WCUL: Called out by BECU's Todd Pietzsch
Posted by Brent Dixon on September 18th, 2006
I had several different conversations last week on the importance of promoting financial literacy among youth. One revolved around Biz Kid$, a show about to be kicked off on PBS, produced by the folks who did Bill Nye, and sponsored by a slew of credit unions. Another was with Tom from the BrassMedia crew, discussing how focusing marketing and education on consumers in their prime lending years now, although important, is no way to sustain long-term growth for credit unions. Hit ‘em while they’re young.
The conversation that woke me up the most was with Todd Pietzsch, head of PR at Seattle’s BECU. BECU won an award at the dinner on Thursday for their work with a local high school. These guys actually have a branch in the school that is both used and run by students. The idea of this is to 1) give those punk kids some real world working experience and, more importantly, 2) wake those punk kids up to the importance and understanding of financial literacy.
It’s a really great program. And apparently quite a few credit unions are doing this, I had no clue until talking about this stuff with Todd.
So here’s where the call-out happens, and where Todd reminded me of the exceptional reality of the Credit Union Movement. When talking to him about the program’s specifics, I asked, “So what kind of an effect has this had on your membership? Are you seeing quite a bit of turnaround in the high school?”
The dude just looked at me, like the question honestly hadn’t occurred to him.
Then he replied (this is a rough transcript): “No no no, it’s not about new memberships at all! This is all about teaching these kids how to handle their money, and how to get out there and be responsible and prosperous in the real world. Even if we don’t get a single new member, this program will be a complete success. Educating the students is what’s important.”
Touché, man. And after having just spoken a few hours earlier on the importance of keeping your eye on the values of the movement, and not being so bottom-line focused, this was a much-needed moment of honesty.
Our credit union has a “branch” in a local grade school and Junior High School. It is great because the “employees” of the grade school branch can go on to work for the Junior High branch and we’ve even had one that during High School and now College has worked as a part time teller at our CU. The kids at the Junior High run the entire operation from a Board of Directors to Marketing within the school all the way to the front teller line staff.
Kevin,
That is so cool. I especially like that your program in particular is built around a long-term relationship. How long have you have those branches been up and running?
Brent,
This is our 11th year at the grade school and our 2nd year at the Junior High School. Our first year at the Junior High wasn’t as successful as the students would have liked in terms of transaction volume. So responding like a true business, this years Board of Directors has adjusted the branches hours of operation and directed the Marketing Department to do additonal signage around the school. These and other changes make us think this will be a great growth year for our Junior High branch.
Hey guys. This is a great idea. And our credit union has thrown it around a bit. Since you have some experience, Kevin, do you have an suggestions on getting started that I can take back to the management team? I would love to get something up and running in our school community.
Hi Jessica,
Here are two things I can suggest. First, start having conversations with your local school district to build a strong relationship. Try to find somone within the school district (teacher,administrator,etc) that will act as a strong advocate for your credit union at school board meetings,etc. Second, develop goals for your branch. For example, with our grade school branch our most basic goal is to simply teach the students the importance of savings.
It struck me when we were doing the branding exercise for the Shared Branching co-op advertising that so many people have childhood memories of visiting the bank with their parents – but not the credit union. It never occurred to me that since credit unions have historically been in employees’ place of business, that people weren’t taking their kids there. (they’d do their banking on their lunch hour, rather than on the weekends). We have a whole generation of people that don’t have credit unions imprinted on their collective psyche. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a Seattlitte reference Washington Mutual’s “bank day”, well, I wouldn’t need to work at the credit union anymore.
BizKids and credit unions in schools are such good, long term investments for the credit union movement. Hats off to BECU and WSECU and all the other credit unions doing stuff like this.
When I was around two, I remember tripping and cracking my head open at News Media Credit Union in Houston, TX.
The fall left me with a permanent mark on my forehead (see figure 1-a), sort of a credit-uniony version of Harry Potter’s lightning bolt.
This may not be the kind of memory Shari’s talking about, however.
figure 1-a