’ve lost that connection.”

He says that connection to day-to-day business conditions matters. A board member who no longer feels tied to the local economy might struggle to represent shareholders effectively. His successor is already on the board, a younger executive in the agricultural sector. 

“At some point, new ideas matter,” Thurs says. “We planned the transition and brought in the right person.”

Hardwick views succession less as a milestone and more as a mindset. Age alone doesn’t dictate when a director should step aside, he says, but engagement does. He’s seen directors retire because of age, relocation or shifting priorities but says diminished curiosity is really the stronger signal to watch for. Board service today requires steady attention to new risks, regulatory priorities and shifting market conditions. A board member who’s lost interest or is too busy with other things might miss emerging risks, overlook regulatory shifts or disengage from the difficult questions. 

Without the right balance of attention and energy, the contribution might fade. 

“If you’re not as interested in rowing that boat forward with the bank, and if you lose that fire and excitement and passion about it,” Hardwick says, “then you ought to consider that maybe it’s time to move on.”

Hardwick hopes more young professionals see community bank board service as an opportunity, not an obligation. Committee work puts board members in front of real businesses, numbers and decisions. They review larger loans, study collateral and guarantees, and watch how balance sheet choices play out over time. Those lessons don’t stay in the boardroom either; they carry back into a director’s own business or career. 

“Some potential members may not even realize how much value they can get from serving on a board,” Hardwick says. “You’re seeing how different businesses operate, how they grow and how they manage risk.”

For Hardwick, board of directors’ work feels most meaningful when it translates into action. After all, behind every loan package is a business plan, payroll or a bet on local growth. Maybe it’s a general contractor that needs a short-term loan to secure a major contract, an area school financing a building expansion or the local manufacturer increasing its workforce. A board’s vote might determine whether those projects move forward or stall out. 

“When we lend to someone who needs capital to get to that next level, that’s where the rubber meets the road in helping your community,” Hardwick says. “That part gives me a lot of satisfaction.”

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