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  • From: "Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Permaculture Credit Union transition
  • Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 19:58:55 -0600


More on the Permaculture Credit Union
Permaculture Credit Union

One of many of Bill Mollison’s stories in the Permaculture Design Course that
I took 30 years ago was the tale of the Maleny Credit Union. Maleny Credit
Union (MCU) was founded in 1984 in Maleny Queensland, Australia by Jill
Jordan. Jill was inspired in 1983 by a statement made by Bill Mollison where
he stated “to have a sustainable permaculture development you need to solve
your financial and economic problems first”. Jill had already founded the
local food co-op and was a firm supporter of local focused businesses and
enterprises. The MCU was a model in Australia of ethical business practices.
Jill ultimately left the MCU, became a city councilor and later worked on
the board of a water recycling company. She died in 2010.

The MCU currently has 5000 members and $ 51.5 million in assets.

This success story led me to read what I could find on financial institutions
and to delve deeper into the teaching of permaculture know as “invisible
structures”. Invisible structures support the second pillar of permaculture
“visible structures” which are the things we do to create regenerative
systems like gardens, homes, forests, water catchment, and the myriad of
things that support us and our families. The visible structures in
permaculture tell us what to do and the Invisible tells us how to do it.
The invisible structures encompass finance, legal systems, and social
organization.

As a solar builder in the 60’s and 70’s I had run into the difficulty in
obtaining financial backing from banks for innovative new ideas in home
building. I had had the same problem in obtaining agricultural loans for
organic growing when the loan officer noticed that I didn’t have biocides and
chemical fertilizer in my loan application – I’m sure he didn’t have a clue
what “organic” even meant. With this background of negative results from
financial institutions I often dreamed of a different form of finance.
Permaculture was my gateway into turning my dream into a reality.

At a gathering of permaculture graduates in Santa Rosa in the 90’s we were
brainstorming on how to create a permaculture village. During that
discussion Bill Mollison brought up the fact that we would have a hard time
financing such a venture. I volunteered to look into forming a financial
institution that would finance such an enterprise. During this same time in
Santa Rosa I meet an attorney named Manuel Abascal and talked to him about my
new task.

Manuel had been engaged in trying to get a class action suit against Citibank
for predatory fees for services. His argument was that it was those people
who could least afford it, (those who lived from paycheck to paycheck), were
being charged usurious fees for insufficient fund checks. I asked Manuel to
help me in forming something new. Another person at that Santa Rosa meeting
was Vint Lawrence who also joined our founders club.

In 2000 we somehow managed to get the state of New Mexico to license us a
credit union. We had decided that a credit union was the ideal legal form
since it was a co-op structure. It took us over two years to meet all the
bureaucratic work necessary to get approval by the National Credit Union
Association (NCUA). The Permaculture Credit Union was greeted by depositors
from around the country and we were on a roll!

Twelve years later we had over 500 members and then we were hit by the
banking collapse which turned our world into a miasma of difficulties. We
were under capitalized which meant that we couldn’t make significant loans
which meant that we couldn’t grow financially. Interest rates plummeted and
our green loans were no longer competitive. We had developed a financial
relationship with the local farmers market which allowed us to oversee loans
to local growers which helped our egos but not our bottom line. The NCUA
was breathing down our necks to get our capital assets up and our fund raiser
for capital donations to the PCU was not successful enough to convince the
NCUA.

One year ago the PCU started looking for a merger partner. This search went
on with our CEO, Bill Sommers looking for a good match. He finally found an
institution that had the capital and the services that our members had been
asking for. This institution is the
Sandia Area Federal Credit Union, www.sandia.org which is located in
Albuquerque, NM. Sandia is the name of the mountain range just east of
Albuquerque.

Sandia brings us the kind of stability that we have lacked for the past 14
years and offers checking, online banking, 30,000 free ATM’s nation wide, and
debit and credit cards. They have also agreed to keep our office in Santa Fe
open and to retain our employees. All in all I think that this is an
opportunity for all of us to participate in a much larger opportunity. I,
personally, am happy that I will be able to do all my banking in a credit
union that has all of the services I need.

If we are to change the financial climate in this country we have to find a
way to participate in how wealth is distributed. As a co-op all credit
unions are owned by their members, not stock holders, which means it is up to
you and other members to participate and create the institution that best
fulfills your idea of what an ethical organization looks like and how it
operates.








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