FERNDALE, Mich. — Credit Union ONE has improved its employees understanding of complex regulatory issues and boosted fundraising contributions for credit union issues since launching an advocacy page on the CU's intranet site.
"No one is going to advocate for us - we have to be our own advocate," said Stephen Dedene, manager of compliance and regulatory affairs at the 108,000-member, $807 million credit union.
With that in mind, Dedene launched the advocacy site in August 2012 as a way to help employees at all levels of the CU become educated about the issues that impact credit unions, and to provide them with the tools necessary to turn that education into advocacy.
Dedene posts three or four entries per month on the CU's advocacy blog. Topics have included: international remittances, ATM skimming, mortgage servicing, tax-exempt status and more. "We're good at telling employees what to do, but we don't often tell them the why behind it," he said.
'Calls To Action'
Along with blog posts, a regulatory calendar, issue analysis and more, the CU also has a section on the site for calls to action.
"When we have important issues come up we will type out a letter, but it on our advocacy site, make an announcement, and employees will go to that site, pit in their information and it will send their lawmakers a letter" using the same CapWiz Congressional messaging software that CUNA uses, said Dedene. "We had 51 employees do that for ATM skimming.... As these issues come up and they impact us, we try to get our staff involved."
Dedene said he is not aware of any other CUs using this kind of advocacy site to educate staff. For now the site is just for staff, but CU ONE is also working to make sure that members can advocate for the credit union. Rather than driving members through CUNA's "Don't Tax My CU" site, CU ONE used web banners, blog postings, press releases, e-mails to members and more to direct traffic to its own site. Once there, more than 2,400 members sent letters to their lawmakers in support of the CU tax exemption.
In order to make sure that the site gets used, CU ONE has held competitions for Detroit Tigers baseball tickets - employees were required to answer a question that could only be answered with a visit to the site - as well as issued calls to action, and held competitions for PAC fundraising. More than 240 unique visitors have come to the site since September, out of a total of about 300 employees at CU ONE.
No Major Costs
Dedene said that there were no major costs associated with the project since it was an addition to the credit union's already existing intranet, and Dedene himself creates nearly all the content. CapWiz costs the Cu about $3,500 per year, he said, "but that cost is separate from the actual advocacy site itself.
It's very cost-effective, and very cost-efficient."
The credit union's efforts appear to be paying off. PAC fundraising from the CU has increased since the site launched, and contacts with lawmakers have become more frequent. CU ONE has also added an advocacy component into its onboarding process for new employees, so every new hire goes through a class with Dedene about the role of advocacy at the CU and how to use the site.
"We've come a long, long way," said Dedene. "We've turned the corner. And now it's about just ingraining this into our culture. It's making sure it doesn't fall apart. It's something we don't want to just be a phase."
