Credit Unions Rebuild Communities Amid Pandemic Challenges

Two years ago, Salal Credit Union’s charitable foundation was looking for a way to relieve housing insecurity – not only in its core member area around Seattle, but in other states as well.

The credit union ($975.1 million in assets, 45,444 members) has about 60% of its members in the Puget Sound, and the rest in Colorado, New York, northern California and other states.

Matt Vance, Salal’s vice president of marketing and communications, came upon Rebuilding Together in an online search. When he noticed it was having its annual meeting in Seattle, he wrangled an invite.

“I learned so much about what the organization and the work these affiliates do in their local communities,” Vance said. “It became evident they were a great fit. We were looking for an organization that had a national presence and was outside of just Seattle.”

Rebuilding Together’s national network of affiliates allowed the Salal Foundation to do work in some of its communities outside Seattle.

In March 2019, the Salal Foundation signed its first partnership agreement with Rebuilding Together that funded seven home repair grants that year.

In a Salal-supported project in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 80 miles north of Manhattan, Rebuilding Together repaired the leaky roof and replaced rotting siding on the home of a 70-year-old woman who is the primary caretaker for her four-year-old great-granddaughter.

In Sacramento, Calif., Rebuilding Together built an accessibility ramp for a Marine Corps veteran living with a disability who could not safely get in and out of his home.

Salal was in discussions with Rebuilding Together for its next round when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic March 11.

Because of social distancing requirements, projects depending on large numbers of volunteers had to be scrapped, ­including ­projects Salal planned to fund, according to Chris Perry, vice president of development at Rebuilding Together.

“They immediately said, ‘What can we do? What is the need that’s out there?,’” Perry said.

The answer was emergency repairs: Homeowners with leaky roofs, dangerous wiring, leaking plumbing or other issues that couldn’t wait. The problem with those projects is they required contractors, and contractor projects are generally three times more expensive than those that can be done with volunteers.

“We talked to them about how there’s still home repairs that need to happen, even if there are no volunteers to help,” Perry said.

In July, Salal signed its second partnership agreement for $70,000 to support nine home repair grants and other projects in California, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New York and Minnesota. The amount represents about two-thirds of the foundation’s projected $110,000 in grants this year.

While Salal’s projects with Rebuilding Together in 2019 ranged from about $7,000 to $12,000 each, this year’s projects have ranged from $10,000 to $15,000.

“They were comfortable funding those kinds of projects,” Perry said. “Their funding was extremely generous, and very much needed as things really started to hit.”

Volunteer work has started to resume – with mask wearing and other pandemic precautions.

Rebuilding Together’s affiliate in the San Jose, Calif., area had to cancel its big annual volunteer event, Rebuilding Day, originally scheduled for April. Instead, they created a modified version Oct. 17 and Oct. 24, gathering sponsors and 200 volunteers who completed projects at 13 homes and two non-profits in Santa Clara County.

Deanne Everton, executive director of Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley, said Salal is supporting the affiliate on other projects this fall.

“Our partnership with Salal means so much, especially during these extremely trying times,” Everton said.

Of course, credit unions across the country are engaged in community support and other charitable projects. Other examples include:

• SIU Credit Union of Carbondale, Ill. ($388.8 million in assets, 41,803 members) announced in November that it was giving $17,500 to The Poshard Foundation for Abused Children and $17,500 to the Marion Veterans Affairs Medical Center, singled out because their needs were especially great due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Travis Credit Union of Vacaville, Calif. ($4.1 billion in assets, 216,573 members) refocused its community outreach after the pandemic. It began giving grants of $10,000 to $20,000 to businesses in its “Network of Awesome” in its area near ­Travis Air Force Base halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. By matching employee donations, the credit union was able to distribute $3 million in seven months.
• BECU of Seattle ($25.6 billion in assets, 1.3 million members) announced Oct. 28 that it is planning to give $5 million over five years to support Black communities and racial equity in Washington state. BECU plans to work with local nonprofits that are focused on improving the well-being of the Black community and “led by Black leaders and employ a predominately multicultural staff that is representative of the communities being served.” In 2019, BECU funded over $6.4 million in donations to local charities, or 0.03% of its assets as of December 2019.

A study published by the Filene Research Institute of Madison, Wis., in August, looked at the 585 credit unions with assets of $500 million or more as of Dec. 31, 2018 – a manageable number for researchers and home to 71% of members. Altogether, those credit unions held $1.13 trillion in assets, or 77% of the movement’s $1.43 trillion in assets at the time.

Of those, only 356 credit unions had publicly available information about their charitable giving. Among that sample, charitable giving equaled $115.6 million in 2018, or 0.015% of their $1.13 trillion in assets.

On average, this set of credit unions has released 1.68% of their net income in corporate giving – about on par with companies and other organizations.

The report by Elry Armaza, Filene’s custom research director, found “room for improvement” in credit union charitable giving.

“Although the majority of reporting credit unions worked within some sort of framework to organize their giving, it was not a strong majority,” Armaza wrote. “There is a clear opportunity here for credit unions to operationalize their philanthropic goals into a more developed and intentional strategy.”