WASHINGTON, D.C. – In an effort to fuel the cooperative spirit among credit unions across the country, Minnesota Credit Union Network (MnCUN) President & CEO Mark Cummins spoke to a national audience during the Credit Union National Association’s (CUNA’s) Governmental Affairs Conference in Washington, D.C. The session, titled “Building Powerful Alliances Across Co-op Sectors,” was led by the National Cooperative Business Association and featured a panel of credit union and co-op leaders from Minnesota, Vermont and Washington, D.C.
As cooperatives, the 7,300 credit unions in the U.S. are uniquely tied to more than 22,000 other cooperatives in the country. Cooperatives have more than $3 trillion in assets nationwide and employ 857,000 people, with a payroll of $25 billion.
Minnesota is the nation’s most cooperatively-organized state, with more than 1,000 co-ops across 16 industrial sectors. It is also home to the country’s two largest cooperatives, CHS Inc. and Land O’Lakes.
“Credit unions are considered the ‘sleeping giant’ in the cooperative community, because oftentimes credit unions’ cooperative roots aren’t widely promoted,” Cummins said. “The fact is, credit unions are a prominent sector of the co-op community and have a unique opportunity to capitalize on the enormous potential that exists in collaboration.”
Cummins is the chair of CUNA’s Cooperative Alliances Committee. With a 28-year career in the financial services industry, Cummins has spent 24 years in the credit union movement, including the past six years with MnCUN.
The cooperative community recently concluded a yearlong, worldwide celebration – 2012 was proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Year of Cooperatives. For this reason, the CUNA Cooperative Alliances Committee released a Cooperative Alliances Guide last fall. It discusses how credit unions can improve their interactions with other cooperatives to grow their business, build advocacy allies, and improve their communities.
The committee hopes the report will provide practical ideas to inspire credit unions to actively collaborate with cooperatives from all sectors. The guide is intended to be a “living document,” allowing credit unions to add examples and case studies of collaboration.
“We hope the report will continue to inspire others to learn and spread the high-value and good works that cooperatives have to offer individuals, businesses and communities as we seek to grow a more cooperative economy,” Cummins said.
Panelists at the conference in Washington, D.C., gave some of the following recommendations to credit unions:
- Host a networking event at your credit union, inviting area co-op leaders to meet and collaborate
- Invite other local co-op leaders to speak at your credit union’s annual meeting
- Assign a staff member as your credit union’s co-op liaison, responsible for cultivating partnerships
- Recruit board members that have co-op experience
- Schedule an employee training day that focuses on the seven cooperative principles and how they’re demonstrated at your credit union
- Remind employees that they’re part of the cooperative movement – something bigger, something different
- Frame your credit union’s strategic plan using the seven cooperative principles
- Focus your member business lending on the co-op community
- Educate high school and/or college students about cooperatives to perpetuate the co-op business model
- Participate in the National Credit Union Foundation’s Development Educator training
“Credit unions around the nation are uniting for good, capitalizing on the sentiment that credit unions are consumers’ best financial choice,” Cummins said. “This also applies to co-ops in general, as more people are making values-based decisions and looking to cooperatives for financial services, grocery stores, electrical services and more.”
Follow this link to download a copy of the Cooperative Alliances Committee Guide.
The Minnesota Credit Union Network is an organization representing the state’s 134 not-for-profit cooperative credit unions serving more than 1.5 million member-owners in Minnesota. For more information, visit www.mncun.org.