permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 9:58 PM, Scott Pittman <scott@permaculture.org>
wrote:

>
> 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.


Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
http://www.avantgeared.com
https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
Skype: lawrence.f.london