How to Protect CDFI Funding for Credit Unions by Playing Offense, Not Defense

To say there is uncertainty in the credit union movement right now is an understatement. The NCUA shake-up has left many feeling… well, a bit shaken up. And though tax exemption and funding for CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions) are protected for now, it’s hard to say when “for now” might abruptly end.

When compared to concerns about the NCUA and credit union tax status, there has not been as much outcry over the precarious future of the CDFI fund. Considering that only about 12% of credit unions are CDFIs, this makes sense, but the loss of funding could have significant ripple effects across the movement as a whole. In this episode, we talk to Armand Parvazi, Strategic Adviser at CUCollaborate and former Chief Administrative & Development Officer at New Orleans Firemen’s Federal Credit Union, to get his take on this month’s BIG question:

Why does the CDFI fund matter and how can we engage the credit union movement in protecting it?

Key takeaways:

1. One of the biggest benefits of CDFI certification is to take the pressure off immediate ROI. When profit is the primary lens through which a credit union makes decisions, it’s difficult to prioritize the needs of low-to-moderate income communities. But CDFI funding can help provide a safety net and turn "wish list" projects that might not be immediately sustainable into reality.
2. CDFI certification isn’t for everyone. Becoming a CDFI is a long-term commitment that must align with the credit union's overall strategy and risk appetite. It's not simply about "free money"; rather, it requires risk tolerance and intentional planning and resource allocation.
3. The best defense is good offense. Credit unions should be thinking about how to combat the uncertainty of external forces by playing offense. And the best way to do that is to continually share and reinforce the narrative of why your credit union matters. That includes both what makes it special as a credit union, not a bank, and what sets it apart from other credit unions. 

Resources & links:

• CDFI Fund
• CUCollaborate
• New Orleans Firemen's Federal Credit Union
• Marketing Association for Credit Unions (MAC)
• MAC Conference 2025
• Brigtsen’s Restaurant
• Jacque-Imo’s Café 

Read the full transcript:

Katie Stone:
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Credit Union podcast. We created our podcast to help credit union leaders think outside of the box about marketing, technology, and community impact. The Remarkable Credit Union is brought to you by PixelSpoke, a digital marketing agency that works with credit unions to create user-friendly, high-converting award-winning websites. As a B Corp and an employee-owned cooperative, we believe that business can and should be a force for good. Each episode we bring on expert guests from the credit union and broader cooperative movement for conversations about the intersection of marketing and social impact. Our goal is to challenge your preconceptions about business as usual, and provide you with actionable takeaways that you can use to grow your membership, improve the financial health of your cooperative and better serve your community. I'm Katie Stone, CEO, and one of the co-owners here at PixelSpoke.

Kerala Taylor:
And I'm Kerala Taylor, also a co-owner at PixelSpoke and the Director of Marketing and Impact. And we're here today to discuss our big question regarding the CDFI Fund. And CDFI stands for Community Development Financial Institution. And today we're going to be talking about why the CDFI Fund matters and how we can engage the credit union movement in protecting it. I'm very excited today to welcome Armand Parvazi. He's a strategic advisor at CUCollaborate and previously served as Chief Administrative and Development Officer at New Orleans Fireman's Federal Credit Union. He also serves with me on the board of the Marketing Association for Credit Unions, also known as MAC and is currently our board treasurer. And lastly, don't mess with him. Armand is a fourth degree black belt in karate and has been a martial arts instructor for almost 16 years. Armand, thanks so much for joining us.

Armand Parvazi:
Thank you for having me.

Kerala Taylor:
I feel like there's so many things we could talk about today, but we really wanted to focus this conversation around the CDFI fund and the social impact work that credit unions are doing because I know you and I both share a passion for that. And you had experience in leadership at a CDFI credit union and now you advise credit unions on CDFI certification among other things. So I'm just curious, looking back at your experience at New Orleans Fireman's Federal Credit Union, what did being a CDFI enable your credit union to do that you might not have been able to do otherwise?

Armand Parvazi:
Well, I think it comes back to what it means about being a credit union. The idea of a credit union is of course the people helping people mission, and that started with having a single common bond, and who were your people? A lot of times it was the group of employees that you worked with and then they would form this cooperative to help serve them. And then as time went on, credit unions started growing past their original field of membership and into the communities. And what the CDFI Fund was looking to accomplish when it was established was being able to bring more accessible financial services, more accessible financial products, more financial education to communities of low or moderate income. And credit unions were already established in a way that led into that. They were there to help their existing field of membership have greater accessibility of financial services. So why not lean into the community that needed that extra services and products?

CDFI Fund is supposed to help lubricate the inner mechanism to make those processes a little bit easier and more attainable. The way I describe the CDFI grants and the program to a lot of credit unions is it's meant to take the projects that have been either shelved or were a wishlist project and take them down off of that shelf and say, "Let's put this into production today." And it gives you a little bit of that safety net to say that we can start this process knowing it won't be financially sustainable from the moment that we kick it off, but we have multiple years to get it to a point where it can become something that we had normally have out there to our membership. So the CDFI Fund helps make a lot of goal and dream products into a reality, and that's something that the credit unions, once they learn how to make that a sustainable product internally can continue to offer to their membership for years to come.

Katie Stone:
Great. Well, pivoting a little bit, you're currently serving in an advisory role at CUCollaborate, and I was particularly interested in this question, and that is, what is your number one piece of advice for credit unions considering certification? And the reason I was so curious about this is because when I was doing my CUDE training last year, this was just a question that came up a lot. There was a lot of interest in the room about becoming a CDFI, and yet people were looking for advice, tips and hints. So I think this would be incredibly helpful for our listeners to hear.

Armand Parvazi:
Yeah, absolutely. So in my role as strategic advisor, I'm looking at what the next three to five years could be for a credit union. A lot of credit union consultancies think about the project. What's the project, what do we need to deliver for the client, and then what's the next project after that? My role specifically is how does that project actually affect the credit union strategy long term? And I have a wonderful CEO and founder, Sam Brownell. Sam very early on told me, "You can tell a client no." And I said, "Okay, that's good for me because I don't like to sell or push something that I don't think is going to actually help the client." If they want a project and they don't fit the project or it's maybe not the best move for them, feel free to push back and guide them in the direction where that would actually be the most beneficial.

And I do that a lot when it comes to CDFI, because a lot of credit unions, they don't know everything that goes into the CDFI. They don't understand that it's such a long-term commitment going forward. And some credit unions, just because they don't have all the facts yet feel like it might be free money to just move forward and help them get something up and don't realize that there are accountability measurements and there are efforts that have to be done both internally and externally to get a healthy

CDFI program running in the credit union. So a lot of things that I ask them first, trying to think about what's long-term consideration? How are you going to make this work? How are you going to actually continue to perform and build on your activities that are CDFI related? My first question is...

So it's not really my first question. I actually look at the financial performance report before I even ask this question. But my question that is in my brain is, what is your comfort with risk? Because at the end of the day, whatever you want to do, it has to fit your risk appetite. And if a credit union's risk appetite does not fit what it means to be a CDFI credit union and moving into areas of low to moderate income, CDFI is just going to be a pain point for them as they go forward. And it's not going to be something that they can find joy in and they're not going to revel in it and they're not going to continue to push it forward. So first consideration is what is the risk appetite and does that match what the CDFI fund is looking for?

And as one of my colleagues and I always go back and forth talking about is CDFI does not inherently mean increased risk. That's not always what it means. However, when you are looking to move towards lower credit tiers and get a little bit deeper in lending, good underwriting practices will help mitigate that risk. It'll help keep your charge-offs low, help keep your delinquency low. However, if you're of the mindset or maybe it's coming from the board that you only deal with a high FICO score, which I can personally speak to, does not mean that it's going to have a higher amount of repay ability. But if that is the number that your board is focusing on, you either have to change that mentality or you have to focus on other strategies because CDFI might not be the right source for you of strategy. However, if you are comfortable with lending to multiple credit tiers, we can start looking at what projects do you think CDFI would solve for you internally?

The easiest way, the cleanest... I shouldn't say the easiest. The cleanest accounting method for a CDFI is a lot of times offsetting your allowance for loan loss. But when credit unions want to either have other projects they want to accomplish, they're looking at making investments in either new technology solutions or moving into an area that is underserved and underbanked, it can move towards something that's a little bit more physical, like actual physical technology that coin counters and ITMs and branches. But if it's something that you just want to get deeper into lending with creditors, then allowance for loan loss is a great way to use those CDFI funds.

Katie Stone:
Great. That's really helpful. The big theme I'm hearing is this has to be a strategic choice. It has to be a holistic approach to becoming a CDFI. It sounds to me like it's not something you just dip your toes in. It's really a commitment from the credit union.

Armand Parvazi:
It is. And one of the things that I would add to is, I have two different conversations with board members. And I say it's usually board members because obviously the credit union leaders are the ones who usually engage us first and then they would like us to give that third party view to the board members. And I usually go about it one of two ways. Either if they're very sensitive to the risk, I explain to them, if you have risk-based pricing, the lower the credit tiers you go into, the higher the APR is, so therefore the more loan interest that you're making. That's one way to look at it. For other credit unions, if that board is more mission oriented, CDFI also fits that because then you're really getting into the people helping people philosophy, and this is just deepening that relationship with that original mission.

So it does fit both mindsets, whether you're very risk averse and you're thinking about your loan interest yield or if you're very mission based. But the question is, once we have that concern identified and we start talking through it, the board members have to make that commitment that this is where the credit union wants to go and the leadership has to be able to continue to execute on that mission, but they have to have buy-in from top to bottom that they want to do CDFI.

Katie Stone:
Well, unfortunately, we're all aware of the precarious future of the CDFI fund, but I have to say I haven't seen as much outcry over this in the credit union space as I have with some other issues like the tax exemption status, the NCUA shakeup. And I'm guessing that part of the reason for that is that there's only about 12% of all credit unions that are CDFIs. So I'm curious to hear your take. Should all credit unions care about the CDFI fund regardless of their own status? And if so, why?

Armand Parvazi:
Yeah. The outcry with the situation with when it comes to NCUA, the board members, and the tax exemption at risk, that is existential to credit unions. I spent the last seven years doing advocacy for my credit union and for credit unions as a whole with our state league. I would spend a lot of time in DC, I would spend a lot of time at our local state capital in Baton Rouge. And I was always talking about credit unions, and it wasn't just our credit union at Fireman's, it was credit unions as a whole with all of Louisiana, and when we're in DC, all credit unions as a whole, talking about the impact that credit unions make. Tax exemption would be a huge hit to our industry and it would cause impacts that we can't measure at this time. Credit unions have a bigger impact on the American economy than people realize. It's kind of hard to quantify sometimes.

Very recently, America's credit unions put out a wonderful piece explaining the dollars of what it looks like to be a credit union member and what it looks like to be an average bank member. And that's great information. But more importantly, it drives down to the fact that credit unions are mostly serving people that are not profitable with banks. So banks don't want to focus on those people because they're low to moderate means, or maybe they're in an area... It doesn't even have to do with their income. They're just in an area where it doesn't make sense to build a branch because it's going to be more of a loss of that investment than it would be to do in a high population metropolitan area. So credit unions are the ones that step in and follow through with helping to serve that community.

So once tax exemption goes away, assuming it does, credit unions have a harder time to serve those pockets of America that are not being served by banks. So both banks and credit unions... And I want to say this very intentionally because as much as I fight with my bank counterparts, I do not hate them in any sort of way. They serve a very important role in our banking ecosystem, but so do credit unions. And if either one of them goes away, we have a huge void that will not be served properly at that point.

So going back to your question, why has there been more upheaval and outrage with the tax exemption over CDFI? Because it has a bigger impact with credit unions. As you stated, Katie, 12% of credit unions or CDFIs, it's not the majority of credit unions, but it still makes a pretty sizable impact when you see those dollars go into a community. So credit unions should be more interested in it. They should have both more of an interest in CDFI fund and just the existence of the CDFI fund. Because while each credit union can't be a CDFI, because that might not be part of their strategy, their brethren around them can be.

What's the quote? A rising tide lifts all ships. Same thing here. As long as you have credit unions working in a community, the more impact they can make in the community, the more improvement they can make in the community, the more upward ability that they give to that community, it helps all the institutions that are serving that community, even our community banks and our big banks.

Kerala Taylor:
I love how you frame that. We also work with some community banks and we understand that they also make important contributions. I love how you talk about the synergy between banks and credit unions and how it's important to work together because there are different populations being served. And as someone myself, I'm a big fan of CDFI, so part of me is like everyone should become a CDFI. But as you mentioned, it might not be the best fit for every credit union, but I imagine there are some lessons that CDFI certified credit unions have to teach all credit unions regardless of whether or not they have any plans to pursue certification. So I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about what all credit unions can learn from CDFIs.

Armand Parvazi:
So first off, I would say not every credit union should be a CDFI. If we have listeners out there that are interested in becoming a CDFI, call me, I'll help you with that. However, not every credit union fits what a CDFI should be. I'll give you a good example. One of the credit unions that I used to work with, they were originally organized to serve a group of high income employees from a certain group. They were all engineers. And as they went down the road of expanding and growing, they really stayed with that core group who they were originally formed to serve. And they don't fit the CDFI model naturally, and that's okay because their original common bond was this group of people, and they serve them extremely well.

But many other credit unions are starting to get into community and field of memberships with the underserved areas. They can benefit from becoming a CDFI certified institution.

So it does fit if you're going into your community, and that looks like your long-term strategy is going deeper into the lower amount of income, the underserved, the underbanked, and the lower credit tiers. Things you can learn from CDFIs though is a lot of CDFIs will have a little bit deeper understanding of underwriting policies and procedures, and they will take risk a little bit more comfortably because they are used to the risk.

So with my last institution, NCUA came in... And please leave this in the podcast, I am not bashing the NCUA. I like the NCUA. They should be good partners of the credit unions. But the NCUA examiners that we had in that day came in, they said, "You're dealing with a loan portfolio with an average FICO score of 622." They came in with that and said it as if that's a bad thing. And we said, "Okay, we understand." And they said, "No, you don't understand. That makes your portfolio very risky." We said, "We don't understand how it makes it very risky." Because if you look at the performance for the last five years, we're not just outperforming our peer credit unions, we're outperforming all the credit unions in our entire peer group, and yet you're telling us that our portfolio is a little bit extra risky. So what makes us risky?

And they really kept going back to the FICO score. But what we learned in that point, and it became a point of pride for us, is that the way our chief lending officer had built out his lending department, the way that we were doing underwriting, the way we were just comfortable with the risk going in, not so much saying no to a loan application, it didn't fit our model, but saying, "No, but let's do it this way," we were able to build out a loan procedure that looked at the lowest tiers of credit and yet still had a low delinquency and charge off. Because we were comfortable with the risk, we got deeper into it and we partnered with it with a level of education so our members would learn how to manage their accounts, and that's what made it better.

We didn't make a decision off of FICO score. As technologically advanced as we got, we didn't turn it into an automated solution. We would still get into the nitty-gritty with a member, showing them what they could refinance, how they could save money, what's the best way to manage their accounts, and then go deeper and find out what is the member's actual cash flow? Let's do a budget analysis for the member.

There are so many members nowadays... Especially in the New Orleans area, we have a lot of gig workers down here. They don't know what they're actually making because a lot of it's small dollars. It might be waiters and service employees that are living off of tips. It might be... Really, this is far beyond New Orleans, but it might be like Uber and Lyft drivers, it might be Uber Eats people. Everybody taking on extra gig work, those dollars are not as clear as when you're getting a nice every two weeks salary and it's direct deposit into your account. So a lot of times we'll have to go the extra step to teach those people how to track their funds a little bit better, how to budget it a little bit better and how to plan for that feature.

Kerala Taylor:
Yeah. You bring up so many good points. It reminds me of a conversation we had on another podcast episode about a mortgage product and really carefully looking at the underwriting criteria for that and looking at things like, what's your rental history? You can make on-time rent payments for 10 years, and that doesn't impact your credit score at all.

Armand Parvazi:
That's right.

Kerala Taylor:
Yeah. There's so many ways to think outside the box there.

Armand Parvazi:
Yeah, we would do that with a lot of our members as well, because the history's there, it's just not being tracked in traditional a way.

Kerala Taylor:
Exactly.

Katie Stone:
Well, from a marketing standpoint, one thing we've been thinking and talking about a lot here at PixelSpoke is how credit unions can better engage their members in advocacy efforts. As we already kind of touched on, I think that there's little awareness amongst members about their credit unions tax status or what the NCUA is. Probably those items a little bit more, but particularly there's probably less awareness around what it means to be a CDFI. So how do you think credit unions can best message to their members around the importance of the CDFI fund?

Armand Parvazi:
You bring up a very important topic there, Katie, because member activation is difficult. I've been very fortunate to be successful in member activation when it comes to a number of different... Whether it was bills or initiatives or whatever when it comes to multiple administrations. But it's really hard because as much as we love being credit union people, as much as we know that we're giving an impact to our communities, many of our members just see us as their bank. I would stand in one of my branches and just listen to the vernacular of our members. And I'd listen to them on the phone, it was like, "Hey, I'm walking into the bank right now. I'll talk to you later." They aren't fully understanding the impact of a credit union. I'm not going to give a reason why. There's a million reasons why. They might be distracted. They might be just looking for the lowest rate. It might be the same institution their parents banked with, so therefore they're banking with us. It could be a number of ways to explain how we're missing the boat on explaining how special credit unions are, but that falls back on credit union leadership to get that point across. So member activation is a very hard topic.

When it comes to the impacts or potential impacts, whichever one we're talking about that we see right now, I think credit unions really do have to start getting the narrative out there and explaining to their members what is important in the credit union ecosystem. So one of the things that we do at CUCollaborate is we help our credit unions compile their impact. We create an impact report for them, and we help them explain to their members what their impact as an institution is. And more importantly, we're taking it to a next step because right now we have this huge existential crisis of what's going to happen with the NCUA, what's going to happen with tax exemption, et cetera?

And so what we already do is we take in all that data from the credit unions and we help compile it and average it to show what the credit unions impact is. But what if we took it a step further and we showed what a member's impact is? So instead of saying that this credit union is doing XYZ for their members, we're going to say, "This credit union is doing XYZ for this member, for you." And then how do we take it to something else? Project Zip Code's a good example of how members can get connected with their lawmakers in their area. But what if they had that extra piece of data to explain to their lawmakers that this is the impact that it's making for me. If you vote against credit unions, you're voting against my interests with this.

So I think that will help once that's live, helping credit unions talk to their members, but it's got to be an intentional, active, and consistent message from the credit unions. Credit unions have to constantly be talking to their members about what is the impact of credit unions, why it's important and what are the benefits of having a strong and healthy credit union ecosystem.

With the CDFI fund, it's similar in the sense of it impacts credit unions, but obviously it doesn't impact only credit unions. Because also banks and loan funds and venture capital groups can be CDFI certified groups as well. But these are the dollars that go back into our communities and help people that wouldn't have normally been helped by whether it was the banking groups that are in that area or credit unions that just couldn't afford to take on these extra projects. So I think it's really important for credit unions to talk about what makes their CDFI status special with their members.

I can give you the example of Fireman's. We had about 30,000 members when I left. What would happen if we just got half of those members? I mean, 50% us a huge amount. Let's bring that down to 10%. What would happen if we just got 3000 members talking to their lawmakers and saying how important their credit union is and that these efforts that are looking to erode credit union individuality would actually be hurting their community that they're in. And at the end of the day, these are all our members, but they're also these lawmakers constituents. That is really important to remember that these are voters that are reaching out to you and saying that you're now voting against my interests, so therefore maybe we need to start thinking about a new lawmaker. That gets their attention real quick.

So I think it's something that credit unions just have to continue to blast out to their members, whether it's in online banking and emails, in their branches, they have to be talking about it, because if they're not talking about it, who will?

Katie Stone:
I really appreciate that too, because it's something we talk a lot about in terms of our credit union client websites, and that's this idea of storytelling and letting the members tell their stories. And I'm hearing the same thing from you when it comes to talking to lawmakers and not talking in the abstract, but talking about how this impacts me personally and my story. So I think that's really powerful.

Kerala Taylor:
Yes, the eternal WIIFM question, what's in it for me? But it's so effective. Because no one's going to call their lawmaker. It's not a huge ask, but it's an ask, and there's a lot that we could be calling our lawmakers about these days. So really understanding, "Why am I doing this? What's in it for me? How will it impact me?"

Armand Parvazi:
Yeah.

Kerala Taylor:
Yeah. Well, I definitely did not want to end this podcast without talking a little bit about karate martial and arts in general because it does feel like, this year in particular, credit unions are having to play a lot of self-defense, and I'm curious if there are any lessons from the world of martial arts that you think credit unions should be employing right now?

Armand Parvazi:
Right. Funny thing is, I've been teaching... Let's see, I've been doing jitsu for 20... This is 2025, so I've been doing it for 25 years. That's the easy way to remember it. And I've been with our group, Shogun Martial Arts for the last 16 years. But I really started teaching about 20 years, and then I was off and on in college on teaching. So I always somehow liken it to martial arts. I don't know if I'm just making the connections in my brain, but when I spoke at World Council a couple of years ago, I opened up my presentation with, "Martial arts and running a credit union are actually oddly similar because you know exactly what should happen and it never happens the exact way that it should happen because we live in reality, and reality is not a perfect vacuum." In reality, things change. There are outside forces and you always have to be adapting to what those outside forces are. And just like in martial arts, you don't know what your opponent is going to do, so therefore you have to be ready to change your strategy based on what's happening.

It's the same thing with credit unions. We don't know from day to day what's going to happen with the next fight. We don't know what's going to happen if, well, the talk about tax exemption goes away, but what's the next fight beyond that? Well, it might be something very local. It might be something that only deals with this state's credit unions and not this other state's credit unions. Many credit unions are still state chartered. It might be something specifically in that state like California where a whole bunch of credit unions right now are changing over to a federal charter. It might be something more local than that.
So a lot like they say, the best defense is a good offense, the same thing comes with credit unions and with having that narrative out there of why your credit union matters, why it's important. Get your members to be interested in the fact that they bank with a credit union and explain to them what the difference is on a normal basis. That way when one of those threats come about, you already have your members activated, ready to go and bought into your credit union. It goes back to brand loyalty at the end of the day. If your brand has good reputation, good loyalty, your members will go the extra mile for you.

But as you put it a second ago, Kerala, what is the big WIIFM question, what's in it for me? If your members don't realize that there's something in it for them, you now have an extra hurdle to get over before you activate them. If you're constantly reminding your members how important you are to their lives and how they are very important to you, and then you have to make the ask to reach out to lawmakers or do something for your institution, they'll be much more likely to be activated and ready to go to bat for you.

Katie Stone:
All right, let's jump into some rapid fire questions. So my first question is, what is your favorite day of the week?

Armand Parvazi:
Oh, man. I do love a good Saturday because you just wake up... Well, you wake up when you wake up a lot of times. That's the best part about it. Saturdays are usually the days where my partner and I will just run the streets, go visit whether it's family or run and do chores. It's our days together. So I would probably say Saturday is my favorite day.

Katie Stone:
Good choice. What is your favorite US city besides the one you live in?

Armand Parvazi:
Oh, that's easy. It's New York.

Katie Stone:
Oh, yeah.

Armand Parvazi:
The thing I love about New York is that every few blocks, it's a new city. There's so much culture in New York from one area to the next, to the next. You can go five minutes down the street and feel sometimes like you're in a completely other country. And I love that variety. I love the fact that it has this very fast-paced beating heart, but at the same time, you can go have a very comfortable and slow dinner somewhere.

Katie Stone:
I would plus one that answer. What's your favorite holiday?

Armand Parvazi:
Halloween. That's not even a question. It always has been Halloween. I don't know why. It's hard for me to really encapsulate what I love about Halloween. I like how it can be spooky and kind of goofy and cute or very gory and go into a very dark place. It's a very versatile holiday and it's always a great opportunity to just go and be something you're not for a few hours. Almost like everybody gets to be an actor for a short amount of time.

Katie Stone:
I love that reason, maybe more than the answer. All right, I'm going to throw one bonus question in there just because we were talking about it before we started recording. So what is your best local secret haunt in New Orleans?

Armand Parvazi:
In one sense, I want to give him kudos because he runs a great restaurant. In the other sense, I don't want to blow up his business to where he can't serve everybody.

Kerala Taylor:
You could just describe it. You don't have to give [inaudible 00:31:36].

Katie Stone:
Yeah, there you go.

Armand Parvazi:
No, no, no. I'll name the restaurant too, but it's a restaurant called Brigtsen's. For everybody listening, it's B-R-I-G-T-S-E-N-'-S. Brigtsen's Restaurant is run by a friend, Brigtsen, and he is an amazing chef. And you'd never find his restaurant unless you were looking for it. It is in this little house in a neighborhood. And I forget how long he's had the restaurant, it's like 20 or 30 years. But it is fantastic... I don't want to say southern cooking because it kind of is, but it has such a French influence as well. There's no way to describe it. Go there, check it out. It's probably closer to French with a touch of Creole in it. But you would be forgiven by going there and thinking it's a very classic French restaurant.

And the other place is... And I think a lot of people need to go this, if you want to experience the cliche New Orleans Southern Food is Giacomo's. Giacomo's on Oak Street. It's a wonderful restaurant, as their sign outside says, "Lousy service and warm beer." But it's one of the best New Orleans restaurants you can find. And a lot of times people, when they're looking for that classic New Orleans restaurant, they never make it there because it's not in the French Quarter, but I would highly recommend Giacomo's as well.

Katie Stone:
Awesome. All right. Thank you.

Kerala Taylor:
We'll include those both in our show notes. All right, let's do our final take. And as a reminder for our listeners today, our big question was why does the CDFI fund matter and how can we engage the credit union movement in protecting it? So Armand, in just a few sentences, can you summarize your thoughts?

Armand Parvazi:
The CDFI fund matters because it was established to serve people who lawmakers knew were falling through the cracks of mainstream financial services. And yes, credit unions do serve that already, but credit unions are generally not the multi-trillion dollar banks that we think of when it comes to like Chase and Wells Fargo. Nowadays, I mean, we're talking about big credit unions. We're a few billion when you talk about that. I mean, the largest credit union, Navy Fed is still about 190 billion. So we don't come close to the Chase and the Wells Fargo's of the world. So many credit unions are much smaller than that, well under a billion. How do they find the money to be able to continue to grow and invest in their membership when we are supposed to be not for profits? And the CDFI fund helps make those investments possible, and each one of those investments is investing in a community, it's investing in a person.

And pretty much every person, no matter what industry they're in, they don't wake up and say, "I just want to do my job and go to sleep." They wake up saying, "I want to somehow change the world." And that's what credit unions do. We change the world. We don't change the world in this massive way like an Apple or Facebook or something like that. We change the world for one member, and that one member's world is worth changing. So if we can give a little bit extra capital to credit unions to help keep changing the world for somebody, that is worth it. And it might not be to your benefit today, but one day it might be. And wouldn't it be great to know that your credit union has that extra capital to invest in your community and invest directly into you if that day comes?

Kerala Taylor:
Well said. Well, I think that's all the time we have for today, but thank you so much for joining us, Armand.

Armand Parvazi:
Thank you all for having me.

Kerala Taylor:
All right. It's take away time. So I'll start by talking about the benefits of CDFI certification. It seems like an important one is really to take the pressure off immediate ROI. When profit is the primary lens through which a credit union makes decisions, it gets pretty difficult to prioritize the needs of lower to moderate income communities. So what CDFI funding can provide is a safety net. It can help turn these wishlist projects that might not be immediately sustainable into reality.

But secondly, let's recognize that CDFI certification isn't for everyone or isn't for every credit union. Armand emphasized that becoming a CDFI is a long-term commitment and it really has to align with the credit union's overall strategy and risk appetite. It's really just not about free money. It requires risk tolerance and it also requires a lot of intentional planning and resource allocation.

And lastly, let's talk about the concept of the best defense being good offense. I loved talking with Armand about applying lessons learned from martial arts to the credit union movement, specifically about combating the uncertainty of external forces by playing offense. And there's certainly a lot of external forces out there these days. So how do you play a good offense? Well, he talked about continually sharing and reinforcing the narrative of why your credit union matters. That includes both what makes it special as a credit union as opposed to a bank, but also what sets it apart from other credit unions.

And I'm just going to add my own 2 cents here and say that I don't care how great your service is or how low your rates are. I mean, that's wonderful, but they're not differentiators because nearly every credit union I talk to mentions these two things as key differentiators. And if you're all saying the same thing, they're not differentiating you. So when you think about playing offense, so to speak, I'd like to encourage you to really get to the heart and soul of your particular credit union. What makes your credit union special, and be proactive about that messaging.

And before I close, since Armand and I are both on the MAC board, I'd be remiss not to include a little plug for the October MAC conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. If you've never been to a MAC conference before, they're specifically for credit union marketing professionals. The conferences are inspiring. They're incredibly fun. If you want to nerd out more about CDFIs and all things credit union with me and Armand, we would love to see you there. You can visit macnetwork.org for more information.

Thanks for joining us today for another great episode. The Remarkable Credit Union is brought to you by PixelSpoke, a digital marketing agency that with credit unions to create user-friendly, high-converting, award-winning websites. As a B Corp and employee-owned cooperative, we believe that business can and should be a force for good. You can learn more and check out our work at Pixelspoke.coop. That's PixelSpoke, all one word, dot, C-O-O-P. And until the next time, I wish you the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable.