Thompson Hine LLP, a business law firm established in Cleveland in 1911, celebrated its centenary by presenting the first Malvin E. Bank Award for Exemplary Client Service, named in honor of Thompson Hine’s distinguished specialist in federal income and estate tax matters, whose continuing service to the firm spans more than half its history. Bank’s tenure as general counsel for the Cleveland Foundation from 1967 to 2003 certainly reflects the utmost standards of loyalty and commitment to the client’s best interests, as does his service over the years as a director of more than 50 nonprofit businesses. Bank has also provided wise counsel and gentle guidance to the more than 30 charitable and educational institutions of which he has been a trustee.

Mal Bank grew up in a poor and tough neighborhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He graduated with highest honors from Pennsylvania State University and earned his LL.B. at Yale Law School. Entering the Army as a first lieutenant, Bank capably performed the duties of brevetted major during the Korean War and was awarded a Bronze Star. He knew no one when he arrived in Cleveland in 1957 to join Thompson, Hine & Flory. Today he is revered as one of the city’s most outstanding humanists and among the nation’s finest lawyers.

Bank played a major role in the evolving design of the Cleveland Foundation’s governance structure and corporations, starting with his behind-the-scenes work to enable the foundation’s merger with the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation in 1968. In 1982, he helped to facilitate the foundation’s first program-related investment, used to buy the $3.8 million Bulkley complex critical to the future of Cleveland’s Playhouse Square theaters—and Cleveland’s revival. Bank’s quiet backing of $5 million commitments to both neighborhood revitalization and public education improvement in the late 1980s was instrumental in winning board approval of these landmark “Special Initiatives.”

Bank has shaped the field of philanthropy in countless ways. Most notably, as a representative for the Council on Foundations, he negotiated with the U.S. Treasury Department and Congress about proposed 1976 revisions to rules and regulations related to charities. He authored an amicae brief for the Council on Foundations in the late 1990s that constituted a definitive history of the community foundation movement.