Credit Unions Embrace Unity and Advocacy to Help Members and Communities Reach New Heights

In a Nutshell: If you haven’t heard of all the things credit unions do to help consumers and members use financial services to their greatest potential, you’re missing out. Fortunately, America’s Credit Unions is poised to emerge in 2025 as the credit union industry’s foremost voice, consolidating two prior associations into a single, powerful entity. Through education, advocacy, and support, America’s Credit Unions celebrates not-for-profit credit unions as engines of progress and community growth.

I wish more people knew the history of America’s credit union movement. I’m no expert, but I’ve learned to appreciate the distinct contribution of credit unions to financial services and their unique role in forging a future for millions of members and thousands of communities.

Many, if not most, of the credit unions I write about have inspiring origin stories about how community members banded together in times of struggle to accomplish better things collectively — without the constraints of the profit motive.

The movement gathered strength after Congress passed the Federal Credit Union Act in 1934, during the Great Depression. That tells you something about the financial need at the time.

Today, credit unions continue to provide a member-owned, not-for-profit alternative to for-profit banks. All credit unions, large and small, seek to perpetuate the values of financial cooperation through the movement’s people-helping-people philosophy, and the benefits of lower rates and fees from retained earnings.

America’s Credit Unions is the industry’s trade association. It embodies the credit union mission as an advocate in Congress and the states, and supports the industry through strong compliance assistance. It provides education and cooperative networking, and helps set the agenda and tone of the debate around America’s financial future.

Through its predecessor organizations, CUNA (the Credit Union National Association) and NAFCU (the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions), America’s Credit Unions helps build a stronger America as the industry’s champion.

CUNA and NAFCU finalized their merger to create the new association on New Year’s Day 2024. America’s Credit Unions intends to be fully operational as a separate entity by early 2025.

In the meantime, Carrie Hunt is pulling together workstreams and roles as Chief Advocacy Offer to establish the association’s voice and to position credit unions as an essential solution for financial equity.

“Now more than ever, especially as the economy rises and falls and jobs come and go, credit unions stand by their members from the second they open an account across their entire financial journey,” Hunt said. “Our job is to give every single person in our country the option to belong to a credit union.”

The passage of the Federal Credit Union Act ushered in CUNA’s creation. Interestingly, NAFCU followed in 1967 specifically to represent the interests of the federally chartered institutions the 1934 act enabled. In 1970, NAFCU helped establish deposit insurance for credit unions, administered through the National Credit Union Administration.

For years, CUNA and NAFCU had separate but broadly similar agendas. But changing economic conditions and an emerging need for a unified voice in Congress and among industry stakeholders led the boards to construct a path to unification.

Merging the interests and operations of two vital and engaged organizations and workforces is never easy. Applying the traditional discipline of credit unions helps Hunt and the rest of the team at America’s Credit Unions think creatively to face the new.

“Credit unions need their trade association to be successful and help them survive and thrive,” Hunt said. “America’s Credit Unions truly represents all the great work credit union leaders have done since the 1930s to ensure the credit union model evolves to suit members’ needs.”

The unified board sees America’s Credit Unions primarily as an advocacy organization. As Chief Advocacy Officer, Hunt’s duties are diverse. While enacting priorities to advance, empower, and protect credit unions, she leads a compliance team that engages with member institutions and, in coordination with an association services division, helps credit unions identify opportunities for partnership with third-party providers.

All of that flows into the education it provides on specific subjects such as lending and fraud, as well as board responsibilities and how to set up compliance in a credit union.

On the advocacy front, America’s Credit Unions works in concert with member institutions to achieve success. Members are its best cheerleaders and its best resource to understand how laws and regulations impact the credit union model.

“We’re here to make sure credit unions stay as strong as possible,” Hunt said. “We look at our members as an extension of our advocacy efforts, and in return, we use their dues dollars wisely and provide them with the tools and resources they need.”

That’s what you want in your trade association. Credit unions may have a proud history stretching back to the Great Depression, but stories about the past don’t help you solve today’s problems and anticipate future needs.

For that, you need what America’s Credit Union provides: a forum for the best minds in the industry to act in each other’s best interests. Good things happen when people work together to achieve a goal bigger than the sum of its parts.

“Ultimately, our vision is to help people everywhere trust and partner with credit unions,” Hunt said. “Every single day at America’s Credit Unions, we think about how we can help credit unions help their members be successful.”

That means facing challenges squarely. Hunt said one is balancing the industry trend toward consolidation against the imperative to reach out to underbanked and unbanked communities.

Hunt said a significant difference between banks and credit unions manifests itself in the way the two types of institutions respond to banking deserts.

“Credit unions are putting and keeping branches in areas where banks aren’t,” Hunt said. “If a branch isn’t profitable, a bank may close its doors, while the credit union understands its importance in the community.”

Another challenge is learning to expend limited resources judiciously to provide digital banking services that meet and exceed those of competitors while maintaining and coordinating with the branches.

Credit unions often have diverse member demographics, working with consumers near the start and end of their financial journey. Allocating digital and branch resources against an evolving membership base strains planners and potentially comprises efficiencies. Hunt said it’s part of the process at a credit union to look at member needs first and then find the best way to achieve the goal.

“We’re doing better than banks, but we’d love to do more,” Hunt said. “The more credit unions we have in terms of geographic reach, the better, and we’re focused on making sure we have that reach.”

Hunt worked in national advocacy for NAFCU for 17 years before moving to state advocacy at the Virginia Credit Union League and then America’s Credit Unions. Years of experience help her illustrate the credit union difference with many real-world examples of institutions serving the unique needs of members and small businesses.

For example, a credit union in Richmond, Virginia, People’s Advantage, operates what Hunt calls an empowerment center instead of a regular branch. The empowerment center provides financial literacy resources, including one-on-one counseling. They’re ready to start from the ground up, no matter where that is.

“It’s person to person, just trying to get people on the right path, with VIP service specialized to the person’s exact needs,” Hunt said. “You just don’t get that on the banking side.”

It’s one relatively modest example of something that happens every day in most credit unions: an employee going above and beyond when it may not directly impact the institution’s bottom line.

As a state-based advocate, Hunt drove around Virginia, constantly visiting members. From that vantage point, she could see credit unions impacting communities in unmistakable ways. One, Freedom First, used its status as a federally certified Community Development Financial Institution to help revitalize its home city of Roanoke.

“If you went around town, you saw all these revitalization projects for businesses with the Freedom First banner,” Hunt said.

That’s business as usual for credit unions, and the same is true for small businesses as it is for individual members. Hunt said a credit union’s relationship with small businesses can be “storefront by storefront supporting the mortgage and construction end or funding the business side of a startup.”

Meanwhile, as it prepares for full-fledged action in 2025, America’s Credit Unions remains the industry’s leading advocate and trusted partner in a world of ever more sophisticated digital threats and economic challenges. Hunt said it’s a full-time job with one focus.

“We’re incredibly focused on helping everyday Americans prosper,” Hunt said. “Credit union members are loyal because they’re in a better place, receiving the benefits of credit union membership. It’s just a win-win.”