Advancing Communities Together

It depends on the efforts you’re already engaged in, and how deeply your credit union will get involved.

• On the low end of the spectrum, we would love your credit union to spend time telling your story—articulating how your not-for-profit structure benefits the community.
• On the high end of the spectrum, engagement with community groups—perhaps up to building long-term partnerships with them.
• There’s a broad spectrum of involvement in between. The important thing is that you help us tell the credit union story by telling your story in a way that resonates across audiences and dovetails with broader needs.

This is not meant to interrupt any marketing or communication plans but to supplement them. In fact, this has the potential to be helpful for your communication team; it can be difficult to create content, and this would be a tool for helping develop more content. We plan to provide templates and resources to make this easy for you. We hope that being involved is helpful for your team.

It is not. It’s an effort to create resonant and thorough messaging across the industry, and to highlight and further develop the good credit unions do.

We have no plans for direct financial commitments. However, as credit unions engage with community groups, they may notice opportunities to get involved in the groups, which could involve commitments of time and resources. We hope that such involvement yields productive partnerships for all parties involved.

This is likely the most delicate and difficult part of the effort. We want the organizations to better understand how credit unions help in their communities. It may not be viable to simply approach them and say, “We’re here to set the record straight on credit unions.” Rather, this challenge will likely be tackled through approaching the organizations to better understand their work and discuss how credit unions might work with them. During the conversation, credit unions should make it clear how they are not-for-profit cooperatives, and how they already benefit communities. If it makes sense to work together—great! If not, the organizations walk away with a better sense of how credit unions already give back to communities.

There will be a distinct advocacy arm of this effort, with the Leagues advocacy team meeting with and education legislators. Credit unions will be enlisted in this effort.

Further, as we spread the message further and wider, legislators and other policy makers will gain a better more complete appreciation of the credit union difference and recognize the unique and important role credit unios paly in the marketplace—and that they don’t need further onerous oversight.