Pushing Past No: How Verity Credit Union is Challenging the Status Quo

Credit unions across the country are searching for ways to offer their underserved members pathways to homeownership. But when it comes to affordable housing, it’s clear that bolder action is needed to meaningfully move the needle.

The affordable housing crisis is particularly acute in Seattle, Washington, where home prices increased by over 80% between 2010 and 2020. This month we’re excited to welcome Uche Okezie, Real Estate Development Director at HomeSight, a Seattle-based nonprofit, and Tina Narron, Chief Lending Officer at Verity Credit Union, also based in Seattle, to talk about how they are cross-pollinating, collaborating, and breaking convention to reimagine solutions to this thorny and seemingly intractable social issue.

We also address this month’s BIG question:

How can credit unions “dream more boldly” when it comes to community development and what kinds of innovative partnerships can they forge to drive this work forward?

 

Key takeaways

1. Credit unions simply cannot go it alone when it comes to making meaningful progress on thorny social issues like affordable housing and the racial wealth gap. You need… Partnerships with community organizations that have boots on the ground… and that can… go a long way toward building trust and understanding the true needs of communities.
2. Most social problems can’t be solved in isolation from one another. You can make sure people have a roof over their head, but if they can’t find childcare or finish their education or get a business loan, their opportunities are still going to be limited. Thinking more boldly involves cross-pollination and a mindset that acknowledges the intersectionality of community needs.
3. The easy answer is “no.” The conventional way of doing things usually doesn’t work for underserved communities. If it did, they wouldn’t be underserved. In the credit union space, being unconventional may require asking regulators to make exceptions or turning down “good” business because it’s not values-aligned. I loved the question that Tonita Webb, Verity’s CEO has asked, “would we be missed if we disappeared?” The way to make sure you would be missed is to follow their motto to “push past no.”

 

Read the full transcript

Cameron Madill:
Hello and 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. Each episode we bring on expert guests from inside and outside of the industry for conversations about innovation. 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 magnify the positive impact you have in your community. Today’s big question: how can credit unions dream more boldly when it comes to community development and what kinds of innovative partnerships can they forge to drive this work forward? I’m Cameron Madill, the CEO and co-founder of PixelSpoke.

Kerala Taylor:
And I’m Kerala Taylor, also a co-owner and the senior marketing manager at PixelSpoke. I’m so excited today to welcome our guests. We have Uche Okezie on as well as Tina Narron. Uche is a real estate development director at HomeSight. That’s a Seattle-based nonprofit where she manages the development of a multifamily homeownership cooperative at Othello Square. She’s worked at HomeSight in various capacities for over 20 years. A fun fact about Uche is that she watches British Premier League soccer and is a big Liverpool football fan.

Tina is the chief lending officer at Verity Credit Union, which is also based in Seattle, and she has nearly 25 years of experience in the financial services sector, a lot of it in credit unions. She’s also a big traveler and she’s getting ready for what sounds like a very exciting trip to Turkey, Croatia, Greece, Albania, maybe a few other countries in there. Uche and Tina, thank you so much for joining us.

Tina Narron:
Thank you.

Uche Okezie:
Yes, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Kerala Taylor:
Uche, so I thought I’d start with you. I was just curious in a few sentences if you could give us an overview of what HomeSight does. Obviously you seem to believe in the mission, having been there for 20+ years, so why do you think the work that you do is important?

Uche Okezie:
I think I’ll start with why I think it’s important. HomeSight has traditionally focused on how the communities that we serve, which is primarily Southeast Seattle and the Central District, how they can keep and build wealth. We were always focusing on homeownership. We have homeownership counseling, we do mortgage lending, we offer down payment assistance to income-qualified households, and that’s households that are 80% and below area median income, and we also build quality affordable houses.

We also look now at how to… members of our community can also gain wealth through starting and keeping a business. We’re just promoting agency for our communities that have traditionally not been at the table, whether that’s through policy work or ways to keep the assets that they have or to build new ones. We are a community development corporation, we’re a community development financial institution, and then just really focusing in on our communities and helping them stay healthy and thriving.

Kerala Taylor:
That’s so great to hear. I think Seattle and my hometown of Portland face a lot of similar challenges, unfortunately, when it comes to affordable housing, so I love to hear about the work you’re doing and I hope there are things that we can learn here in Portland from that work. Just as a background to my next question, I kind of stumbled across the Othello Square initiative that you’re working on, which I’d love to hear more about. It was through the Verity Credit Union website. I’ll admit I have this kind of long distance crush on Verity Credit Union for a long time. I just love the work you do and I love that you’re a credit union that’s truly walking the talk when it comes to the credit union mission.

So it was through the Verity website that I found out about Othello Square, and we were in the midst of figuring out where to direct some of the funds in our own community giving program. We donate 10% of our annual profits at PixelSpoke to community initiatives, particularly ones that are in the cooperative space and the credit union space. To me, this initiative just brought together… It has a cooperative housing component, there’s participation from a credit union, and I saw the convergence of the credit union cooperative space and other opportunities in the cooperative space just coming together for something really unique and interesting. With that, Uche, I’d just love to hear in your own words, just give us an overview of what the Othello Square project is and how it came to fruition.

Uche Okezie:
Sure. The Othello Square project is a limited equity cooperative. We use the acronym LEC just because that’s such a mouthful. With this cooperative, as in any cooperative, everyone who is a resident in the building is a part owner of the building. They have bought shares into the building and that gives them the right to live in their unit for however long they own their shares. It gives each household, each member, each household is the member, it gives them a vote in all of the building operations, any matter, whether it’s the budget, voting on the board members who are also members of the cooperative from year to year, every year it gives them a vote in what happens with their building and in their community, and that community is the building.

Cameron Madill:
It’s such a cool project you guys are doing, and I admit to a lot of the similar fandom, I guess, that Kerala was saying. Tina, I’d love to ask you how did Verity Credit Union specifically get involved in the Othello Square project? There’s just so much out there. I feel like we hear this all the time, and we see this with our own community giving. How do you choose? What excited you about this specific initiative in particular?

Tina Narron:
Yeah, that’s a great question. Really the vision of Verity has always been to really be a trusted partner. We are also a community development financial partner, a CFI, and our goal is to advocate for systemic change for all and really advance racial equity. When we are talking about what does Verity see for our future, that is one of the areas that guides us in any project or initiative that we take on. Kind of going back to our mission, you said you were poking around our website. You’ll see that we really are trying to co-create with and advocate for pathways to generational wealth building, and one of those ways is through homeownership that Uche mentioned and also small business, so you’ll see that a lot of our projects or initiatives that we get involved in all tie back to supporting that mission.

How we joined and got involved is early on in this project, before it was even designed there was community meetings to talk about it so there was people from all over the community, whether it be nonprofits, there were us as a financial institution, there were just residents all kind of sitting down and talking about what they needed and what they’d like to see that property look like. This is where HomeSight did a really good job of hearing all of that, gathering all of that data, kind of coming up with plans. We had a community impact person. Her name was Vivian at the time. Well, her name’s still Vivian. Vivian was attending those meetings and boots on the ground. When it got to a time when HomeSight was ready to nail down some partners to help finance folks in these units, they reached out to us and said, “You’ve been part of this planning process. Can we count on you to help support some of the lending aspects?” We gladly stepped up and created some products to help do that.

Cameron Madill:
Awesome, thank you. Uche, I’d love to circle back a little bit to just the cooperative element because I think cooperatives, as many of us know, are kind of the best kept secret, the worst kept secret, whatever I’m trying to say. They’re secret. They’re too much of a secret. Everyone who you talk to is kind of like, “Oh yeah, yeah, cooperative. I kind of know what that is. Maybe that’s my credit union or my grocery store or whatever.”

But yeah, I just think it’s so fascinating how when we began our worker cooperative journey at PixelSpoke six years ago, one of the first things I feel like we all learned was like, “Whoa, there’s a lot of different kinds of cooperatives.” You have consumer co-ops and worker co-ops and purchasing co-ops and seller co-ops, and not only that, it’s not like all consumer co-ops are the same or et cetera. I would love to have you go a little bit more into what does it really mean to be a residential co-op? What are kind of the nuts and bolts, and why go that route versus a different model where maybe there’s ownership but not voting or some of the other options that are out there?

Uche Okezie:
With the cooperative, I think the difference between the cooperative model and the typical traditional single family “I own my lot” or “I own my unit and I never have to talk to anybody again, really, I can just shut the door”, with the cooperative model I really feel like because everybody owns the building cooperatively, they all have a vested interest in its destiny, its future, and they have the right to communicate that to their fellow members, the people that they all share this asset with, really. I think that that’s one of the main differences. You aren’t going to have your own mortgage, you’re helping to collectively build wealth, the asset of the building that you all live in and share in. I think that that’s maybe the main difference between, say, a cooperative and a condominium.

The reason we chose this option is because things have been changing in Seattle. Land is more expensive. We typically relied on down payment assistance to help income-qualified folks purchase, but there’s just not enough to cover the gap in affordability between what they can afford and what the market says they have to pay in order to purchase it. We saw this as a way to find another pathway to provide that level of affordability by having everybody sort of pull together instead of individually, “I can afford my mortgage. I can afford my mortgage.” You come together and you share in the equity, you share adjustments, sort of like a lending circle kind of.

Cameron Madill:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s great to hear. I mean, what’s interesting is, not to completely sidetrack us, but we did something similar for our worker co-op conversion and most worker co-ops have to do that too, that you can’t capitalize most businesses with just an employee share and so you go to this collective model. So that’s fascinating to hear. Thank you.

Kerala Taylor:
When I think of affordable housing, my mind immediately goes to rent control or a big public housing project, and this just seems really different because it’s a pathway to ownership and to me that’s a way to keep the wealth into the community.

Tina Narron:
Mm-hmm. It has an aspect of rent control because it’s not that the shares aren’t subject to current market value of properties. There is a controllable feature of the value and how much it can go up per year because you want to create the generational wealth but you don’t want it to be affordable housing for one family, and the next time it’s sold it’s now all of a sudden market price. Yeah.

Uche Okezie:
Exactly.

Kerala Taylor:
That’s a great point.

Uche Okezie:
That’s why we cap the transfer values. When somebody wants to sell their shares, there’s a cap.

Kerala Taylor:
Fascinating. Tina, I love Verity’s vision, which is cooperative communities who dream boldly. You’ll notice I worked that boldly phrasing into the big question here. It caught my eye because my observation within the credit union movement is that credit unions are really good at collaborating with one another, I can think of so many examples where credit unions are working together, but I feel like I’ve seen less interplay between credit unions and other types of cooperatives. As Cameron mentioned, there’s all these different types of cooperatives out there. I’m just curious to hear more about how Verity is working toward forging these cooperative communities and how does Othello Square align with that vision.

Tina Narron:
Yeah. Well, we recognize that we are not big enough to make major impact without help so we are intentionally building relationships with other organizations that have like-minded missions, Othello Square and HomeSight being one of those organizations that access to homeownership and kind of bridging that wealth gap is so important to build strong communities and to serve on our mission. It’s not the only one, but it’s certainly a large one. That’s how we kind of pick partners to work with. Is our missions aligned, our strategies aligned, can we fill gaps within each other?

I think of trying to work with underserved communities, there’s a lack of trust in the financial sector because of all of the experiences their parents and generations before that may have experienced in the traditional banking system. By working with nonprofits that are boots on the ground and have that trusted relationship, we’re able to kind of work together so we have that trust building. Once there’s trust, then we can have true and honest conversations about, “Are you ready today? If you’re not ready today, what steps do you need to make to become ready?” I think that’s an important piece that sometimes a traditional commercial bank misses out on.

Kerala Taylor:
Absolutely. Are there other cooperatives that you’ve worked with in the past or that you’re currently working with?

Tina Narron:
There’s quite a few nonprofits and different co-ops that we work with. We work with a co-op in small business, so if there’s a large loan that we can’t financially take on or we need to spread some of that risk out, we work with other credit unions to kind of build that out. But yeah, there’s many nonprofits and organizations more so than the term co-op, but yeah, we do work with quite a few.

Cameron Madill:
Uche, I was hoping to hear a little more about the broader narrative around affordable housing because this is an amazing initiative and I think we all know the scale of the housing crisis is just sort of boggles the mind. You hear these statements that… Anyway [inaudible 00:14:45], but it’s so big that we have so many people working on it. You’re doing a really innovative initiative. I’m wondering how in addition to just the direct impact, how do you think the project might help change some of the overall narrative around affordable housing solutions and maybe kind of what some other key stakeholders, city officials, real estate developers might learn from this?

Uche Okezie:
I think putting it out there as another viable option for folks who are trying to figure out how they can get into the market, “How do I at least control where I live?” This is beyond asset building. This is, “I just want to live someplace and know that nobody’s going to tell me I have to leave and that I can make the payments every month, I can give my family stability, I can give myself stability. Maybe this is my jumping off point to do other things because I know my costs are stable.” This is just another option like community land trusts or even the single family townhome fee simple model and just making it more common. I think our biggest stumbling block here has been that it’s just not a common model, you know?

Cameron Madill:
Yeah. Yeah.

Uche Okezie:
You’ve heard of the co-ops here in Seattle market rate where it’s pretty much like a condo it seems like in terms of how much it costs to get in.

Cameron Madill:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerala Taylor:
Yeah.

Uche Okezie:
I think I would love for this to be something that was completely normalized and another option because I think people like to have options. They don’t want to feel like, “This is all I got.”

Cameron Madill:
Yeah.

Tina Narron:
This is where the financial institutions need to be more bold, so underwriting. We quickly realized that traditional underwriting that somebody would qualify for a mortgage today has a history of being barriers and roadblocks to BIPOC homeownership and affordable housing, and so really coming up with and being bold in creating new ways of looking at credit, not just having a minimum FICO score and you must have two years time on job and you must have this, you must have that. Well, really kind of refiguring and reconsidering some of those traditional underwriting guidelines that have been around since when I was doing loans in the ’80s.

Some of that same stuff has carried over and it’s never really been changed even though our world has changed. I think of what our world looked like back in the ’80s and what it looks like today. It’s like why are we still using that same make and model to deliver capital? Our organization has been partnering with other organizations that are using AI to give a different view on risk mitigation and kind of looking to even maybe replace FICO soon from all of our pricing and our underwriting guidelines just to remove the bias that’s built into the FICO score model.

Kerala Taylor:
Mm-hmm. I know from one of our clients, DC Credit Union, they actually have a specific cooperative housing mortgage product that they offer, and that came from a member who was looking for a mortgage but none of the more traditional lenders would give her one. They just didn’t understand the cooperative housing model. It seems like that’s another opportunity for credit unions to think about, “What are some of the unique elements of this mortgage product? In offering it, can we normalize that model more? Can we show people that it’s an option?” Because I agree with you, Uche, it just seems like such a no-brainer for a solution to affordable housing, and yet it’s not being widely adopted and there’s not a lot of awareness about what cooperative housing even means. I hope you can help change that a bit.

Uche Okezie:
We’re trying. I mean, we have a lot of investment from the city, the county, and the state, federal as well, and looking at this as a pilot for the West Coast because this might be another viable option for them to help, not necessarily solve, but help with solving that affordable ownership problem that we’re running into because things are just… Cost is out of control, inventory is so small, financing is so difficult. We push the American dream, but how do we help people actually achieve it?

Kerala Taylor:
Yeah. I can tell you there’s a lot of passion around affordable housing amongst our team members, and to be able to connect the dots with the cooperative space was really exciting for us because we really like our giving dollars to support the cooperative space, but this also seemed like a way to address a core passion on our team too. Let’s see. Tina, I wanted to ask real quick… I definitely wanted to mention that Verity is part of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, and this is yet another thing that I don’t think there’s a ton of awareness about. I was wondering if you could just talk a bit about what that is, what it means, and how the Othello Square project in particular ties into this concept of banking on values.

Tina Narron:
Yeah. I think back in 2016 is when we started really researching and became a formal partner of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values. It is a worldwide organization filled with banks, it’s filled with credit unions, microfinance companies from around the world that really have said, “We have one thing in mission that we want to do good with our capital and make sure that we are sustainable in our lending and activities in the banking sector.” There was three banks in Europe that started this organization. Last time I checked. there was about 60 different organizations attached to there. There’s about… At the time, there was only three credit unions in the country in the US that were part of this organization. I think there’s six or seven now, but Verity was one of the earlier adopters.

We signed on to whether it be supporting the climate change initiative to whether it be access to homeownership, what we call as the triple bottom line approach, and so what capital is being delivered to help people in our communities such as women-owned businesses, BIPOC businesses, veteran-owned businesses, LGBTQ, things like that, or is it loans that are going to affordable housing, making sure that we’re creating that generational wealth? Then the third piece of that global alliance is the sustainability factor, and so what things are we doing that still let our members live well but also trying to protect the environment and the planet?

Along the way, we’ve done a lot of decision-making and strategy shifts based off of where we said that we wanted to be and the goals that we put forth. Originally when we joined, we thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to be 25% of our assets be dedicated to triple bottom line by the year 2025?” It’s funny, it’s the power of everybody getting behind something and really kind of focusing on it. In 2016, we measured 16% of our assets were dedicated and by 2019, 2020 we were up in the 30 and 40% so we blew that 25% mark by 2025 out of the water, but it’s because everybody was focused on it, everybody was making some hard decisions, turning down good loans, turning away relationships that we had built with car dealers that were selling trucks and things that weren’t eco-friendly autos and just having to say, “We really appreciate your partnership, but our mission is changing and we need to change with it.” It wasn’t easy, but we all got behind that and now today we’re really happy that we did.

Cameron Madill:
Congrats on all the progress. That’s amazing.

Tina Narron:
Yeah.

Cameron Madill:
All right, well, let me tell you something pretty cool about our podcast and it lets you do anything you want. I’m going to give each of you the magic wand and we’re going to imagine that the Othello Square project is kind of successful beyond your wildest dreams. I’d love to know just what does that look like? What are your long-term hopes and dreams 5, 10, 20 years from now when we’re looking back on this with pride and satisfaction? Maybe Uche you can go first and then Tina you can go second.

Uche Okezie:
More co-ops, limited equity co-ops, and more demand for those units, for it to be just as commonplace as saying, “I’m going to go buy a condo.”

Cameron Madill:
Love it. All right, Tina.

Tina Narron:
Yeah. I think for me, the big success would be everybody that’s in that co-op is striving and doing their best, that they’re successful in all aspects of their life, whether it be in their health, in their homeownership, their budgets, their finances, all the things that make a community a positive and vibrant thing. That’s to me the main goal, but then also really using this as a model, like you mentioned, more co-ops, more ways to provide affordable housing, and working in partnership with all the other organizations that are going to be working and living inside that community. We have so much opportunity to cross-pollinate and work together to think bigger, think bolder.

Kerala Taylor:
Actually, before we delve into the last few questions I realized we hadn’t really gotten into that yet, is that it’s not just this cooperative housing but there’s all these wraparound services. I saw access to childcare, which is a huge passion of mine with two kids and childcare has just been like my headache for the past 10 years of my life, and educational opportunities and a community center and a branch of Verity Credit Union, so that… I mean, the affordable cooperative housing is pretty innovative in and of itself, but that’s also a huge piece of it, that there’s just all these things right at your fingertips that can help make your life easier and better.

Uche Okezie:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just the vision was born out of the neighborhood plan that they did before. We have a light rail coming through Seattle, and when the main line was built the neighborhood was like, “Wow, this is going to bring so much development. We really need to be a part of the decisions that are happening.” So they put together this plan, and based on that plan was the Othello Square campus. They wanted to see all of those things that you mentioned, childcare and community healthcare and affordable housing not just subsidized, but all up and down the income spectrum.

We’ve been really, really working to help the community realize this dream. There’s mixed income rental and there’s the ownership piece, and then there’s the healthcare piece, we have a legacy community healthcare center there, the charter elementary school that we have there, we want to have… There will be a plaza that’s open to the public for people to gather and celebrate or just hang out, access to equitable internet, things like that. We’re really, really trying to make this a place that really benefits the folks that are already living there. We’re halfway there.

Tina Narron:
Is that the easy half or the hard half?

Cameron Madill:
We’ll avoid… Yeah, no, we won’t go there. All right, let’s move towards some rapid-fire questions. I’m just going to alternate. I found that wand one more time. Let’s go, Tina, you first. If you could wave a wand and change one thing, what would it be?

Tina Narron:
In the whole world or just…

Cameron Madill:
Yeah. This is a powerful wand.

Tina Narron:
I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”

Cameron Madill:
This is first-rate, five star rated magic wand.

Tina Narron:
I think my dream is to eradicate poverty from our area and around the world.

Cameron Madill:
Love it. All right. Uche, if you could have dinner with one historical person, who would it be?

Uche Okezie:
Maya Angelou.

Tina Narron:
Good one.

Cameron Madill:
Well done. All right, all right. Tina, what is your life slogan?

Tina Narron:
My life slogan. Live hard, play hard.

Cameron Madill:
All right. I like it. That’s why you get to visit all those cool countries. All right, Uche. What’s the song you’re most embarrassed to admit you like that you just love jamming away to in your car or your bathroom or whatever when no one’s around?

Uche Okezie:
I don’t have one. I like them all. I don’t… I really-

Tina Narron:
[inaudible 00:27:20].

Cameron Madill:
All right, we’ll change it. What’s just your favorite song right now, the one you’ve been thinking of recently where you’re just like, “That’s some great music?”

Uche Okezie:
You know that old sitcom, Good Times?

Cameron Madill:
Sure.

Uche Okezie:
It’s the theme song (singing).

Kerala Taylor:
I love it. Great. Well, let’s do our final take. Just to remind our listeners and to remind our guests, our big question today was how can credit unions dream more boldly when it comes to community development and what kinds of innovative partnerships can they forge to drive this work forward? I was wondering if in a few sentences if each of you could summarize your thoughts on this question. Tina, we can start with you.

Tina Narron:
Yeah. I think one of the things that we’re doing a better job is not just giving an easy answer. If there is a request from somebody that is a good decision to make but, let’s say, the regulators say that we can’t do it because of this threshold or that threshold, well, maybe we need to go ask the regulators, and we have done this recently, for exceptions to the rule and told them why it was such a good idea. A recent nonprofit and land trust organization that does affordable housing in our area needed some pre-construction unsecured debt lines of credit to kind of support that, but the maximum loan amount per regulation was $100,000. Well, that’s not going to work really well on multimillion dollar properties.

So we did, we ended up going to the DFI and asked for waivers and kind of explained why we wanted to do this, and so we were able to secure a $5 million unsecured line of credit for them to continually work on affordable housing throughout the state of Washington. Another great example is if we’re at first glance kind of leaning towards a no, well, let’s ask enough questions until we can get to a yes, so what are some things that we need to do? Recently, I guess it was during COVID, the Ballard P-Patch was potentially going to be bought out by some developers instead of staying a community garden, and the community rallied to get grant money, raise money, private funds to save the P-Patch.

Well, COVID came and one of the other finance organizations pulled out their lending and said, “No. We don’t know what’s going on with COVID.” Which is fair. That was a fair decision back then, but when my team was asked to take a look at it and they said the same thing, we’re really not so sure that this grant money is going to come in. We don’t know. So, “Well, before we say no, let’s call. I know they can’t guarantee it, but try and get a feel for how secure that grant money is and is it going to come or not?” Within a week they came back to me and said, “Well, we recommend that we approve this loan now and we feel comfortable with what that decision was.” The easy answer would’ve just have been said no. The tougher answer was to push further, ask those questions, and take some risk.

Kerala Taylor:
I love it. That’s so great. Uche, we’ll end with you and just thoughts on your partnering with Verity. Do you see other opportunities for partnership or other ways that credit unions can help support your work in community development?

Uche Okezie:
Absolutely. Well, we are already partnering with Verity on working with the folks that will be living in the cooperative and then Verity will also have a branch there, which is great, so they will be able to contribute to teaching residents as well as other folks on campus and in the community about financial empowerment. But another credit union will also have a location, not in our building but in a building on the campus, and just working with them to do… It’s more along the lines of small business empowerment and teaching those kinds of tools and offering those kinds of products.

I think that instead of always thinking about the tried and true path, I guess, to be able to open your mind and expand in terms of thinking outside the box about who would be a partner that actually benefits the communities that you work with. I mentioned lending circles earlier and just realizing that the conventional way of doing things doesn’t always work for certain communities and being open to trying different things, different solutions, just like Tina said, push past that no and see what’s going on behind that. Is there a way that we can figure out how to solve and turn that no into a yes?

Kerala Taylor:
Turning nos into yeses. I love it.

Tina Narron:
Well, our CEO just recently asked us, “If Verity had to close their doors tomorrow, would we be missed? Would we truly be missed?” That’s what we need to ask ourselves. If the answer is, “Well, maybe for a little bit, but somebody will pick up and fill our spot,” well, then we’re not doing our job..

Kerala Taylor:
Well, thank you so much both for joining us. It’s just a fascinating subject, one that’s very near and dear to us, and it’s just really inspiring to see a different take on an age-old problem and one that’s particularly come to light more in recent years. Love to see that you’re tackling this and doing it in a new and hopefully very effective way. Tina, Uche, thanks so much for joining us.

Uche Okezie:
Thank you.

Tina Narron:
Bye.

Kerala Taylor:
Thinking about our three key takeaways, I’d start with the theme of partnership. I’d say one thing our conversation made very clear was that credit unions just can’t go it alone when it comes to making meaningful progress on thorny social issues, issues like affordable housing or the racial wealth gap. You need partnerships with community organizations that have boots on the ground, and that can go a long way toward building trust and understanding the true needs of the communities.

Secondly, most social problems really can’t be solved in isolation from one another. For example, you can make sure people have a roof over their head, but if they can’t find childcare or they can’t finish their education or they can’t get a business loan then their opportunities are still going to be limited. Thinking more broadly involves cross-pollination and a mindset that really acknowledges the intersectionality of community needs.

Lastly, my favorite takeaway, the easy answer is no. I loved how we talked about the conventional way of doing things and how that usually doesn’t work for underserved communities because if it did, they wouldn’t be underserved. In the credit union space, being unconventional might require asking regulators to make exceptions or turning down “good” business because it’s not values aligned. I really love the question that Tonita Webb, Verity’s CEO, has asked, “Would we be missed if we disappeared?” The way to make sure that the answer to that question is yes is to follow their model to push past no.

Well, thanks for joining us today for another great episode. 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 worker-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. Until next time, I wish you the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable.