Win a trip for 2 to DISNEYWORLD!



Credit Union for Kids  is the third largest corporate donor to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals after only Walmart and Costco.  The millions of dollars credit unions raise each year in support of their local children’s hospitals are a perfect example of “people helping people,”   This generosity and community support is a clear differentiator for credit unions, which should give credit unions a clear competitive advantage over other financial institutions. Miracle Jeans Day is one of the largest national credit union fundraisers for Credit Unions for Kids! 

What goes best with Miracle Jeans Day? A Miracle CU*SWAG

CU*SWAG has teamed up with Credit Unions for Kids  to give YOU an opportunity to not only spread the word about the amazing foundation, BUT enter for your chance to win a trip for two to Disney World with airfare, hotel and exclusive invitation to the 2011 Children's Miracle Network Hospital's annual Celebration in Orlando, Florida!!!

 

To submit your entry and to get more info please go to mjd.cuswag.org! 

 

Hurry the contest ends August 16! Get your wheels turning and submit your entry today... it's worth the prize!

 

At a Loss for Christmas Gift Ideas - Consider Paying It Forward

Sharing a little Christmas Season Love....

Looking to give something special to family, friends, clients, or co-workers, but haven’t figured out what to do? Consider a gift that encourages the receiver to pay it forward.

Juntos Avanzamos Award for Beacon FCU

Beacon FCU was awarded the Juntos Avanzamos Award.  This an award given to credit unions who connect with the Hispanic community beyond a brochure or website in Spanish.  Credit unions like Beacon FCU help Hispanics build financial wealth and achieve financial success, through services in Spanish and financial education.  This award is focused on the idea of people helping people beyond what is easy or convenient.  Beacon FCU saw a need and decided to meet that need with the Hispanic community!  Check out the video below and give us a shout back on ways your credit union is working to reach non-English speaking people in your community!

Wear and Share to Help Haiti Heal and Recover

To help provide disaster relief for Haiti, CU*SWAG has designated this Thursday, January 21st, as ‘Wear and Share to Help Haiti Heal’ Day. CU*SWAG strongly believes in the credit union philosophy of ‘People Helping People’ and pledges to donate 100% of profits from orders placed on January 21, 2010, to the National Credit Union Foundation CUAid Disaster Relief System.

“As we continue to work with credit unions around the country, we have built the credit union spirit of people helping people into the CU*SWAG culture from day one,” said James Robert Lay, Grower of Relationships. “CU*SWAG wants to show the world that credit unions offer more than just financial services. They offer hope and help for people and nations in need.”

Currently, CU*SWAG donates ten percent of its profits to a quarterly featured charity within the global community and wanted to expand its level of social responsibility. With the disaster in Haiti and the extreme need for assistance, CU*SWAG wanted to do more than just send in a check. The goal is reach as many credit unions as possible and have their money go straight to providing aid in Haiti.

“We are excited to offer credit unions the ability to give back and help CUAid raise money for Haiti relief efforts while credit unions get CU*SWAG to share the credit union love with their employees, members and community,” said Lay.

Tweet, post to Facebook, call, email or text your credit union friends to tell them about ‘Wear and Share to Help Haiti Heal’ Day. Help spread the word while showing members and the community credit union love with a CU*SWAG shirt.

Hi Mom! Live at the Mobilize.org Conference! Watch Below...

Watch a live stream from mobilize.org conference and get involved with the chat on the credit union blog.

Do You Have a Fowarding Quotient Strategy?

New term for me today - Forwarding Quotient (FQ). Are you strategically and thoughtfully taking time to forward content of value to your clients, peers, work team, and friends?

I learned about FQ through a weekly update from a LinkedIn group I follow - twitter innovators Innovation & Creativity Network of Tweeters . Scott Jacobs posted a link to Harvard Business Publishing (a source that I also follow through RSS feeds) "Conversation Starter - The Disadvantage of Twitter and Facebook" by Michael Schrage.

As I read along, I was nodding in agreement. Whether we grow our relationships through face to face contact or online connections, special are those who know us well enough to share pertinent information that build us up, help us with projects, or provide inspiration and spur innovation.

I've found useful information through posts to this LinkedIn group. Scott's post, his choosing to participate and not just observe, gave me value. HBP posting timely articles with attention grabbing headlines keep me coming back.

Have you made the commitment to participate in social networking communities? Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn?

Do you add value by forwarding information or commenting on blogs that grab your attention?

Do you have a lesson learned, aha moments, informative articles that will help someone position forward?

Add value. Be a contributor to the communities and dialogues around you. Share!

Learning Continues Through Social Media Channels & E-mail Communications

Social media is simply another language. One where those who are fluent or even learning themselves are often more than willing to share their knowledge and coach novices. Today, Sean McDonald was gracious enough to take the time to educate me and open my mind to yet another way to share lessons learned.

Once I decided Twitter did have value, I typically begin my business day with a quick overview of tweets. This morning a post by @ConversationAge caught my attention:

RT @ConversationAgeListening is a basic, human element of your business. Why is it so hard? http://ow.ly/pyHG  

For those new to Twitter - RT is a "re-tweet" or repeat of someone else's message.

Since I still consider myself new to a lot of the social media channels, and sage advice I continue to receive is to listen, the tweet reference caught my attention. After reading it, I wanted to share the message with others. I emailed Sean directly, seeking permission to repost as a guest blog on this site. 

He was kind enough to take the time to introduce a new term to me "pointer post" to me, including an example:

Thank you for the kind words, glad the post is helpful to you. Best approach for you sharing my blog post is to do a pointer post.  A pointer post is where you write a short intro on cugrow.com (intro can be how it applies to the CU business, what you liked about the post, or something as short and sweet like, “this is what we have been discussing at cugrow, thought you would benefit from another point of view”) and then link over to the original post.

Thanks Sean for taking the time to reach out and help educate others along the way. For me, this is one of the many values just waiting for folks as they learn to embrace a wide variety of communication tools.

Do you have lessons you've learned about social media to share with others? Shout back and share.

Helping People Understand Twitter and Other Social Media

When reviewing the weekly update from one of my LinkedIn groups, I came across the following post from David Pittman (Sr. Director, Marketing Communications, Initiate Systems, Inc.). I found his approach insightful and have his permission to share…

My company recently jumped headlong into social media, becoming active on Twitter, Facebook, and, LinkedIn, with soon-to-roll plans for other social media outlets. As the marketing communications director, I'm responsible for getting all this action rolling. That means I also field a huge range of questions from co-workers.

The most frequent type of question I get is "How is [X] different from [Y]?", especially "How is Twitter different from Facebook?" To help my colleagues understand the different social networks, I borrowed from my product marketing friends and created personas for each network. Each persona is the name of a fellow well-known employee, so everyone can quickly picture the personality of each social network and the 'feel' we will try to give to each in our communications.

Below are the personas I wrote, with the names changed to protect the guilty.

• Our blog is like Tom C: authoritative but with a humorous edge. Invites other opinions.
• Twitter is like Bill F: clever, witty and fun; easily interacts with other people; not afraid to ask thought-provoking questions.
• The website is like Ginger K: organized, has everything you need. Isn’t as outgoing as other media, but is always ready to interact with you.
• Flickr is like Emily G: has all the images, pictures and graphics you could want. (One person added, “And is easy to use.”)
• YouTube is like Dr. Robert H: has depth and technical knowledge, but also has a funny personal side.
• LinkedIn is like Alexandra T: knows everybody; exudes a professional demeanor; isn’t afraid to reach out and make connections.
• Facebook is like Ted P: cheerful, congratulatory and social. Reaches out to other people, encourages interaction among different people, has lots of friends; is able to integrate personal and professional.

What do you think of the characterizations he applied to each social network? What changes would you make?

Make a Difference. It Will Only Cost You $1... That's It!

It takes a lot to think huge and do something different to make a difference.  Carol Schillios is living on a roof for as long as it takes to raise $1 million to support women and their families in developing countries.

She won’t come down from the roof until she raises $1 million.  You can help. You can make a difference.  It will only cost a $1.  But don’t think of it as a cost.  Think of it as investment into the greater good of mankind with the spirit of credit unions and “people helping people”.  

Carol simply asks that you donate $1 to the Fabric of Life Foundation, and accompany that donation with a small act of kindness.

Click here to read some of the amazing success stories from the work Carol and her foundation have already done.

You can help. Donate a dollar. Spread the word.

1.    Donate a dollar (or lots of dollars if you would like), and perform a small act of kindness in “your world”.

2.    Spread the word and tweet what you did with your one small act, along with this link to Carol’s site http://bit.ly/qQaec and the hashtag #imupontheroof.

For example: Hooked the office up with @starbucks today because I love my team and they do great things http://bit.ly/qQaec #imupontheroof

3.    Simple “free” idea: Change your Twitter location to “Up on the roof with Carol.”

By using the hashtag #imupontheroof, we can all follow along and “be on the roof” with Carol.  She is online “up there” and will be reading your tweets, thoughts, blog post and comments.

Help spread the word and encourage everyone you can to do the same by emailing, tweeting, blogging, texting, Facebooking, MySpacing, YouTubing and any other “ings” you can think of.  
Together, we can make a difference and bring Carol down from the roof.

Shout Out to Carol

• Carol is on Twitter as @schillios.
• She’s also on Facebook.
• Her blog is upontheroofwithcarol.org

Building the Business Case for Social Media - Come on in, the water's fine

My venture into social media began a little over a year ago as a result of a conversation with two young men before they were about to do a presentation at Southwest CUNA Management School (SCMS) for alumni and students. The students had arranged for the presentation about the basics of social media. At the time this was all new to me and I wasn't ready to embrace any of it. However, James Robert Lay and Brad Garland impressed me. They were young, professional, passionate, and communicated well. It wasn't even the presentation that got my attention. It was how they approached business. Since then they have both become treasured friends and mentors.

One of the lessons I was reminded of when visiting with James Robert and Brad was to invest time in getting to know professionals outside of your own generation and beyond existing customer/member and vendor relationships. As relationships grow and new ones are formed, when we are looking for them, there are numerous opportunities to learn from each other. Collaborations can be a driving force to help position forward.

James Robert coached me through basics of blogging, eventually opening the door for me to blog on this site. As with most social media tools, the advice was to observe first. See how the media is used. Find blogs that interest you. Participate by commenting. Submit guest blogs. Learn how to stand up. Walk. Run. You decide each step of the way how quickly you want to progress.

I was introduced to RSS feeds. Cool. They saved me time by organizing blogs with information that was of interest to me directly into files in my Outlook. Now, when I have time, I can quickly review information, looking for new ideas and innovative approaches. To position forward we need to be finding new ways to do business.

LinkedIn is still my favorite, though this one seems to be more difficult to get folks to "buy into". To me it's more professional. One of the challenges is for folks who ventured into LinkedIn when it was primarily a HR recruiting/job hunting communication tool. They tend to think, been there, done that, tool has no value. It has evolved beyond it's HR/Job function, though it still has elements related to that. I like the ease of sharing news and starting/following discussions. I much prefer following a discussion here as opposed to weeding through email or twitter strings.

Facebook. Twitter. Waiste of time? Why bother? To maintain and grow market share, as well as position forward, we need to reach people beyond our traditional market(s) and contacts.

Before SCMS began this summer, I had just started to explore Twitter as a communication tool. During some idea generating sessions we used Twitter for live comments. As the process evolved, we realized that Twitter had power to bring expertise immediately into the conversation or to share "back home". No travel. No expense. Real time.  We had strategic "experts" join our classroom conversation from New York, Washington D.C., and California. The experts gained new ideas. Credit union employees were able to be part of the conversation, gaining insights, without leaving the office. All players won.

Recently Brad posted a twitter offering to help on projects. I took him up on his offer with a simple request for him, but something that would have taken me time to figure out. I wanted to sync twitter with facebook and had not spent the time to figure out how to do it. He made it happen with a few key strokes and I was off and running.

This morning I posted on Twitter that I was looking for ways to help folks see the business case for social media. Darrell Bahr picked up my message on facebook, sending me the following reply:

"Need case studies/examples. CU people are largely numbers people, so they need something tangible and proven/tested before they will try something so "radical". A few places to look:

Link 1

 

Link 2

 

Yes, I could keep going on. This just scratches the surface. But another lesson learned, you have to manage time. My other duties are screaming at me. 

 

Care to share ways to show the business value of various social media tools? I'm all eyes and ears - shout back.