Last weeks’ Credit Union Journal Daily Briefing featured Financial Plus FCU of Flint Township, Michigan. The credit union is “encouraging area high school students to step behind the camera to shoot a video that can teach others about financial literacy,” by holding a video competition.
What a great idea and a powerful example of how a credit union can engage with its members while getting work done that needs to be done.
Think about it.
Teaching your members about financial literacy, or any number of other personal financial management topics, is a core goal of credit unions…
it improves your ties to members and makes them better members. Connecting with members and building stronger relationships is also a core goal of credit unions…it increases their commitment and expands their use of your products and services.
But it takes time to teach members, it takes materials, and it takes money to develop the materials.
Enter the world of member produced videos that are cost effective (essentially free, except for the prizes you give away in your contest), focused directly on your credit union, and great visibility builders. You don’t even have to pay for the bandwidth to host the videos, just set up a YouTube.com channel and host them there!
ACTION ADVICE: Consider this approach for your credit union on any number of topics you would like to teach your members about, and don’t limit your thinking to video. You could just as easily have a contest where members developed worksheets, toolkits, workbooks, or PowerPoint presentations about various topics. You might even form an Advisory Group of members who evaluate and approve these materials for use with your members–a great way to groom future volunteers. Outsourcing to your members just may be the solution to a number of problems you are wrestling with…why not give it a try?
