permaculture

["Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>]

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.