Filene Launches Community Impact Research Center

The Filene Research Institute has launched a five-year project to study the impact of social and community development efforts by credit unions.

Filene, based in Madison, Wis., announced last week the Center of Excellence for Community Social Impact will be led by Mai Nguyen, an associate professor in the city and regional planning department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She is also director of the UNC Center for Community Capital, a research center focused on the power of financial capital to transform households and communities in the United States.

As Filene’s research fellow for the project, she will guide original and applied research designed to provide credit unions with “insights and resources needed to develop strategic advantages in the communities they serve and drive transformative community change,” according to a Filene news release.

Nguyen’s profile at UNC describes her as “a housing and urban scholar who seeks to improve the lives of vulnerable and underserved populations.” It said her research “is inspired by the goal of creating equitable and resilient communities.”

Nguyen said she is fascinated by the idea of geography as destiny — the idea that the neighborhoods where people are born predicts many of their life outcomes.

“Much of my work is centered around how to communicate complex research to educate and move people to create social change and take action,” she said. “By bridging urban planning scholarship and art, we can tell stories about racial injustice through the lens of the people who are most impacted by these systems, institutions and policies.”

Taylor Nelms, Filene’s senior director of research, said current public health, economic and social injustice crises demonstrate that financial services are indispensable community partners.

“The value of credit unions as providers of trustworthy and responsible financial services is already widely recognized,” Nelms said. “But credit unions, their community partners, and the people they serve are forging new and innovative pathways to positive social impact.”

Nelms said the new research center will measure and showcase the impact of the work credit unions are already doing.

“And we will get creative to move organizations to action and leverage cooperative finance to make real and lasting change, with positive impacts for individuals and collective and intergenerational transformation for communities.”

The center is supported by Callahan & Associates, the credit union company based in Washington, D.C., Lake Trust Credit Union of Brighton, Mich. ($2.2 billion in assets, 176,109 members), Redwood Credit Union of Santa Rosa, Calif. ($6 billion, 291,684), Summit Credit Union of Madison, Wis. ($4.3 billion, 206,436) and Washington State Employees Credit Union of Olympia ($3.9 billion, 285,393).

“Making a positive impact in the lives of our members and the well-being of our communities is very important to us,” Matt Martin, Redwood’s SVP of community and government relations, said. “Being a part of the Center of Excellence will allow us to take an even deeper dive into this critical work.”

Before year’s end, Filene will launch one final Center of Excellence focused on best practices in measuring and accelerating innovation and incubation. This will round out Filene’s research agenda with six focus areas, including four launched earlier this year: Centers for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Consumer Financial Lives in Transition, Emerging Technology and Data Analytics.