Watering Down A Call For Progress.......

NEWS FLASH:   JUST RELEASED!

FORGET THE PEOPLE;
IT'S THE SYSTEM!

CUNA'S SYSTEM STRUCTURE AND GOVERNANCE TASK FORCE HAS RECOMMENDED MEMBERSHIP CHOICE FOR ALL CREDIT UNIONS JOINING CUNA!       

THE CUNA BOARD ISSUED A PROMPT RESPONSE....

Corporate Governance...

ANY POTENTIAL SIMILARITIES?

IN TOUCH?

Draw your own conclusions...

Walking It Back...

"CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle said he's observed that his credit union trade association, which he has stood at the helm of for one year, was bloated and inefficient."

- CUTimes (Sept. 24, 2015)

"I MISSPOKE.  WHAT I MEANT TO SAY WAS THAT CUNA WAS..."

Putting The Banks To Shame...

We be bad...!

BEFORE WE ALL BECOME TOO PROUD AND SELF-IMPORTANT ABOUT THE GROWTH AND SUCCESS OF THE CREDIT UNION MOVEMENT....

TAKE A LOOK AT THESE TWO CHARTS ON THE GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION IN CONSUMER SAVINGS ....

WE'VE DEFINITELY GOT THOSE COMMERCIAL BANKERS ON THE RUN!

Shell Game...

ABOUT THOSE PROPOSED 
"CUNA -"NO DETAILS YET"- DUES CUTS"...

[Suggest you "Watch very closely"!]

By the way, if we're so eager to review NCUA's budget, shouldn't CUNA be willing to publish its'...

Live From The Sunshine State....

WELCOME TO THE LEAGUE OF SOUTHEASTERN CREDIT UNIONS' 
WEEKEND RETREAT!

Where....

FLORIDA'S FINEST.. O-O-O LA LA!!!

REPRESENTING WHO'S
MOST IMPORTANT!  - ME! 

HEY, PATRICK LAPINE HERE WITH THE LEAGUE OF SOUTHEASTERN CREDIT UNIONS. BEEN LOTS OF TALK GOING 'ROUND ABOUT THE QUESTION OF CHOICE WITHIN CUNA AND THE LEAGUES - LOTS OF CONFUSION, BEHIND THE SCENES TURMOIL, JUST ALL KINDA BAD STUFF!

WELL LISTEN UP, AS ONE OF THE

LEADING LIGHTS IN THE LEAGUE SYSTEM AND AS A VOTING MEMBER OF THE CUNA BOARD, LET ME FILL YOU IN ON HOW ALL THIS REALLY GOES DOWN.

[LINK - "GOING BOTH WAYS"!]

MOM, APPLE PIE,
AND ME!

I'M FOR CHOICE AND I'M FOR CREDIT UNIONS - OK? TRUST ME! I'M ON YOUR SIDE! BUT ON THE CUNA BOARD, I GOTTA LOOK AFTER MY CONSTITUENTS - RIGHT?  SURE THAT'S THE AMERICAN WAY! 

I'M NOT PAID TO HAVE A CONSCIENCE NOR TO DO THE RIGHT THING.  AS A CUNA BOARD MEMBER, I'M THERE TO REPRESENT MY CONSTITUENTS  -  THE OTHER LEAGUE CEO's IN MY DISTRICT.

Resorting To Kickbacks .... ???

NEWS FLASH:

"CUNA BOARD DECIDES TO CUT DUES FOR MEGA-CREDIT UNIONS [here's the nuzzle] WHICH GET A BETTER DEAL AT NAFCU!"
[Why now, pray tell?]

Pssst!
Let's make a deal! 

"Hey, just pass 'em a little cash back, stroke their egos a little, and this will all blow over. Trust me, it always works."

"And, perhaps they won't take time to notice...."

Still Playing "Minor League" Ball...?....

"THE BIG LEAGUE" - A situation where competition is keen and a high level of performance is expected.  The Governance and Structure Task Force Report. 

League puppetry?
Just doing their Doody?

"BUSH LEAGUE" - Anything amateurish or below professional caliber.  The CUNA Board response.

"IN LEAGUE WITH" - In cahoots with, secretly cooperating, often to do something bad or unjust.  The "cute little puppy" response from some Leagues.

"NOT IN SAME LEAGUE" - What may happen if credit unions are given the freedom of choice ( a key democratic, cooperative principle - or used to be!)

CUNA at the Bat !

"OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE" - What may happen if credit unions are not given the freedom of Choice!

What's The Definition Of "To Nuzzle"?

"To push or rub with the nose"
... h-m-m-m.

TO NUZZLE - verb | nuz-zle | \'ne-zel\ | - to push or rub with the nose | synonyms: to snuggle and snoozle | antonyms: bold and independent | rhymes with: fizzle | Ex: "Rather than lead and oppose the poor Board decision, he chose to nussle."

Source:  Merriam-Webster

Guess some folks could interpret that as a...

On Being Honest...

"WHILE THE BOARD DID NOT ADOPT ALL OF THE TASK FORCE'S RECOMMENDATIONS,..."

["Not all" ?!? Glad they at least discovered advocacy ...!!]

[Here is the full link to the news release]

GOT TO ADMIT THAT CUNA HAS DEMONSTRATED
SOME FANTASTIC LEADERSHIP IN ALL THIS !!!

So, now that the CUNA Board has so boldly and intelligently defined our future, 
Be sure to order your new "America's Credit Unions" headgear today...

Something Magical...

SOMETHING MAGICAL IS HAPPENING IN SAXAPAHAW, NORTH CAROLINA!

TAKE A LOOK FOR YOURSELF...

A CROWD PLEASER !

[CROWD-FUNDED, IF YOU CAN SPARE A FEW BUCKS.]

Invertebrata....

"ZOO"-OLOGY:

THE FOLLOWING ARE EXAMPLES OF THE INVERTEBRATE SPECIES, REPRESENTING ORGANISMS WITHOUT A BACKBONE:

CUNA's Latest "Leadership" Announcement...

WELL, WHADDAYATHINK?

WAS IT A CASE OF...

"CHICKEN OUT"?

OR "CHICKEN....

CUNA Launches NAFCU Membership Campaign!

No Other Choice?

The CUNA Board voted in closed session yesterday to encourage in essence, all America's Credit Unions to actively consider membership in NAFCU!

During the just completed Fall meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, the 24-member CUNA Board rejected the Governance and Structure Task Force Report recommendation supporting "optionality" - giving credit unions the right to choose membership in either CUNA or the leagues.

CUNA Board sends CUs a message
 from The Dairy State!

By rejecting both the Task Force recommendation on "choice" (withheld, yet to be published) and the strong support for optionality found in the recent CUNA-sponsored industry survey (still being suppressed), the CUNA Board has placed organizational self-interest above the best interests of the individual credit unions CUNA is supposed to represent.

1) Significantly higher dues costs, 2) increasingly questionable effectiveness on Capitol Hill, 3) the absence of direct representation at the national level, 4) and now a let-them-eat-cake vote by an out-of-touch (or worse) Board.... 

Dum-D-dum,
Dumb!!!

COULD CUNA DO ANYTHING MORE DAMAGING TO FORCE CREDIT UNIONS INTO THE ARMS OF ARCH-RIVAL NAFCU?.

Well?... 

Credit Union Marketeers....

FROM THE NEWS:

"Our neuman..."

"The Credit Union's new SVP of Sales, Communications, Marketing, Magical Moods, and Mischievious Misperception is a recent graduate and holds a....

CUT The Mustard... CUT The Fat ???

A White Bull Elephant?

If you were on the CUNA Board and your System Structure and Governance Task Force 

had just released "The Dorety Report" which recommended the following:

1) Give all credit unions the choice of direct membership - now!

2) Focus on advocacy only - now!

3) Reduce your Board size from 24 to 15 - now!

Could you, in good conscience, CUT out the deadwood and vote to effectively become...

Time To Fish Or CUT Bait...

Poobahti Grandees !

Well, word has it "on the street", that the CUNA System Structure and Governance Task Force Report is being confidentially circulated amongst the CUNA cognoscenti and Grand Poobahti as we speak!

Word's Out !

Doesn't take too much sniffing around the base of the CUNA/League fire hydrant to confirm that three major recommendations have been made by the Task Force and that "the ordure is about to hit the aerogenerator" when the CUNA Board meets later this week.

It will be interesting to see if CUNA will manage the Task Force report as poorly as it handled the national survey/focus group results earlier this year. After repeatedly pleading and cajoling everybody and his brother to participate in the survey, CUNA reneged on its promise to publish the results and suppressed the data. 

Why withhold the results from the participants and CUNA/League members? Four basic reasons:

1) Even with the begging, pleading and the hyped-up "national importance"; the response rate was only around 12% - perhaps indicating that no one really cares all that much about CUNA one way or the other?

Toast ?

2) The results were uniformly dismal for both CUNA and the Leagues - described euphemistically as a "lack of enthusiasm" for both!

3) If you throw out the "not sures, I don't knows",  the majority of credit unions in every size category voted for the right to choose membership in CUNA and/or the leagues - with 63% of the "yea/nays" among even the smallest CUs voting to support choice! 

Kick? Can Do !

4) The truth is frequently not fashionable along the Potomac and the survey results leave little room for the further kicking of America's Credit Unions' can down the road!

So, why wouldn't CUNA just be smart for this once and go ahead and release that little Task Force report to the rest of us?

Well?

Would that be too much to ask? If so... 

      

Parlez-Vous Choice.....?

Mr. Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was a remarkable man. Not only was Paine a hero of the American Revolution, he was also one of the leaders of the French Revolution!   His book "The Rights of Man" may still be the best read treatise on political democracy and human freedom ever written.

Well worth your time!

French revolutionaries adopted a very direct approach, when dealing with an uncaring, dismissive, ineffective, embedded aristocracy. The French always found it most beneficial to...

Choice...

Ms. Tubman

"I freed a thousand slaves.  I could have freed a thousand more, if only they knew they were slaves."

                                           

 - Harriet Tubman

Esse Quam Videri...

"Esse Quam Videri"

("To Be, Rather Than To Seem")



The motto of the State of North Carolina

... nothing else really needs to be said, does it?

Out Of Focus: Over Managed, Under Led....??

ON SEPTEMBER 17, 2015

IN THE BEST TRADITION OF

 

&

LOOK FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF CUNA 

TO MAKE A

 ANNOUNCEMENT 

OF YET ANOTHER

Evaluating The Trades... Part 3: Time And Tide Wait For No Man.

You've heard the story of King Canute before. But if it doesn't ring a bell right off that's only because it's been awhile since you heard it. Remember now? Nah? Well it goes like this....

King Canute ruled in Denmark, Sweden, and England around the turn of the millennium (.... that's the first one! 1000 A.D.) The King was wise, all-powerful, been around the block a few times - much was demanded of him. 

His subjects expected him to solve each and every problem which arose! The King told them that's not the way the real world works! To prove the point, the King had his throne carried to the edge of the North Sea and set up on the beach, where he said he planned to command the tides "not to come in" for the rest of the week....!

GUESS YOU KNOW HOW THAT WORKED OUT!

Evaluating The Trades.... Part 2: Price No Object?

H-m-m-m?

Well, don't know how you sized-up CUNA-vs-NAFCU yesterday in what they "had to say about themselves"; but let me try a few observations: 


1) NAFCU's pitch was clear, concise, focused - made the key points, did it on one page. 
2) CUNA's "togetherness song" was at best "tone deaf" and without a doubt "off key".
3) NAFCU has a mission - advocacy, education, compliance - period.
4) CUNA also has a mission -"refresh" themselves, 
advocacy, and unite and challenge you and me!?! [Say what?]
5) NAFCU has the "why words" covered - "your bottom-line, Board of your peers, responsive, growing with us".
6) CUNA is still using someone's old campaign speech "with B.S. words"  - "bold leadership, ambitious vision, take-no-prisioners strategy, best-in-class value, reignite the spirit, fearlessness, entrepreneurship, legacy". Unfortunately, there is little substance to be found amidst the yada!

To me "someone's" got a problem; 

how did you read it?

But let's move on and revisit that always crucial question of price. Here's a quick rehash of the "cost of doing business" comparison...

Evaluating The Trades... Part 1: The Interview - "Tell Me About Yourself".

How to decide?

Most of us, when making a major decision, try to compare the available choices against some list of criteria - the "pros & cons" which we believe to be key to the decision.  These criteria always involve some trade-off between quality and price. 

Quality often involves looking at past

performance, current market reputation, and future promise. Price is our perception of relative value. Usually, it is necessary to rank or weight the decision criteria by relative importance. When doing the ranking, it is not unusual to find that factors other than quality/price also have great importance - and that's why most truly important decisions are not so easy, nor straight forward.

So, how should we go about taking a hard, honest look at the question of quality, value, and "other factors", when choosing where to invest our members' funds in trade association representation?  Where do we start?

Well, one simple point of departure would be to take a look at what NAFCU and CUNA have to say about themselves...

Spinning The Media...

 Let's CUT !!! 
[... and edit !!!]

I'M A BIG, BIG, BIG SUPPORTER OF

CUTimes !!!

Heather Anderson

Executive Editor

Credit Union Times

Pulp Friction...

IT'S BIG CHECK TIME FOR CREDIT UNIONS !!!

SPRUCE IT UP! 

OR ....