Churches Open Credit Unions to Help Poor

Sept. 10 -- All churches want to save their parishioners' souls. The Church of God Credit Union wants to save their money, too.

"Sometimes people of the congregation needed financial help as well as spiritual help," explains LeAne Cloud, president of the Wichita, Kan.-based institution.

The Church of God Credit Union is one of a growing number of faith-based credit unions around the country, created to help members and people in need. There are roughly 500 around the nation, set up in church basements and donated office space, and staffed mostly by volunteers. Most, but not all, are affiliated with churches in low-income neighborhoods.

Faith-based credit unions are run independently of their parent churches, however, and are federally chartered and monitored just like thousands of other, more traditional, credit unions. As a group, they have more than $2 billion in assets.

They represent a variety of faiths and denominations, including Protestant, Catholic and Muslim, officials with the National Credit Union Administration say.

With new regulations and support from the Bush administration, faith-based credit unions are set to go forth and multiply. Several have recently begun offering services to people outside the church's community.

Part of the Mission to Help Poor and Needy

Some faith-based credit unions are set up primarily to help members invest their money according to their religious values, but most see their financial services as an extension of their ministry's efforts to help the poor and needy.

"We were started in the church and we go by Christian principles of helping people who need our help," says Rita Haynes, the treasurer and manager of Cleveland's 50-year-old Faith Community United Credit Union, one of the oldest faith-based credit unions the country.

Even today, with 4,000 members, the credit union has only five paid employees.

"There are a lot of folks out there getting ripped off," agrees Shiloh of Alexandria Federal Credit Union officer John Dupree Jr., citing the glut of check-cashing shops and pawnbrokers in the low-income Parker Gray neighborhood of Alexandria, Va., where his 900-member church is based.