American and AA

Independence Day is upon us. This is day of celebration marked by fireworks and…often by excessive drinking. Be safe out there, folks. Especially those of us that still count on our fingers. This July 4, make sure to have soft drinks available and let us take a page today from Alcoholics Anonymous. AA has much more to teach us than abstinence from alcohol.

About 100 years before AA was formed, the Washingtonian Temperance Society was founded by recovering alcoholics seeking help each other stop drinking. The basic model was simple, elegant, and effective: Alcoholics Helping Alcoholics (that should ring a familiar tone for the credit union enthusiasts among us).

But the Washingtonian Temperance Society had all but disappeared within a few years.

What happened? It failed amidst infighting, sanctimony, and self-interest. The people grew sick and tired of hearing the group’s leaders fight for relevance and visibility, while twisting stories of recovery into examples of moral superiority.

A century later, Alcoholics Anonymous quietly took root. AA’s founders knew the critically important lesson that “a society composed almost entirely of promoters was frightening . . .” and self-restraint was necessary for their survival, and so AA wisely adopted the tradition of “attraction rather than promotion.”

America is attractive enough as it is.

We don’t need to sell freedom with a bullhorn and a bomb.

America draws people here by promise—and America’s arms are wide enough to hold everyone. Our Founding Fathers were about as Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive a group as could be imagined in their day—not in their demographics, but in their convictions, their regions, their faiths, and their lived experiences. They gave each other space to be heard. They listened to one another. They argued, compromised, and unified. And into that unity they stitched an extraordinarily beautiful common ideological thread: America is suspicious of concentrations of power. America admits it doesn’t always make good choices, so it gives power of change to the people. At her core, America is expansive and welcoming well beyond the imaginations and discriminations of our Founding Fathers. That is why they designed America to make space for everyone—to keep welcoming more (and more different) people into her warm embrace.

Credit unions are like America. Like Lady Liberty, we open our arms to the overlooked and underserved. Like Lady Justice, we stand firm upon the democratic principles that everyone deserves a fair and equal chance to succeed. Like the government our Founding Fathers designed, our boards of directors are not plutocrats siphoning power and money away from the people—they are volunteers, elected to represent of the interests of the membership in service to the cooperative principles.

While we must be careful to avoid the fate of the Washingtonians, credit unions can no longer rest on the policy of attraction rather than promotion. We cannot rely on the current generational wealth transfer to fuel future credit union growth. We cannot rely on our federal government to level the competitive playing field. We cannot outspend the banks on advertising.

Instead, let us leverage the ideals that created America’s attractiveness: prosperity and well-being come to those who commit themselves in service to one another. When we care for our neighbors, we improve our neighborhoods. The more people we invite into our open arms, the more our movement (and your credit union) will grow.