Be 'memberlicious' by partnering to make your community a better place.
A few months ago, I wrote about what it means to be “memberlicious,” and about how mortgages are memberlicious. If you didn’t read that article, you might wonder about the definition of memberlicious. It’s a made-up word that describes an experience that is highly pleasing to your members’ senses. It’s something both credit unions and their members can get excited about.
Credit unions have lots of ways to be memberlicious: make sure you are on the member’s side, be specific, don’t default to the expected, stay away from jargon, and celebrate. All great ideas.
Here’s another one: Get involved in making the community a better place to live.
Now, I don’t mean the typical get involved in the community where you have a booth at the local strawberry festival or you sponsor a little league team. All of those things are nice, and they show how the credit union is a part of the community, however, they don’t do anything to differentiate your credit union from others or materially help your members or the community. It’s just nice.
So here’s what I mean about being memberlicious by helping make the community a better place to live:
Community leaders know that cities and towns with higher home ownership rates generally have a better tax base, better schools, better-looking properties and lower crime rates. It’s attractive for communities to have all these benefits to retain and grow their populations. And your credit union is memberlicious when it becomes part of making that happen in your community.
Most areas have some sort of local housing program. It might be through a NeighborWorks America affiliate or it might be through the local government or some other group. Find out what your local group does and how you can partner with it. The best way to do so is to use the might of the credit union’s balance sheet to put together a loan program.
In my community of Dayton, Ohio, Wright-Patt Credit Union has done several such programs.
For example, we partnered with the local county development corporation, CountyCorp, and the local NeighborWorks America affiliate to acquire funds from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program. CountyCorp acquired forceclosed homes with the money and rehabilitated the homes.
Wright Patt PCU became the preferred lender for the sale of these homes and CountyCorp provided additional Neighborhood Stabilization dollars for to provide down payment assistance and created a credit guarantee pool to help cover a portion of any potential loan losses.
The credit union made these loans with relaxed credit criteria due to the guarantee and we helped a lot of folks become home owners. We were willing to take a bit more risk to help stabilize a part of Dayton hit hard by the foreclosure crisis. In over four years, we have only one loan that exceeded 60 days past due.
More recently, we partnered with the local fair housing association to create a lending program for a community hard hit by foreclosures and lenders who allowed foreclosed properties to become run down. The local agency provided forgivable grants of up to $16,000 per borrower for down payment and closing cost assistance when the borrower purchased a home in targeted communities. The borrower has to attend a robust course on home ownership and home maintenance. The credit union partners by making mortgage loans to these borrowers, most under $50,000, when no other institution in town will even look at them because of their size.
If you don’t have balance sheet or other limitations that prevent you from making such loans, find some ways to partner. We’ve participated in joint home buyer education sessions with housing non-profits. We’ve sponsored their programs. We’ve led a coalition of credit unions to provide funding for a foreclosure prevention specialist. All of these activities have helped create more homeowners or allowed home owners to keep their home. That’s good for individuals and the overall community--and that’s memberlicious!
CUES member Tim Mislansky, CCE, is president of myCUmortgage, SVP/chief lending officer for $2.8 billion Wright-Patt Credit Union, Fairborn, Ohio, and chief blogger for Mortgages are Memberlicious. With more than 20 years of credit union experience, Mislansky sits on the ACUMA board of directors, is a member of the Accenture Mortgage Cadence Advisory Council, and serves on the board of the Dayton Ohio Habitat for Humanity. He is passionate about helping credit unions be better mortgage lenders.
