Nora: Basically, the difference between a credit union and a bank is that a bank has stock holders, and then they pay their board of directors, and the bottom line is that they'll have to pay their stock holders and they're operated totally different, where a credit union is owned by the membership. And if the credit union is doing well, dividends can, you know, in the form of dividends are paid back to the members. And if the board of directors does not get paid, they are not compensated financially at all. And a credit union is basically a group they talk about the field of membership a lot. And what they mean is that it's a group of people with the same interest. A lot of times you'll find teachers, credit union, some union workers, nurses, old people, Philip: state employees Nora: state employees from New Mexico has a credit union. The difference in our credit union is that it's an ethics-based credit union. And it's based on the ethics of permaculture, which can encompass people from all different countries, not just a localised area. So it's a I guess when we started then we didn't realise that that would is good but also more difficult because we have all these We have members from all over the United States and some foreign members. So, from a logistical standpoint of making their money available to them like you would in a bank, we've had to learn how to do things. Philip: And this is from a brochure that we put out: Information for prospective members and it's what we call the 'Frequently Asked Questions'. It starts with: 'What is a credit union?' and the answer is: 'After successive years of bad weather during the mid-nineteenth century, European farmers needed a way to save their farms from foreclosure by urban banks. To do this they formed groups to pull their savings and lend to each other. The first credit union in the US was organised in 1909. However, it took a severe drought, the Great Depression, and the courage of president Franklin D. Roosevelt to stand up to the banks and create the Federal Credit Union Act 1934.' Philip: So, it's very interesting, the whole concept of credit unions being membership-owned and also the friendly atmosphere that you find with credit unions they in starting up this permaculture credit union we really had a lot of help from other credit unions and it was very helpful to us because we didn't have an office, we didn't know a lot of the things that we had to do, and fellow organisers or fellow managers in other credit unions were very, very willing to help us with anything that we needed. If we needed certain kinds of paper work, they would tell us where they got theirs. Nora: And I don't think you won't find banks doing that. In fact, most banks in this country are merging and swallowing up small banks. You know, so that you're a number, period. That's it. And hopefully I mean well it won't happen that will not happen with the group won't happen with the credit union. Certainly not with this one, yet, because we're so small. Philip: Banks are physically set up to make money for the people who invest in the bank. And it's not necessarily the customers who have accounts in the bank. It's investors who have put money into Nora: capital Philip: the capital that's needed to start off a bank. So they're always trying to make money and what we do is provide this vehicle. Philip: There were a lot of people within the permaculture community. And the term permaculture itself comes from permanent and agriculture. It's like a combination of those two words. And it started in Australia by a fellow by the name of Bill Malson. And Bill, he always thought that banks were always out to make a buck from people. And there weren't any banks that were really consciously involved in giving people money for projects that made sense, were sustainable energy-wise and so on. So he was here in the Santa Fe area in 1996, or I think it was early in '97 when people first started people within the permaculture community here in the Santa Fe area started talking about 'Look, can't we do something about a different kind of organisation to help people along who may not have a credit rating because they've never borrowed money'. And but yet they might want to do some things to take care of the earth as well, and so they started organising in '97 and by the end of '99, somewhere in the fall of '99, Nora and I became pretty headway involved. Actually, we were going to meetings for almost a year before that. Nora: '98 Philip: '98 Nora: But I said today it's ironic we've been open two years today. Philip: Yes, two years. We opened two years ago today. Nora: We knew! Philip: And we have three hundred members, or three hundred and twenty-five members or something like that, and we have we just went over the two million dollar in assets the end of June, yes the end of June, no the end of July, we made it over the hump of two hundred two million dollars in assets. And most credit unions - even the smaller credit unions in the state of New Mexico - have somewhere between ten and a hundred billion dollars in assets. Nora: Well, it's the first new credit union to open in New Mexico in over thirty years. Many people talk about trying to open a credit union. I don't know, like, nationally, you know, through the country, how many open. I would guess that there aren't very many because the process is so involved to be they call it a charter, you know, once you to get your charter to be a credit union. I think that process alone took three years, in the making, to pass all the business plans and all the things you needed to do to be and not only that but your board of directors and all your volunteers have to be squeaky-clean. You all have to have credit reports, you can't ever have done anything wrong in your whole life that's, you know, so it's very intense to get the charter. So once you get it, you know, and you're regulated heavily, but I guess with good reason. Philip: The business plan was the stickiest part for this group because they would write up a business plan based on all of the huge, thick books and Nora: 'How to start a credit union' books Philip: notebooks of information that they got from the National Credit Union Administration. Now, and that NCUA, the National Credit Union Administration, insures all of the accounts for credit unions just like the banks Nora: up to a hundred thousand dollars Philip: up to a hundred thousand dollars. And banks have their own insurer. FDIC is the banking insurer, and NCUA is the credit union account insurer. And so NCUA, because they are our insurer, they want to make sure that we're going to do this right so that they don't to have to put a lot of money out. And so we would send them a business plan based on all this - we found out later - outdated information that they would send us. And then we'd come out with this huge, thick document xeroxed on both sides, and then they would send it back to us after about three months, and say, you know: 'well, you didn't address these issues, and these issues, and these issues'. So we would pounce on it and take it and address those issues and send it back. And then Nora: three months would pass and they would send it back Philip: three months would pass and they would send it back from somebody else's office and, because the person who has taken care of it in the first place had had a heart attack and had bypass surgery or something, and so it would move to somebody else. And then the second person would say . Nora: I think they were waiting for us to go away. Philip: Yes, I think so, too. They were waiting for us to go away. Nora: But we didn't. Philip: And we had a lot of perseverance Nora: a lot of perseverance Philip: and we stuck with it. And finally they sent somebody, one of their economic development specialists, to work with us on our business plan. He came to us with a business plan that we had sent to them, xeroxed on both sides, and he only had the sheets that were every other page. No wonder it didn't make sense to them. They were looking at half the business plan, every other page was missing. So he sat with us and told us: 'Look, I'll be very frank with you and very honest. You don't need all this information.' And I said: 'But you know, it is in here.' - 'Well, you don't need all that. Here's what you need to address. You need to address how you are going to be able to follow this plan to make some money. So that you can support the people who are working in your office.' Nora: operating Philip: The operating money. And so we worked up a business plan, gave it to him and they said: 'Ok, that'll do.' Philip: So they agreed that we should get our charter. We had our charter from the State of New Mexico on May 19th in the year 2000. And we opened our doors on August 15th, in 2000. Nora: Much trepidation. We were very nervous. Philip: And they are breathing down our necks all the time because they want to make sure that we know what we're doing. Now, in many cases we've had people who have given us donations that cover our operating expenses, to help us get started. They don't like that. They want us to be earning that money, they want us permaculture community has a lot of people that like to save money, but not many people like to loan or borrow money. And so we really need to get loans out more and more so that we can get a little bit more interest for the loans than we pay out for the savings which is what we use for our operating expenses. And that's what they keep telling us we have to do. We have to do that. We have to get out more and more loans. So we're making a very concerted effort now. Nora: What I was trying to explain and I think also what we would like to do is be able to teach young people or young adults, let's say, who want to do some different things or who want to have a sustainable project for their home or their farm or whatever. But they don't really know the ins and outs and the pitfalls of the financial world they live in - understandably. And especially with what you read today they're, you know, they're frightened. But with a small credit union like this we need to teach them that we have this available and that we want to be able to help them and we also want to be a full-fledged financial institution. We want to have checking and things like that for the members so they can have access to their money. We don't just want people to put money in and save it. We want to do all of those things. And so I think they have to they have a lot to learn and we have to help teach them that. And we are trying to do it by our newsletters and by word of mouth. And for people who teach permaculture around the United States, then we send them information also about the credit union. So they in turn can teach some of their students that this is a good thing. And financially maybe we can make a difference and that it doesn't really have to be like it is. It can it's equitable. So that's what we were we really took a big chunk to try to change the financial world which is, you know hopefully it will happen in our life-time but it really I think it's made a difference. It's very rewarding when you go to a seminar or a convention about credit unions or about permaculture and you talk about the credit union. People are just thrilled, I mean, that somebody is trying to do this. And that it's . Philip: It's a green organisation. Nora: It's good. And that's what we're trying to do. We are doing it rather quietly and slowly because I think if you really, really market it - the idea and the plan - that it would grow so fast that we couldn't really handle it. So we are trying to go slow and teach our members, and now that we're three hundred and growing, why we're doing it. Philip: We all feel - all the organising body, of which there must be twelve to fifteen people - we all feel that the earth care ethics part of this, the fact that the earth care ethics are care of the earth, care of all the species and sharing the access with all other species that that's very important. So what the way this is reflected in our loan policy, for example, we give people a discounted loan rate for sustainable energy or earth caring projects. For example, in our house we have solar panels on the roof that supply our domestic hot water and also at least half of our radiant heat to keep the house warm in the winter. And that is free energy from the sun. We had there is a certain amount of energy that we have to put in money-wise and create it, creation-wise, to get it set up to start with. And it takes a number of years, like maybe six or seven years, for that to pay for itself. Nora: The county did drill for more oil. Philip: But we don't need to drill for oil to supply the heat for the house. Philip: And also projects - even things that aren't projects, but like automobiles. If somebody wants somebody buys a vehicle that gets better gas mileage, if they get up to thirty if they get better than thirty-five miles to the gallon, we give them a three quarters of one percent discount. And if they get up to forty-five miles to the gallon, like the new Toyota Prius, then we give them another three-quarters of a percent, so it's a total of one and a half percent off of our relatively low, competitive car-loan rates in the first place. And if somebody wants to better insulate their house, they can do that and when they do that, we'll give them a three quarters of a percent decrease from our standard loan rates. If they want to put in a water collection system from their roof, especially here in Santa Fe this year with the drought that we have, it becomes very apparent that that is a really good idea. And if they want to go out and buy a cistern and then channel all of the water from their roof into the cistern, then we will give them a three quarters of a percent decrease in their loan rate for that kind of loan, too. Anything that keeps the process sustainable. Philip: And we're actually a non-profit-organisation - a not-for-profit-organisation. Most non-profit-organisations here in this country have a designation from the Internal Revenue Service, the tax people. It's a 501c3 and it's an typically it's an educational institution of some kind. But the 501c3 designation - the c3 - says that they are people can donate money to that organisation and write it off in their taxes. It's like a contribution to a publicly-owned or publicly-operated institution. The credit unions, the state-charted credit unions, are 501c14, which is also in that same 501 designation as a non-profit. But it's a unique c14 is a state-charted credit union. And there are other like, I think, 501c12, maybe a church organisation or something. 501c1 is a federally-chartered credit union. So, we have a mechanism where people can donate money to the credit union through a non-profit-organisation which is called the Permaculture Institute and earmark the money for the credit union - for start-up funds for the credit union. And when they do that, then they can write it off on their taxes. They can take that as a charity contribution. Nora: Particularly the women that I've run across had been in it for years. And they start, you know, as a maybe a teller or something and just keep going unlike banks, you know, most head of banks are all men, but credit unions, it seems, many, many women. So, that's I didn't realise that but that's kind of interesting. Philip: As CEO Nora used to go to these luncheons that the CEOs would have in Northern New Mexico and they would discuss different problems that they would have to deal with. And share problems with each other. And many of them were women. Nora: There's some men, too, but it does seem like women can do well in this field. Philip: And we found a woman who was the CEO at a fairly small credit union, who was willing to be on our board. And she's been very helpful to us as well. Because she knows the ins and outs and she can face the examiners when they come and ask them more direct questions than we know how to ask. She can ask them questions like 'what is it you're really trying to get out with this', you know. Nora: Well, she wants to see us succeed. Philip: Yes, she does. She wants to see us make a goal. Philip: And I was the chairman of the board of directors. Unpaid. All of the board positions are unpaid. And Nora would sit in her office at her computer and I would sit in my office at my computer. And every once in a while we'd shout a question to each other about, you know, 'Did you remember to do this?' or 'Did you should we have a meeting about this?' or 'Should we have a - what did we used to call them? - brain storming sessions?' And then we'd be writing notes and pretty soon we would be sending e-mail to each other from one office to another in the same house. Nora: Well, because if I send an e-mail it has more impact than verbal - Philip: Actually most of the e-mail that Nora sent to me . Nora: verbal instruction. See, Kurt gets it. Just like that. He knows what we're talking about. Philip: Nora would send e-mail to me and say 'Please print this.' That's all I'd get. There'd be a document because Nora: I didn't have a printer Philip: she didn't have a printer on her computer and I had a printer on mine. So I'd get this document that would come by e-mail and I'd print it out and she'd come in and pick up the hard copy and I felt like I was the printing centre or something like that. But we did we had a lot of fun with the credit union. We had a lot of there wasn't much gnashing of teeth but we . Nora: No, we used to have board meetings. Now we got a little bit better handle on it, but some board meetings would last for three or four hours. It was just intense. Many things that needed to be accomplished and voted on, and they had to get done. Philip: And sometimes and I was trying to keep things down to an hour or two at the most. My philosophy was anything over an hour is no longer a meeting, it's a party. And whoever has whoever called the party should supply beer. But we never had anything to drink up there. All we had was Nora: water Philip: water. Nora: It was probably just as well. Philip: Bottled water. We'd bring in bottled water by the case. And people would drink bottled water. Nora: It was just as well. We had to get a lot done. Philip: I remember once in a while somebody would bring in cookies and that would sustain us through a lengthy meeting. % % Acknowledgements, availability and copyright % -------------------------------------------- % Acknowledgements: The project has been supported by the University of % Tuebingen. The video interviews have been carried out and recorded by % Sabine Braun, Stefanie Hahn, Petra Hoffstaedter and Kurt Kohn. The % speakers have agreed to the use of the materials for non-commercial % research and education purposes. % % Availability of the ELISA corpus: The ELISA corpus is made available by the % Department of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Tuebingen. % It is freely available at this website for study, teaching and research % purposes, and copies of the transcripts may be distributed, as long as this % statement of availability appears in the text. However, if any portion of % this material is to be used in educational presentations and publications, % permission must be obtained in advance. Commercial use of any form is % excluded. For further information about permissions, please contact Dr. % Sabine Braun at s.braun(at)surrey.ac.uk. % % Copyright of the ELISA corpus: Department of Applied English Linguistics, % University of Tuebingen. %