League collaboration behind the scenes benefits everyone

Cooperation is a cornerstone of the credit union movement and can be seen throughout our industry in a myriad of ways. A prime example is the incredible work your credit union leagues/associations accomplish on behalf of credit unions every day and especially over the last few months, with increased collaboration behind the scenes.

AACUL has always facilitated calls and conferences among a variety of league employee groups (i.e.: CEOs/presidents, advocacy, communications, and education professionals, service corporation executives, state foundation executives, etc.) to share ideas, solutions, and advice across states. As you can imagine, with so many new and challenging issues brought about by the COVID pandemic, the need and frequency of these discussions have increased dramatically. The transition from in-person to virtual dialogs over these last few months, in many cases weekly group check-ins, has produced an unprecedented level of cooperation and collaboration across the system, as leagues share ideas, information, and support each other.

For example, on their regular Zoom calls, league education directors share information about logistics, technology, speaker ideas, and so much more on how they are serving and supporting credit unions. When the Heartland Credit Union Association (HCUA) held their multi-day virtual SHIFT20 conference in mid-May, they invited leagues across the country to participate, observe, and learn about a new technology platform HCUA was using. And, in true cooperative spirit, they even held a debrief afterwards about lessons learned for their colleagues across the country. The Cornerstone Credit Union League, the League of Southeastern Credit Unions, and others are also inviting leagues to their upcoming events in the same spirit.

Similarly, leagues and CUNA have also teamed up for a special small CU webinar series on a wide-range of topics, launching in August and running until Spring 2021. Every league is participating with CUNA in delivering valuable content to help small credit unions with this new, free series.

This type of cooperation helps everyone involved and is key to a thriving system. We also see this behind the scenes collaboration with system advocacy, media relations, and much more. That’s the credit union difference. More specifically, that’s the credit union league difference.