WASHINGTON—CUNA is taking the wraps off a political engagement program aimed at rank-and-file credit union members that it has been piloting at two credit unions.
Called the Member Activation Program, or MAP, it was introduced to credit unions at CUNA’s GAC here, and will receive a more formal, detailed explanation later this week. But during a press conference here new CUNA CEO Jim Nussle said the experience of the two credit unions involved in the pilot—University FCU and CommunityAmerica Credit Union—has been that members are not at all apathetic about their credit unions once they learn more about their ownership in the credit union, and issues affecting that ownership.
“This makes them more connected to their credit unions,” said Nussle.
A primary goal is to leverage the 100-million Americans who claim credit union membership more effectively, to put credit unions on par with organizations such as the National Rifle Association and AARP when it comes to strength in Washington.
Nussle said the strategy is to move away from activating members in response to various crises and instead keep those members consistently engaged.
The first part of that agenda, he said, is to educate members on what credit unions are, what they do and why they do it.
“That means understanding the tax status and regulatory burden and what that does to the bottom line of the owners,” said Nussle, also citing the cost of data breaches to credit unions as another issue to which members are connected in terms of cost and risk.
Dennis Pierce, the outgoing chairman of CUNA and CEO of CommunityAmerica CU, one of the two CUs to pilot MAP, said “We found our members want to be engaged and want to participate, and those who were engaged did more business with us. The more we can emphasize the ownership aspect, the more of an advocate the member becomes.
“The (tax exemption) issue was sort of the catalyst for starting it,” Pierce continued. “But there is an ongoing appetite for information and they want to participate. One of the issues is, once you activate them you have to keep them engaged. They want to know how you’re doing and want to remain updated. You can’t drop in and drop out.”
Nussle said that the pilot test of MAP has been “comprehensive, very well tested and vetted out,” and that CUNA will soon be releasing those results more formally.