Sorry I have been away from blogging so long but have been deeply enmeshed in chartering documents. Do you know how many documents we need to file to get a charter? So far we have 121 that need to be worked on- and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Some are simply filling out existing forms, but most are ones that need to be created. Because we believe strongly that we should leave behind bread crumbs for the next generation of Credit Unions to follow, we are organizing our effort so that relevant parts of the documents can be re-used by the next generation of community oriented credit unions.
It is all part of our CU good neighbor policy. In our dreams financially responsible groups will want to start credit unions in the their local communities and we can do what credit unions do best – join together to provide financial services to people under served and over charged by the current banking system. Chartering is really hard, we are focusing our efforts on it, and we have years of financial experience, but people from all different backgrounds should be able to start a credit union. We imagine that the chartering process can be a shared burden and that each credit union can benefit from what others have learned in the process. In fact the NCUA suggests that groups find a mentor credit union to walk them through the process. We hope to create a group of documents that set us up to be mentors. No one should have to reinvent the wheel, but existing credit unions can have trouble mentoring due to time constraints, changes in management, and perhaps even distance from a process they did a long time ago. Yet mentorship is the only way anything ever gets passed on. As we said, it’s been hard, but we are beginning to see thing come together. Next up, finding a home at last!