Bank seeks to tap community's time, talent

SANDPOINT — Intermountain Community Bancorp Curt Hecker asked community leaders last week to tap into their “time, talent and treasury” to join together to help the bank assist their hometowns.

Hecker and a handful of bank executives have been holding meetings throughout Idaho seeking public buy-in and cooperation for an initiative called “Powered by Community.”

“I have challenged our employees to do what we have done in the past … only on steroids,” Hecker told the 90 assembled people.

The multi-pronged local economic stimulus program hopes to help economic development organizations, communities and businesses.

Bank senior vice president Rick Youngblood laid out the ambitious program: 1,000 volunteers matched with 100 initiatives and 100 percent of the bank’s employees.

The bank is looking for outreach ideas through its Web site: poweredbycommunity.com. The bank will pick projects to assist with by April 15.

“Anything anybody can do to bring us together as a community is a good thing,” said Festival at Sandpoint director, Dyno Wahl. “Panhandle has always been a leader here and it looks like they are stepping up again.”

A local gun manufacturer wasn’t so convinced that the bank’s motives were entirely philanthropic. After Hecker’s speech, a man who didn’t give his name accused the bank of being socialized because it received money from the Capital Protection Program of the recent federal bailout of financial institutions.

“Is the government telling you to do this?” he asked.

Actually, the idea to “get in the game while other banks are on the sideline” started to grow on Hecker near Christmastime.

Up until the end of last year being a bank CEO “used to be a cool job,” he said. “I challenged myself to figure out how to make

our bank relevant and I knew it would take significant restructuring.”

Hecker called up some friends and confidants and put together the outline of Powered By Community. His original idea of empowering employees to make a difference is still the guiding vision of Powered By Community.

He reminded the audience that banking and finance is the largest single business in the world. There are 8,000 financial institutions in the US but 19 of them own two-thirds of the deposit base in the country.

“That is a lot of power,” he said.

“Small banks have it easier,” he said. “The difference between the amount we loan and what we have in savings is what we make.” He said his bank doesn’t deal in derivatives or other risky financial instruments that partially led to the largest bank bailout in history.

As the housing crisis shot across the county, Hecker thought Bonner County and Sandpoint would be immune or that it wouldn’t hit here as hard.

He was wrong.

“Sandpoint is lagging behind the curve on the way down and on the way up,” Hecker said. In other words, we aren’t done yet.

“Stress is good,” he said. “It makes you think outside of the box. “But stress without control equals fear and that is what a lot of people have right now.”

Hecker, a former football player at Boise State, used a football analogy to describe the bank’s approach to weathering the economic storm.

“We can choose to be on the sideline or we can be in the game,” he said.

Hecker hopes Powered by Community will help with job development, training and education, affordable housing and social program support “as well as ideas we haven’t even thought of yet.”