This article is part of Callahan & Associates’ “CDFI Grants In Action,” a limited editorial series that showcases how credit unions leverage CDFI funding to advance their mission and deliver measurable impact for members. To learn how CDFI certification can change lives and unlock opportunities at your credit union, visit CU Strategic Planning, A Callahan Company.
Vantage West Credit Union ($3.2B, Tucson, AZ) is deepening its social impact work with the help of CDFI grant funding.
The Arizona-based cooperative has been certified as a community development credit union since 2018, but after the pandemic, leadership wanted to be more deliberate with that work.
The Problem
With roots in serving the Air Force community in and around Tucson, it’s no surprise the bulk of Vantage West’s membership resides in Pima County. However, the credit union’s field of membership also includes Pinal, Cochise, and Maricopa counties, with each county presenting its own mix of economic challenges.
Phoenix, in Maricopa County, is one of the fastest-growing, highest-paying markets in the country. Tucson is the opposite, with lots of low-income consumers — many in rural areas — and considerable under- or disinvestment. Many banks have pulled back — both in the Tucson market and more broadly across Southern Arizona — meaning financial services aren’t always accessible, and payday lenders and others have been more than happy to fill the void.
“COVID highlighted a lot of disparity in the economy,” says Jon Bruflat, Vantage West’s vice president of community impact.
The pandemic and follow-on inflation, shifting interest rates, and more have revealed just how many Americans live paycheck to paycheck or need help managing their finances. Vantage West understood the statistics around those facts, but it needed a person to turn data into action.
The Solution
A $625,000 CDFI grant helped the credit union hire a manager in 2023 to launch a financial wellness program that focuses on consumer coaching and connects program participants to vetted local nonprofit partners that support Vantage West’s community-impact areas, including housing, education, and economic development. That second goal is important because Tucson has a dense population of nonprofits, according to Bruflat, and the credit union wants to tap that knowledge base and build relationships with the right ones.
“A lot of people who come to [work in] credit unions have had some financial experience,” the VP says. “We wanted a person who had been more on the needs side of this with nonprofits.”
The candidate Vantage West selected spent more than a decade in the Tucson nonprofit world, including United Way, local foundations, and more. That experience helped the credit union better understand the financial education needs of potential program participants and craft topics — such as how to budget, save, and build credit — that would resonate.
To help satisfy the second goal, the financial wellness program manager works with employees to help them improve their own financial wellness and provide better guidance for members across a variety of channels. The credit union has certified close to 80 employees as financial coaches via an internal program that blends methods and information from America’s Credit Unions, United Way, and others.
“We’re developing relationships and resources so our staff is comfortable referring members to the right support — generally either a community resource or a community partner we know,” Bruflat says.
Vantage West also tweaked how it approaches sponsorships. Rather than saying “yes” by default to many requests, it now zeros in on two dozen or so key partnerships related to housing, education, and workforce development. Of note, the initial hire left the credit union shortly after implementing the program, but a new hire has maintained the momentum.
The Results
Nearly 700 people have participated in financial wellness coaching programs. Some of those attendees have met just once, but many have taken part in more than one session.
“The record is 13 appointments over the course of a year helping someone build credit,” Bruflat says. “We’ve had success stories of helping someone get out of transitional housing and into an apartment, helping somebody get their first home loan, and refinancing high-rate debt and rebuilding credit with us through lower-rate loans.”
Vantage West has also embedded itself into the work of local partner organizations, including the Gospel Rescue Mission, which serves families in need of transitional housing.
“We’ve added ourselves into that mix as their financial services support,” Bruflat says. “We come on site a couple of times per month to do education in group settings, but we also help people add a banking account. That has differentiated us in the market, and we’ve grown.”
Partnerships like this have not only helped Vantage West improve its community outreach but also inadvertently bulk up business-banking relationships. Bruflat says he can think of at least 10 such relationships the credit union has added in the past year based on its wellness and impact work.
The program’s success has changed Vantage West’s approach to partnerships, particularly in how it pulls together multiple organizations to make a greater, coordinated impact.
“Having that sense of those areas you really care about and tying back partners or donations to that can make a big difference,” Bruflat says. “You can do that whether you’re a CDFI or not. Ask yourself ‘What do we want to be known for?’ That’ll drive your strategy and drive it outside of just social impact.”