To Affinity and Beyond! Passionate Members Drive Credit Union Success

Today we're bringing you another guest blog post from our friends over at Credit Union Resources. Bob Rehm, VP, Sales and Service, talks about how passion factors in to the credit union movement.

My mom was a much beloved elementary school teacher all her adult life.  She loved being in the classroom and had a high level of affinity for her profession.  She was also passionate about her credit union, a teachers’ credit union, as they used to call them.  Likewise, the credit union was passionate about educators.

The definition of affinity is: A group of people who share a common interest, background, or goal.  Also, it could be defined as a group of persons affiliated with the same organization, college, etc.

Mom passed her affinity for the credit union to me and my siblings.  All of us have been life-long members of a credit union.  And I’m sure similar stories exist in every credit union.

Does that zeal still exist today? 

My three children work in the education system.  Two of the three have joined teachers’ credit unions, not because of recommendations from their peers at work, but because of my urging.  I don’t think they heard about the credit union at work – no credit union zealots in their circle of co-workers, I suppose.  I’m not being judgmental.  Just saying things have changed.

In recent years, organizations, from school systems to major corporations, have made it more difficult to have access to employees for purposes of promoting the credit union.  Also, financial services have become much more widely available to all working people.  The result has been that many credit unions that used to focus on narrow employee groups now are much broader in their fields of membership.  Many have community or other geography-based fields of membership.

So, now we are crossing the chasm from high affinity relationships to competing against all other financial institutions in the open community.  That’s a pretty big jump.

In a credit union marketing approach, is there a way to develop some type of affinity with a geographic community?  What creative ways has your credit union used to gain affinity?  No doubt, being active in a geographic community requires a different skill set than being engaged with an employer group or association.  Are there aspects of our organizations that people in our communities can point to and declare that they have affinity with us?

Lots of credit unions are creatively engaged in the day-to-day fabric of their communities.  Check out the Unite for Good website for examples of credit unions building affinity in their communities: http://uniteforgood.org/stories

Certainly our movement is growing and evolving.  But, ahh, I remember the days…