LAS VEGAS–There is no shortage of both bad people and bad organizations and bad decisions in the world, but what can a credit union really do? Does it even have a responsibility to act? Does it have the capacity to make much of a difference? Those questions were at the heart of a debate among four people here.
During a session called “The Big T”, for technical foul (the discussion was taking place in Las Vegas at the same time the March Madness basketball tournament was also in town), four people offered their takes on those questions: Jonathan Taylor, CEO of CU SOL; Linda White, executive director of the Credit Union Women’s Leadership Alliance; Sarah Canepa Bang, senior advisor to the vice chairman of NCUA; and Brian Branch, the retired president of the World Council of Credit Unions.
The meeting was held in conjunction with NACUSO’s Network conference.
Here's what they had to say.
Taylor: (The CUSO CU SOL’s) crown jewel is a program called CU SAFE, which stands for Survivor Advocacy for Financial Empowerment. (Taylor asked for a show of hands for anyone who had been the victim of domestic violence or knew of someone who had, and most hands were raised). I think it really speaks to the why the importance of what we do each and every day. (CU SAFE was created) by two credit unions, US Eagle and Rio Grande. They came together and said we need to do something for our community, because this is a real problem. (In Albuquerque) there were 18,000 cases last year. Domestic violence centers are understaffed and overwhelmed. The two ways folks typically reach out is a phone call or a walk-in.
We had a bottleneck. We couldn’t get people over to the credit union. We needed a safe path between the domestic violence center and credit unions. (Victims) needed a path to a new PFI. They need a hand up and not a hand out.
A Different Kind of Counseling
They also needed to provide counseling of a different kind--credit counseling. Credit is abused right along with the individual in order to control. We asked, ‘How can we help those whose credit has been destroyed on purpose?’
It was slow going when we started. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. Today, we have a wonderful program with a lot of work by both the credit unions. We have to do well while doing good or we can't continue to do good…I would just say please raise your hands for your communities and take a stand in this fight, because it's really needed. And think of the loyalty that's created from these people who you can help get a better life.
White: I've had the opportunity to be on the forefront of a couple of organizations, and one was to support the Global Woman's Leadership Network, having been the co-leader of the first sister society and back in 2012; now it's over 200 worldwide.
To see that grow and to see what we can do to help the impact of women not just locally, but internationally, and knowing what women in other countries can and cannot do; I’ve been able to be a part of that and to be executive director of the Credit Union Woman's Leadership Alliance, which is for female CEOs of credit unions under $300 million in assets.
We're not here for male-bashing. We never even talked about it. The conversations are certainly much different when you take into consideration that we have women all over the country who are members, to hear what they're dealing with in their organizations is so enlightening. We have 160 members out of the 2,000 members who are eligible to join our organization.
‘You Would be Amazed’
When we hear the heartfelt conversations that we share in our monthly meetings you would be amazed at what comes from some of these women. We're here to help the sustainability of small credit unions in the ecosystem. Most of the small credit unions are run by women. They have paved the way in making those jobs more attractive; they did the grunt work. But now (the jobs) have become more attractive, so that percentage is leveling out.
Canepa-Bang: There are 3,600 credit unions under $250 million in assets, which means they've always had to innovate to offer the services other folks offer. When you innovate you are taking risks and sometimes you're doing things that nobody else has ever done, such as shared branches and shared ATM's, the kinds of things that you know others wouldn't dream of doing. Things we have to do or our members don't get that service .
The measure of a good management team isn’t that they don’t make mistakes. I would argue good management does make mistakes and fails forward. The measure of good management is how quickly you recover. A failure of management is when there is somebody in your organization who says, ‘I could have told you that wasn’t going to work.’ Or, ‘I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t listen to me.’
As credit unions are innovating, don’t shoot your own foot off. You might be surprised at who in your organization has an observation you should have listened to.
Branch: I retired from the World Council in late 2021 and then in February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, and these were folks that I had worked with since the late-1980s. I was in touch with the Ukrainians, the Poles, about what was happening. There were millions of Ukrainian refugees who came across the border into Poland. The Poles embraced these refugees who arrived in large numbers. The Poles said we can work out a strategy here to deal with this because for them this was very personal. This wasn’t their history, this was right next door. (Joseph) Stalin had shifted those borders westward and so many of the people from Ukraine had lived in parts of the region that used to be part of Poland.
The bottom line really is this is about our community. Polish credit unions made a very strong commitment to invite the Ukrainian refugees to become members of the credit unions. What they are trying to do is not just help the Ukrainians, but help their communities.
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