All good things take heart

I love to look through old photos of people—studying the faces and wondering about their lives, their struggles, their joys. One of the photos that inspires me most about credit unions is this early 1900s photo of Amoskeag Manufacturing Mills workers in Manchester, NH.

Library of Congress

The faces of these people—many who were French-Canadian immigrants—coming to work in the cotton cloth making mills, hoping, with courage, grit, and a lot of heart, for a better life for their themselves and their families.

Merriam-Webster defines the idiom “to take heart” as “to gain courage or confidence; to begin to feel better and more hopeful.”

I think of these workers’ priest, Monsignor Pierre Hevey, and his “taking heart” to start a “people’s bank”, to help the mill workers borrow and save. Fast forward to the 1930s, and the “taking heart” of Edward Filene, Roy Bergengren, Louise McCarren Herring, Dora Maxwell and so many other credit union pioneers who worked tirelessly to form the U.S. credit union movement. I think of modern day pioneers like Maria Martinez, Linda Bodie, Bill Cheney, and the leaders of the Faith Based Credit Union Alliance (just to name a few!) who take heart each and every day, bringing courage, confidence and hope to help people achieve financial freedom.

All good things take heart. The team at the Foundation profoundly believes that it is the heart of credit unions that is the differentiator of credit unions. Our role in the credit union system is to serve as that lovingly insistent reminder of credit unions’ heart.

We do this in several ways. We harness the cooperative generosity of our system when disaster strikes, helping our credit union family recover so they can help members recover. We provide training that focuses on “taking heart”—our Credit Union Development Education training—giving credit union professionals the tools, courage and confidence to leverage the credit union model to address community challenges and issues. We give grants and provide resources through our FinHealth Hub to help credit unions focus helping their staff and members achieve financial freedom.

“Taking heart” can be hard. In the face of pessimism and disenchantment, being hopeful for a brighter financial future and working hard towards that hope is tough. But all good things—all things that are worth it—take heart.

Credit unions are faced with the opportunity to double-down on who they really are—proudly be not-for-profit financial cooperatives, owned by and for their members. That takes heart and the Foundation is here to ensure that heart stays strong.