BERKELEY, Calif.-Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union is reaping big benefits from its installation of a 29.7 kilowatt DC photovoltaic solar system earlier this year.

MANCHESTER, N.H.-St. Mary's Bank has a history of great success with innovations, but a program launched this summer to provide micro loans to entrepreneurs has so far fallen flat.

LAKE JACKSON, Texas-TDECU's $1,000 A Day checking offer has done more than boost checking growth by 30% year over year; it's deepened member relationships.

LAUREL, Md.-After more than two-and-a-half years, Tower FCU is retiring its Cash Back Direct Deposit program, which paid as much as $125 for members who set up a new checking account with direct deposit.

WASHINGTON-A pilot program from the Department of the Treasury that attempted to increase access to financial services for the underbanked will not be repeated in 2012.

Perhaps 2011 will go down as the year social media finally proved it might live up to some of the hype. So in keeping with that, I thought the best way to memorialize 2011 would be to go back and look at some of the best Twitter posts (tweets) and share them here.

I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to the Credit Union Journal team for all the valuable information you publish. Finance Center FCU has been a subscriber for years and we continually read and share your publication across our management team every week.

Obviously [Lockheed CU's] employees have no clue about what it will take to run their institution in 2013. None of these striking employees belong in the credit union industry. Let them work at the bank-that's what they're there for.

RAPID CITY, S.D. -- Highmark FCU awarded the Western Dakota Tech Foundation $30,000 Friday to furnish buildings in the schools 60,000-square-foot expansion.

ST. LOUIS – Anheuser-Busch Employees’ CU has signed with TRC Interactive to implement the company’s First Line of Defense-Fraud Detection and Loss Prevention Challenge, an online interactive exercise that helps credit union staff focused on the latest frauds.

HAUPPAUGE, N.Y. – Island FCU has signed with cuautocoupons Inc. to offer the start-ups auto coupons to its members.

MIDLAND, Mich. -- Members First CU has loaned out $1 million in its fourth year of the $1,000 Whatever Loan.

SAN DIEGO -- Two U.S. Marines who robbed a California Coast CU branch last year were sentenced to prison Friday.

MOBILE, Ala. – A women who helped her brother tap into First Educators CU and several other lenders for millions of dollars in mortgages was convicted by a state jury Friday of fraud in the scheme.

KINGSPORT, Tenn. – Eastman CU is the latest credit union to announced a major holiday payout, with plans to distribute $5 million in extraordinary dividend payments to eligible members.

WASHINGTON – Former top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were charged Friday in a civil suit by the Securities and Exchange Commission with lying to investors and Congress about the extent of the two mortgage giants’ subprime business during the mortgage meltdown.

LOS ANGELES – A federal judge last week directed NCUA and RBS to begin negotiations aimed at settling NCUA’s $629 million claims over the failure of WesCorp FCU, one of five suits NCUA has filed against Wall Street banks over the sale of risky mortgage-backed securities to corporate credit unions.

DES MOINES -- Online payments service Dwolla released a new feature called Instant that gives users access to cash instantly, avoiding the two- to three-day waiting period for transfer of funds.

FRANKLIN, Tenn. – Member Service Solutions LLC plans to launch the first affordable credit union mobile app solution for the new Kindle Fire electronic tablet.

DALLAS – Credit unions were hit last week with a new group of suits by one consumer claiming they violated the public disclosure provisions of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act by failing to post non-member fees being charged at their ATMs as required by the EFTA.