7 years later, our nation’s top schools still don’t know what a credit union is

Seven years ago, a few of us walked around Duke University and asked a simple question: What is a credit union?

We expected confusion. We did not expect how consistent it would be. Seventy six percent of students had no idea what a credit union was.

That small experiment did not stay small. It became the foundation for Zogo, a company we built to help credit unions reach younger audiences through financial education. We partnered with more than 300 institutions and saw, up close, how much credit unions invest in their members and their communities.

After a few years running Zogo, I left to attend Stanford Graduate School of Business. But that original question stayed with me.

Had anything actually changed?

So I ran the experiment again. This time at Stanford. Same question. What is a credit union?

The answers felt familiar.

No idea.
A credit card.
A union for people who work in credit cards.
That one bank that gives credit cards to international students.

That last answer came up more than you would think, largely because of Stanford Federal Credit Union and its role in helping international students access credit for the first time.

But the headline was simple.

Seventy five percent of students still did not know what a credit union was.

Seven years later. Different school. Same result.

At first glance, it feels like nothing has changed. But that is not true.

From 2019 to 2026, total assets in credit unions grew by roughly 55 percent. Membership increased by around 20 percent. Credit unions are serving more people, with more scale, than ever before.

They have also continued to invest heavily in their communities. Financial literacy programs. First time homebuyer support. Debt management initiatives. Millions of dollars deployed. Millions of lives impacted. I have seen this firsthand.

So how can both things be true? How can an industry grow meaningfully while remaining largely invisible to the next generation?

That seventy five percent number is easy to misread. It looks like failure. It is not.

The real comparison is not seventy five percent versus zero. It is seventy five percent versus what the number would have been without all that work. Maybe it would have been ninety percent. Maybe higher.

Thousands of people inside credit unions have spent years pushing that number down. Quietly. Consistently. Without much recognition. That effort matters.

But it also reveals something uncomfortable. Awareness does not win the moment when someone is about to move their money.

The issue is not that students cannot define a credit union. It is that they do not experience one in a way that sticks. Relevance is built through moments. When someone opens their first account, gets approved for their first loan, decides where their paycheck should go, or needs help and someone actually shows up.

That is where perception is formed. And here is the uncomfortable truth.

Most of those moments are invisible to the institution. A member can shop competitors, check rates, and make a decision without their credit union ever knowing it happened. No alert. No signal. No chance to respond.

By the time the institution sees the impact, the moment is already gone. That is the gap. Not intent. Not effort.

Visibility.

But we have already seen what it looks like when credit unions get this right.

When the U.S. government faced a shutdown in late 2025, families were staring at zero paychecks while expenses continued. Navy Federal Credit Union stepped in and disbursed over 345 million dollars in zero percent interest loans to roughly 190,000 members. That is presence.

When an EF4 tornado hit Barnsdall, Oklahoma, Truity Credit Union focused on survival, not banking. They deployed portable restrooms, washing stations, and laundry trucks, and helped families salvage what they had left. That is presence.

Even in smaller ways, Stanford Federal Credit Union shows up to basketball games, handing out beanies and supporting students in moments that build real connection.

Different actions. Same principle. Showing up when it actually matters.

Back at Duke and Stanford, we asked what a credit union is.

Today, we are asking something else.

At FinRank, some of the same people who built Zogo came back to this industry because the problem was never just awareness. It was presence.

Credit unions are at their best in moments like the ones above. The challenge is that most moments that move money are quieter.

A member shopping for a better rate.
A competitor making a pricing change.
A relationship slowly fading after a loan closes.

These moments do not come with headlines. But they matter just as much. And too often, they pass by unnoticed.

That is where the urgency comes from. Not because credit unions are failing, but because the bar for relevance is rising faster than most systems were built to handle.

The opportunity is just as real.

If institutions can see these moments and act on them, they do not just compete. They win where it matters most. That is the work we are focused on. Helping institutions stay present in the moments that move money, without losing the trust and local knowledge that make them different.

Because when you are present, something shifts. You are no longer something a student has to define.

You are something they remember.

Someone will run this experiment again. Maybe it will be me. Maybe it will not. The goal is not to move that seventy five percent number slightly.

The goal is to make the question itself feel outdated. Because the answer is obvious. Not because people were told. Because they experienced it.

Credit unions have already proven they can survive. The question now is whether they can become impossible to ignore. That outcome will not come from a campaign.

It will come from showing up in the moments that matter. Consistently. Quietly. Effectively.

That is the work ahead. If you are thinking about how to stay present in those moments, that is exactly what we are building toward at FinRank.