Chip Filson
The Seated Boxer, an iconic ancient Greek work of art, shows a grizzled veteran of the ring, equal parts resigned and ready to spring into action.
What I like is a sense of respite from competition, the powerful athletic physique and the tiredness that surrounds his humanity. Is he a winner this day? Are there more fights to go? How will his efforts be remembered?
These are questions that all of us encounter, in literal or figurative ways, in our daily efforts.
Walking along 5th Avenue in NYC several weeks ago, I stopped at a store that had a roped line to enter. Joan and I thought it must be a restaurant or a nightclub.
We decided to find out what twas going on. It turned out to be a recently opened Lego store. Here is some of what we saw.
A New York City Taxi
The Statue of Liberty
A Lego tree in the main showroom.
A life size jolly green giant:.
Back to the real world. The Zamboni cleaning the ice at the Rockefeller Center skating rink.:
ICCU is an Idaho based state charter reporting $14.8 billion in total assets, serving 76,900 members via 63 branches and 2,000 employees. In 2025 ICCU opened four new branches, two in Washington and two in Arizona. via a merger with Topcu.
CALCOE FCU, chartered in 1937, has $40 million in assets serving 4,000 members with its main office in Yakima, WA, and a branch in Moxee. It is a strong credit union with deep local roots and a low income designation( LID). At CALCOE’s Special Meeting on March 6, 2026, member voting closed on a merger proposal from ICCU whose main office is 345 miles and five hours driving time away.
This long serving, successful community-owned and directed credit union exists no longer. It is merely a branch operation now run by the 18th largest credit union in the country.
Here’s what the members posted about the merger.
No Direct Financial Benefit to Members
Executive Compensation Shows Who Truly Benefits
Loss of Local Control
Higher Fees & More Complex Policies Likely
CALCOE Is Financially Healthy
Technology Does Not Require a Merger
Permanent Decision
Bottom Line
Who benefits from these transfers of control of long accumulated member wealth?
From the member-owner’s point of view this is a leadership and institutional failure. The merger destroys the “hometown” local advantage that gives credit unions their competitive superiority.
The members have assessed the situation correctly. Their leadership sold out. They will be credit union skeptics forever. The legacy reputations and coop advantages are ruined for them. The credit union system sustains another hit.
Walking into a detention center is a surreal experience. You hand in your driver’s license, sign paperwork, lock your belongings in a locker and pass through a metal detector with your shoes off.
No cell phone, no identification, no wallet.
My heart beat fast as we were escorted through the locked metal doors and waited to be let onto the unit where we would meet with the detainees one at a time in a small airless room.
The names, faces and stories of the people we met over the course of several days- 10 people in all- are deeply etched into my heart. This was a rare opportunity to accompany an immigration lawyer and his team as we visited two centers, one in Massachusetts and RI. We saw first-hand what conditions are like and listened to the stories of those suffering in detention…
As you can imagine, a detention center is a haunting place devoid of warmth and humanity. It seems to me it is the loneliest place in the world. It opened my eyes to just how terrible the reality of what the Administration’s policies and practices have led to…innocent people being locked away.
Families destroyed.
Human rights trampled.
Trauma inflicted over and over again.
The “Industrial Detention Complex” is in effect a harsh landscape of prison “camps” that house hundreds of people -most of them people of color -locked away in buildings wrapped in fencing and barbed wire up to the sky.
While the two places we saw were clean enough, the structures are cold and sterile looking, made of cement blocks, filled with harsh lighting that is on 24/7, few windows, endless hallways and heavy, locked doors.
The clanging of keys and the shutting of iron gates is the sound that remains with me.
I found out that the people we met with who are held for days or months are granted no privileges-unlike other prisoners who can take classes, etc. Folks are held in their cells-which are cages really for 23 hours a day. Maybe they get outside briefly, probably they don’t. There are no programs or classes or activities for them.
One man we met mentioned his idea of starting a group teaching others how to speak English. Our lawyer was encouraging him to do that… this activity would give him something meaningful to do and help others…
Health care, we learned, is abominable or largely non-existent. Receiving medication takes a lawyer’s advocacy and it might be weeks before one can get any lifesaving medicine for diabetes or HIV or blood pressure.
I remember sitting next to one person named Jose (not his real name) as he told his story and added that detainees aren’t allowed to receive any mail. Oftentimes the internet is down or the phones aren’t working. Jose missed his family; his kids and he started to cry when he saw the sticky note the paralegal had written after visiting his wife the week before. Even though it wasn’t his wife’s handwriting, the man held it like it was a piece of gold. It said, “We miss you; we love you.” . . .
During these meetings, we did our best to bring some humanity in with us. Smiling to guards, saying thank you, introducing ourselves, learning their names. The guards seemed friendly enough.
Our lawyer asked questions about the person’s story, their early life, how they came to this country, what they did for work now, who was in their family and considerations for possible strategies for attaining bond and release.
Everyone’s stories were complicated. Of the 10 people we met, all of them were men, fathers, partners- most had fled dangerous conditions in their home countries, crossed the border, asked for asylum, had painful family fractures and hardships. Some had been in this country for decades or just a few years.
One was still a teenager; another was a grandfather. Still another, a DACA recipient.
I tried to be as present as possible. To offer whatever small kindness I could and to listen with care to the person in front of me as we gathered around a small table and sat in plastic chairs. Sometimes, after the interview with the lawyer, I was able to offer a kind word or a prayer. Or to put a gentle hand on a shoulder when the sobs came.
While our paralegal translated, I prayed,
Dear God, Dios Mio,
May this person be safe, May this person be released soon. May this person know how beloved they are of you and their family. Oh God. Help us! Gracias, Amen.
My meager gestures felt woefully inadequate (compared to the enormity of the fear and uncertainty of what each person was facing every minute of every day.)
One man, when presented with the reality of imminent deportation to a country he’d never been to before, hung his head in his hands and cried, “How can I go there? I don’t know anyone there?”
Often, without notice, detainees can be whisked out of New England to detention somewhere down South sent even farther away from family and connection. Where are the women? I asked. Apparently, they are sent “elsewhere” perhaps to Louisiana or Texas. If they don’t have legal counsel, locating them can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
When our time with each person drew to a close, we shook hands, sometimes hugged and a guard escorted them down the hallway. Before returning to their cells, a further humiliation awaited them- a strip search behind a makeshift curtain.
Were they being penalized for seeing their lawyer? It sure looked that way!
Believe it or not, immigration I learned is a civil matter not a criminal one. Let me say that again: immigration is a civil matter not a criminal one. The thousands who have been imprisoned and deported have been convicted of no crime. And even those who have entered illegally, the law classifies this as a civil matter, a “misdemeanor.”
Journalist Jamelle Bouie wrote recently, “Immigration detention is not a criminal procedure. And yet the Trump administration is treating it as a criminal punishment. It is using detention to inflict pain on anyone — immigrant or citizen — caught in its grasp. It is subjecting detainees to horrific conditions of deprivation and abuse, meant to pressure people into leaving the country, even if they have valid asylum claims or even legal status. And the administration is trying to expand its system of internment camps, purchasing warehouses across the country meant to hold tens of thousands of people”[1]
At the end of one very long day of visits, having been inside for 5 hours, we walked out the doors to the fading sky at twilight. The pink horizon softening my ragged heart and I filled my lungs with deep breaths of air.
It hit me, the relief and the privilege of being free. Right across the street from the Detention Center was a Home Depot, a Panera and new apartment buildings. I wondered if all of those people sitting in their cars in traffic had any idea what inhumanity was taking place behind those front gates?
On the long drive home, I recalled how all of the people we met were Black or Brown folks. People of color who on this particular day were from Central America, Mexico and Haiti. . .
In this season of Lent . . .one holy question to ask ourselves is how are we resisting the dangerous, false narratives of immigrants that have been presented to us and instead see and uplift the humanity and rights of individuals? . . .
It is comforting to know that we as a church community are trying everything we can to support those caught up in the midst of this Super Storm of Inhumanity. That we are learning from what communities in Minneapolis have done to support those most vulnerable.
We are in the right place as we meet this moment together!
Bearing witness to one another’s stories and lives. . .
Bearing witness to the truth of the injustices our neighbors are facing by standing up in the public square in the pouring rain. . .
How have you borne witness to the life of another? What might Love say to each of us as we try to find our way through the stormy wilderness?
Let us keep going over to the other side, my friends.
Love shall prevail . . .
On that day in history, history
took a day off. Current events
were uneventful. Breaking news
never broke. Nobody
of any import was born, or died.
(If you were born that day,
bask in the inverted glory
of your unimportance.)
No milestones, no disasters.
The most significant thing going on
was a golf tournament (the Masters).
It was a Sunday. In Washington,
President Eisenhower
(whose very name induces sleep)
practiced his putt
on the carpet of the Oval Office,
a little white ball crossing
and recrossing the presidential seal
like one of Jupiter’s moons
or a hypnotist’s watch.
On the radio, Perry Como
was putting everyone into a coma.
But the very next day,
in New York City,
Bill Haley & His Comets
recorded “Rock Around the Clock;”
and a few young people
began to regain consciousness …
while history, like Polyphemus
waking from a one-day slumber,
stumbled out of his cave,
blinked his giant eye, and peered around
for something to destroy.
With exquisite timing during this week’s credit union GAC convention, the Washington Post published an opinion article with the title:TARGETING THIS $2.8 TRILLION TAX SHELTER COULD SOLVE A BIG U.S. PROBLEM
The opinion was authored by Scott Hodge, described as a tax policy fellow and past president of the Tax Foundation.
Hodge provides multiple examples of successful tax exempt, very profitable organizations such as AARP, the Academy of Arts and Science, the Kaiser Foundation Hospital system and the PGA as fellow travelers in the tax exempt panoply of unfair competitors.
Here is Hodge’s paragraph singling out the credit union exemption:
With more than $2.3 trillion in assets, the tax-exempt credit union industry has long outgrown its depression-era roots. Originally exempted to serve working-class people of “small means” who lack access to banking, credit unions are now indistinguishable from commercial banks. They offer mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and investment services—and they’re using tax free cash to buy banks. In the past decade, credit unions have purchased nearly 100 commercial banks, converting taxpaying businesses into tax-exempt ones. Imagine Gold’s Gym buying your local YMCA.
His example of coops buying banks has logic and common sense. As one observer has stated:
I’d invite anyone willing to discuss the original purpose of credit unions and why neither the FED, OCC nor the FDIC wanted to regulate them.
Short answer: Credit Unions are not banks. They are member-owned cooperatives created as a safety net and alternative to banks. As a result, credit unions were granted nonprofit status, were not taxed, and were placed under social services
But would that be a sufficient response to this recurring threat?
State chartered credit unions received their federal tax exemption via an IRS ruling. FCU’s are tax exempt in the Federal Credit Union Act. One consequence of these two processes is that some states have passed franchise or other taxes on state charters. Another critical difference is public disclosures. State charters must file an annual IRS 990 with facts on salaries and benefits of highly compensated employees and list all charitable donations and political contributions.
Coops’ special service purpose was endorsed by FDR in this 1936 note to the Treasury Secretary. The Pesident encourages publicity for these new institutions, supervised bythe Department of Agriculture, saying they are popular.
In the modern era of an Independent NCUA regulator, the agency’s first two board chairs were not hesitantin their support of credit unions’ tax status. (photo from 1981. left to right Larry Connell, PA Mack, Ed Callahan )
Today’s NCUA board has been agnostic on credit unions’ tax exemption saying the issue is up to Congress. This is similar to Board’s silence on the bank purchases referenced in the Post opinion even though NCUA approval is required for every transaction,.
For the first 100 years of credit union formation, all were started with no financial capital with minimal share donations by the organizers. Today NCUA requires at least $500,000 in equity to receive a charter, but that is not how 99% of active credit unions today achieved their net worth.
Until NCUA insurance was required for all FCU’s in 1970, member shares were equity, ranking last in payout priority in the event of failure. One of CUNA’s concerns about a federal insurance program was that it would reduce members’ ownership attention.
During the bank holiday in FDR’s first year in office when many customers lost savings due to bank closures, credit unions noted that not a single state charter failed in this period. There were no FCU’s until 1934; but just like the states, all member shares were at risk.
Federal share insurance was not passed because of member losses or credit union failures. Rather it was a reward for performance that demonstrated member shares were as safe as insured deposits in banks. It was not untill the mid-1980’s that the Public Accounting Standards Board classified credit union shares as liabilities and not equity in GAAP presentationa.
Even after multiple coop share insurance programs were available, until passage of the Credit Union Member Access Act (CUMAA) in 1998, reversing a Supreme Court interpretation of NCUA’s field of membership rule, credit union capital adequacy was determined on a flow, or earnings set aside requirement.
Net worth was created by allocating 6% of income into a statutory regular reserve account until that total was at least 4% of risk assets. At that level, the transfer was lowered to 5% until a ratio of 6% of risk assets (primarily loans) was achieved. Retained earnings were on top of this required capital account. The tax exemption on net income was a critical factor in coop net worth build up.
A 6% ratio of total net worth to assets was considered well-capitalized. However CUMAA changed the capital creation from a coop model to a banking concept. Now the required ratio was determined by the amount of capital on hand at any point in time versus the flow of earnings into reserves. To be well-capitalized credit unions needed to have at least 7% net worth at all times.
For almost 100 years the tax exemption was critical to building total capital. This was the sole source of credit union bet worth. This process took time before startups could become financially self sufficient without sponsor support or location and convenience advantages.
Member loyalty was the intangible but essential foundation because reserve accumulation could take a generation or more to become self-sustaining. Growing a credit union’s balance sheet from 1998 was now internally governed by the credit unions growth of equity, or ROE.
In his brief history of FCU supervision, Ancin Cooley points out (link) how this founding role of credit unions has been eroded as the founders and builders have left the scene.
Few CEO’s today have had to worry about building capital and ROE performance. There is no external market accountability as there is no stock to be valued and traded. The industry’s average capital ratio is 11%, far above the 7% well capitalized rule requirement. Risk based capital measures are even greater.
Most newly hired or promoted CEO’s, especially in the three decades since CUMAA in 1998, are unaware of how the wealth legacy they now direct was built by generations of member loyalty.
A baseball metaphor for this historical blind spot of incoming CEO’s is useful: “Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”
And so the focus of these newcomer CEO’s, often with board blessing, is how to take the credit union to a new institutional level. Not how to enhance the well-being of the member-owners whose relationships were the unique foundation of cooperative success.
Excess capital makes the allure and seeming ease of purchasing banks or other third party assets, and moving beyond community to a financial intermediary, a ready breakout strategy. With the help of brokers and financial consultants the option is hard to resist. Organic growth seems so common place and difficult versus using surplus funds to acquire assets originated by others.
Instead of fulfilling cooperative purpose, the acquisition or ‘”transfer of control” (mergers) of eternal assets becomes the go-to success tactic. A coterie of consultants, lawyers, financial agents and lobbyists will facilitate these instant growth possibilities.
Today GAC attendees will hear urgent appeals for political action protecting the credit union tax exemption. But is that the best framing of the challenge?
Should the question intead be, if our organization were to taxed, would that change our mission? If the answer is yes, then maybe the first response is to discuss whether the vision-mission statement needs a review.
And secondly, what changes are needed for credit unions to continue their unique role for members, their community and in the overall financial markets whatever the tax status?
This week is the annual credit union political Woodstock festival in the Nation’s Capital. There will be vendor halls filled with new and old names; speeches from industry leaders promoting unity and forecasting threats; praise from both sides of the congressional aisles; and non-stop breakfasts, lunches and receptions/dinners to catch up with peers.
Is it possible in this choreographed cacophony that the most important voice and movement issue may not addressed? The concern comes from 2,700 miles away, written by a longtime member-owner and printed in the local newspaper, the Sacramento BEE.
In this week of celebration I believe this person is raising the most important existential issue facing the movement-will anyone pay attention.
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article314780377.html
The Bee opinion is a current example of the increasing frenzy of secretly initiated intra-industry acquisitions reshaping the unique structure and role of cooperatives.
The proposed SAFE-BECU combination takes the future away from their member-owners. It now rests in the control of self-appointed boards and management’s personal ambitions. Regulatory oversight is entirely absent.
Existential moments in credit union history are not new. In February of 1982 Chairman Ed Callahan, in his first speech to GAC, asked CUNA President Jim Williams the most critical issues facing credit unions. Jim used one word: “survival.”
At that time, the movement counted 20,784 credit unions with $72.3 billion in assets serving over 45 million members. Growth had stalled. Inflation with double digit interest rates and money market funds were taking away shares. Credit union expansion a forgotten dream, investments (GNMA 8’s) were way underwater, and losses were looming high.
Drawing on his five years overseeing the largest state charted system in Illinois, Callahan proposed a new policy following credit union principles of collaboration, self-help, local advantage and ever enhanced member-owner value. The resulting changes in NCUA institutional oversight and industry initiatives created a movement that not only survived but thrived,. The movement transformed to the market driven realities of open competition from the era of government issued licensing for protected financial franchises.
Today the nation’s 4,200 credit unions manage $2.5 trillion in assets for over 140 million members with retained earnings approaching $285 billion. The NCUSIF is overfunded.
Unlike 1982, the system’s present danger is neither financial nor the various external warnings about fintech, stable coin options or other competitive innovation.
Today the existential end arises from two simultaneous practices. One is expanding efforts of self-destructive acquisitions of long-term large sound coops by their fellow credit unions. These efforts mimic the old fashioned capitalistic efforts to gain market dominance by takeovers, not competition.
As described in the BEE opinion editorial, the deals are done in secret with payouts and new roles negotiated by the principals, their advisors and then signed off routinely by regulators. No one represents or protects the member-owner’s rights and financial interests in these deals rife with conflicts of interest.
There is a second social and political factor at work. Today’s political ethos is the example of the strong, ambitious and single-minded pursuit of wealth and dominance, not democratic collaboration. Traditional credit union virtues of cooperation and sharing seem naïve. So leaders will bow their knees, compromise legacies of trust, to those in authority who in turn will stand aside as they pursue their goals of industry superiority.
The movement’s future has been steadily removed from member-owners’ hands through self-perpetuating boards and CEO turnover whose successors have no obligation to the legacy they now control. These changes of control transactions are now greased with payments in the millions of dollars from members’ common wealth.
Can this increasing cooperative cannibalistic destruction be challenged.? As more and more leaders are caught up in what one observer calls the emotional urgency of FOMO risk, can credit unions’ unique purpose be revitalized?
Two sources of hope and example.
The first is a renewed vision and embrace of what success looks like as a coop. Here is a classic, timeless statement by a longtime, very successful CEO, now retired. The Ultimate Vision:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE_3-ipOiPE)
The second factor must be the old fashioned calling that all Americans believe in democratic governance. It is not the rich, those in positions of power or the inheritors of wealth that control our future. But We the People.
Scott Rose, in his BEE opinion, is the example Doug Fecher said would be the test of credit unions’ ultimate success. Scott is sounding an alarm for his community’s future. His effort is the same that has animated the best of American patriots for 250 years. On behalf of his 245,000 fellow owners, the greater Sacramento community and the missing regulatory oversight, he is alerting all of us to this takeover of not just his credit union but the entire cooperative model.
His willingness to take a stand will create public awareness, debate and an uprising from the grassroots. For as he says, “member-owners, local leaders and potentially impacted community organizations must speak out. What is lost is not simply and accounting abstraction—it is real control of wealth. . . Once approved, a merger cannot be undone.”
Will someone at tonight’s Herb Wegner award festival dare to honor the voice of this member-owner who is calling all of us to remember who we are and what we stand for?
The challenge is both present and ageless. In words of the Bard’s most famous character:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
Just spent a week in New York City on a Road Scholar educational program about Broadway Theater.
In addition to talks with multiple production personnel and an actor, we saw live performances of The Lion King, Ragtime and a show in preview, Marcel on the Train. Disney’s Lion King is in its 25th season, the longest continuous performance on Broadway. An example of an innovative, instant and long standing theoretical success.
The 40 authorized Broadway stages are the peak of the theater industry in America, a business that achieved national standing around the turn of the century. I believe there is much to learn from Broadway success that is relevant for coops.
While credit unions in consumer finance and theater’s live entertainment serve very different needs, success in both fields depends on the same three factors: collaboration, community and creativity (innovation).
From high school class plays to college drama departments to the professional stage, every theatrical production is an extensive collaboration of individuals with diverse skills. American University’s (AU) theater department’s recent production of Oklahoma showcased this artistic foundation.
It had eleven leads or main roles backed up with male and female dance and singing ensembles of twenty members. With the six orchestra members, the total performers seen by the audience was 37.
However the list of the creative and production teams was just as long. In addition to director and choreographer roles, there were individuals responsible for Solo Tap Choreographer, Vocal Coach, Fight Director, Intimacy Director, Scenic Design, Wardrobe Crew, Stage manager and two dozen more artistic support positions.
In our New York course, we learned that concept to stage can take anywhere from four to eight years for new shows such as Hamilton or Operation Mincemeat. A revival will require a year or two depending on the production changes.
At every phase of development, the people behind the scenes far outnumber the performers on stage. And that doesn’t include the business, university or 501 C3 non profit organizations backing the artistic undertaking.
To mount a live theatrical performance requires an artistic community plus an external audience (market) hat will be interested in the play’s themes and become supporters.
Oklahoma was Rogers and Hammerstein’s first collaboration. It premiered in 1943 at the height of WW II. The musical was set in 1905 right before Oklahoma achieved statehood. The musical reflects a moment when community was essential for survival. Daily life required cooperation, shared labor and mutual dependence.
One song that illustrates the tension between individual and community well being is The Farmer and the Cowman. It includes this democratic assertion, I don’t say I’m no better than anybody else; but I’ll be damned if I ain’t just as good.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31BI33T9yTI)
When Oklahoma first opened the the public was living in an era of uncertainty and collective sacrifice. Oklahoma offered a vision of America built on shared responsibility and thriving community interaction, not personal dominance.
The third factor in theatrical success is creativity. While the public in the Tony awards will celebrate an individual’s role, the final result is always a collaborative effort that has resonated with a community of followers and critics.
A theatrical success is timely, with events and characters that resonate in the present, as well as timeless appeal across generations. Oklahoma captures the buoyant optimism that is America in its opening song, O what a Beautiful Morning. It includes a memorable phrase of boundless hope: all the sounds of the earth are like music.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks5TgRRhqvw)
Both cooperatives and theater emerged as industries around the turn of the twentieth century. One spoke to the need for economic justice; the other to the growing search for a national artistic identity.
Both of those needs are present today, if not more so. The same organizational capabilities that created these successful enterprises are still essential today:
Credit unions and theater come in many sizes and complexities. Both are much more than businesses pursuing financial sustainability. They uniquely rely on and energize local communities. In an era of social divisions and individual isolation, Oklahoma shows us how community is formed, challenged and celebrated.
In Saturday’s final performance, the audience of AU students, friends and family, applauded and screamed with joy for what they had experienced. From a play created three generations earlier. And whose message is ageless.
In the show’s finale you can feel once more the exuberance of this unique creative collaboration. Here’s hoping your performance today will leave your audience feeling as good!
From Homer’s Odyssey
“… Whoever draws too close,
… and catches the Sirens’ voices in the air…
The high thrilling song of the Sirens will transfix him…” (see note at end)
Coop CEO’s grapple with multiple challenges and choices. Their strategic judgments are often formed by character not objective circumstance.
As recent events in cooperative land have demonstrated, there are ever present calls by Sirens to enhace one’s power and self enrichment.
This is a story of a CEO who has been solicited incessantly for over a decade to compromise her credit union’s future and her principles.
Madeline Stewart the CEO of Vida FCU had a lot on her plate at the beginning of 2025.
Three special projects included a name and branding change from Ontario Montclair School Employees FCU to reflect their expanded market; the implementation of the new CDFI lending program; and a complete physical makeover of its office.
These initiatives are described in several public interviews with local media. In January 2025 she completed a 30 minute recording (link) with the Western Cuna Management School (WCMS) whose three-year program she completed in 1999.
An hour live radio broadcast in July was also filmed for YouTube. She presented her CEO journey to three interviewers. She began working with Vida in 2000 becoming CEO in 2016. She explains the special resposibilty of the credit union to provide members value and service available nowhere else.
(KCAA inverviewers and Madeline on the far right)
In the KCAA radio discussion (link) she gives multiple examples of special member benefits. No fees for overdraft, courtesy pay or NSF withdrawals. The same rate for new and used auto loans. A Visa card with an interest rate as low as 8.48%.
On the credit union’s home page there is an About Vida video (link) which she introduces. Other employees and members share their experiences with the credit union.
CEO Sewart is out front. All three recordngs focus on the welfare of members. At one point she mentions growing up in poverty. She sought a career to serve those taken advantage of because of financial circumstances.
The name Vida, life in Spanish. refers to both the credit union’s potential market and the goal of lifelong member relationships spanning generations.
She expresses gratitude. She references a 2016 NCUA examiner who completed a zip code analysis of her members. He recommended she apply for the Low Income Designation (LID) regulatory classification. That approval led to the CDFI program certification when expanding her FOM to an entire county.
Her responses to question focus on a singular responsibility-how the credit union makes members lives better. I heard little about asset size, growth rates,technology innovation or other institutional benchmarks traditionally a part of CEO interviews.
However here are some selected performance outcomes at 2025 yearend. $170 million in assets with $84 million in loans operating from a single office with 34 employees serving 10,117 members.
Key ratios: ROA, .96%; net worth, 13.8%; Delinquency, .16%; and a net inerest margin of 3.54%.
Vida competes in the southern California market, a land of giant institutions. The credit union thrives by building local personal relationships. With one location, multiple channels and future “twigs” planned, her team stands tall against all comers.
Just as Homer’s Odysseus hero faced constant temptations in his epic quest, she confronts ever present entreaies to change her voyage of special purpose.
For the past ten years the credit union has been the object of constant credit union and intermediary solicitations.
Here are examples of these mulitple communications:
From: February 5, 2026
Good morning, Madeline,
Bumping this up in your inbox as I’ll be travelling out to California (I’m based in Minnesota) for some client meetings and I’m hoping we can align calendars.
Any chance you’d be available for dinner on Feb 26 or breakfast Feb 27?
As I mentioned, happy to provide further context when we connect by phone.
Thanks in advance.
From: Thursday, January 29
Subject: Strategic Interest
Sensitivity: Confidential
Hi Madeline,
Following on from my earlier LinkedIn outreach, I wanted to reach out on behalf of a CU client of ours that’s interested in meeting with you to discuss a potential strategic partnership with Vida FCU.
I would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you at your earliest convenience.
Here is an invitation from 2021;
Trust you and yours are keeping well so far in 2021.
I am writing to you in your position as Chief Executive Officer of Ontario Montclair School Employees FCU to discuss a strategic opportunity with one of my credit union clients.
We’ve been helping companies grow for almost 25 years now and we know that there is value in bringing parties together for exploratory conversations. We have been engaged by a significant-sized credit union based in California that is looking to proactively grow through strategic mergers.
After researching potential candidates,a merger with Ontario Montclair School Employees FCU has been identified as an attractive strategic opportunityfor our client, due to your location and field of membership.
We approach you because we felt there was an interesting strategic fit and that with our client there might be stronger growth opportunities together to better serve members across California.
Our focus at this time is on opening the door for an introductory conversation and presenting their strategic rationale for a merger
The temptations are not just from external brokers, consultants and vendor go betweens. They come from credit unions. One message communicated via the league offered to pay her expenses fo attend the GAC in Washington DC. Local credit union meetings often lead to conversations such as, would you be interested in . . .
In one messsage, the writer threatened to contact the board chair directly if she did not respond!
These appeals are a constant refrain in her tenure as CEO. When I asked why she didn’t listen to the pitch to know what is being used to tempt her peers she replied.
I’m not open to temptation; I care about my members & employees. I’m sure the conversations would kick everything off with an NDA request. They have been pursuing me for years but they’re ramping up the efforts. relentless!!!
Credit unons are averaging over 150 mergers of stable and sound credit unions per year. The merged credit union members are transferred to a third party’s control, a firm they had no role in selecting and one often with no local knowledge or presence.
The credo of one firm soliciing credit union mergers is: Every company is for sale … for the right equation. But, it takes skill and experience to find them. Some credit unions succumb to this belief, facilitated with the right monetary incentive.
I believe today’s coop leaders remembered in the future wll not be the largest, most innovative or expansive. Rather it will be the persons who declined the persistent calls to sell out their owners, employees and communities. For they keep alive the special opportunity for all a coop’s stakeholders tp sustain their unique mission.
One of the perceived advantages of cooperative design and member-user governance was to make them immune to the ever present capitalist free market mantra that any organization can be bought or sold–it is just a matter of finding the right price.
Cooperatives were not founded to be sold or converted to private ownership. But today that belief is no longer universally held.
Madeline is a credit union believer who leads with deeds and dedication. She is building a legacy much greater than her balance sheet and half century of serving in the credit union ommunity.
It is the character of her choices and the implementation of cooperative’s ideals that will become a benchmark for all CEO’s large and small who will come after.
Editor’s note:
With the avalanche of news about anti-ICE marches, Epstein file updates, military deployments, Guthrie kidnapping, and stock market records, it was easy to overlook an unprecedented arrival in DC.
This past Tuesday, 19 Buddhist monks and their rescue dog completed a four-month, 108 day walk from Fort Worth to DC to pray for peace. One account of this human effort and public response is below. Not only is the story completely out of the ordinary, as one interviewee states, it also gives us hope.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13I_7f8pH78)
Hope Closer to Home
Yesterday’s SECU-Just Asking blog was about Lending Hope, a community self-help project in Warren County, North Carolina.
Following are excerpts of the Feburary 4th Warren Herald’s story, Ceremony Marks Official Launch of Lending Hope Initiative. (link)
Key elements of the program include:
The Warren Ministries United purpose: “Our mission is to offer small, interest-free loans that assist applicants in managing rent, mortgage payments, utility bills, and deposits.”
The Rev. Philip Sharp, the organization’s executive director, said that local residents who would like to apply should bring the following:
“We will do the application process with them and do a budget with them,” Sharp said.
After the budget is completed, those seeking funding will complete an application form that asks them a range of questions, including what help is needed, and the amount that is being requested.
Warren Ministries United will consider such factors as income level and amount. Applicants will be asked to contribute what they can, and the Lending Hope Initiative will make up the difference. The applicant will sign a payment agreement.
“When the money comes back, we will give to someone else in need,” Sharp said.
Donations have enabled the Lending Hope Initiative to have enough money to start and will continue to help fund the program moving forward. Thanks to the initiative, a family who lost their home to fire was able to pay an electric bill so that electricity could be set up at their new home, Sharp said.
Warren Ministries United hopes that the Lending Hope Initiative will prove to be sustainable well into the future.
Does this Lending Hope’s process remind you of a another institution’s role? Except the part about no interest?
A former CEO Doug Fecher used to state his criteria for whether the credit union was fulfilling its mission by asking: “If Wright-Patt Credit Union went away would the members stand up and recreate us? Or would they just go down the street and choose another option?”
He would then often add: We’re not there yet, but that is our goal.”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE_3-ipOiPE)
The Lending Hope initiative is one answer to Fecher’s criteria for whether credit unions are fulfilling cooperative purpose. There is one credit union branch only in Warren County, North Carolina. It is run by SECU, the second largest credit union in the country.
Both examples of Hope from a walking prayer for peace, or making no-interest loans to local persons in need, share a common source. They were initiated by religious leaders.
Society often describes these activities as movements. Like the Civil Rights Movement.
I believe that hope is why credit unions were founded. Are we still providing that for our members today?