Barbara Criswell has been presented with the Pennsylvania Credit Union Association’s top award for volunteers. Criswell accepted the Joseph A. Moore Award for the 2018 Outstanding Volunteer of the Year on May 21 at the Association’s 84th Connect Annual Convention at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Farmington.
Criswell is the founder of Service 1st FCU in Danville and has served on its board intermittently since 1975. When she began the credit union, she was named president of the board, a position she held for six months in 1975 and 1976. After a brief break, she came back as part of the Supervisory Committee, where she volunteered from 1978 to 1980. Since then, she has served as a board director beginning in 1987 and continues to support the credit union to this day.
She has long supported Service 1st’s ventures, including their move to open the first high school credit union branch in Pennsylvania. Criswell was also a proponent of the partnership with AFYA SACCO in Nairobi, Kenya, which featured credit union executives from AFYA visiting Service 1st and Service 1st executives visiting Kenya.
“Over the past 43 years, Barbara has helped guide and grow Service 1st to $352 million in assets, serving over 25,000 members in a seven-county region,” said Service 1st FCU President and CEO Bill Lavage. “She was adamant that members be at the heart of every decision that was made, from adding mortgages to the product offerings in the late 1990s to building a Corporate Center in 2010 and purchasing property for Service 1st's 10th branch location that opened in 2016.”
One of Service 1st’s biggest cheerleaders, Criswell is known for consistently promoting the benefits of the credit union to her friends and family. As the founding matriarch of the credit union, Barbara has been instrumental in Service 1st's success, helping them grow from a volunteer staff to a credit union with $352 million in assets.
The Volunteer of the Year Award is presented in memory of Joseph A. Moore, who served as an Association Director from 1936-1972. He sat as Board Chairman for three terms and was the state’s first national delegate to the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) Board of Directors.
