DETROIT-53 years after founding AP Federal Credit Union in northern Detroit, Bob Volpe retired from the industry in late May.
His contributions to the movement and to the $38.6-million institution now based out of Toledo, Ohio, were recognized by the CU, which named Volpe director emeritus and dedicated the new community room in his honor at AP FCU's newest location.
CU Journal caught up with Volpe to ask him to share what he's learned during the 53-year process of building a credit union from thr ground up.
CUJ: How did you first get into the credit union industry; what piqued your interest about the financial cooperative movement?
Volpe: I was working at a factory AP Parts Manufacturing Company and my profession was a cutter. Back then you couldn't cut with an electric saw, you had to do it by hand. I had an accident at work where I smashed my hand, so I lost my profession and people at the factory needed help and were talking about these other credit unions so I thought I would help them organize it. They put me in contact with the NCUA and I made an application for it and we got the charter. I didn't think I would end up with the books but they said, "you helped us take care of the charter you take care of the books." We operated out of my home, we didn't have an office or anything. There were about 500 employees at the factory, and I believe we got about 300 employees signed up in about a few months. Little by little we started to grow.
CUJ: How did you help AP FCU, and the cooperative movement as a whole, grow over the last 50-plus years?
Volpe: At first I operated the credit union out of my own home, but over time I bought a house near the factory so people could get to it easily. I invested my own $5,000 to buy that house to help the credit union, but there were other credit unions in the area that couldn't keep their operations going. So at one point we operated three credit unions out of a single house. I kept buying two or three houses around there and eventually we demolished them and put the office up there in 1989. To this date we merged 18 credit unions; they were all small CUs and were losing offices and too small to operate. When you get one or two and the board sees the result, they want to get more of them. The last was about two years ago. We have since changed charter to take anybody in the county [as a member].
CUJ: What would you say to professionals in the cooperative movement today?
Volpe: You have to have the urge to help people, especially today. [For example,] there's a small credit union near our main office. They were robbed and they couldn't afford another retail store for office space, so we invited them into our office so they could have some space. We didn't end up merging with them, but it all worked out, and we helped them.
CUJ: Do you have any predictions for the future of the movement?
Volpe: There is a funny thing going on today. Because of the financial crisis, quite a few people mistrust banks and they're joining credit unions, but they still keep a relationship with the banks, just on a smaller scale. We have to find a way to get those people to give up on those banks entirely. You have to offer the people something a little bit more than the banks are.
