Beyond Crisis Response: How One Credit Union Proactively Cultivates Joy

Between natural disasters, economic volatility, and political chaos, there is a lot to respond to these days. It’s important for credit unions to create contingency plans and prepare for crisis. It’s equally important to escape the reactivity trap by proactively creating opportunities for joy and connection.

That’s precisely what Abilene Teachers Federal Credit Union has done with 325 Day, an event with a name that refers both to its date and the credit union’s local area code. The idea is to celebrate local businesses, gather community members, and most importantly, have fun!

This month, we’re joined by Abilene Teacher FCU’s Community Development Officer, Elizabeth Gray, and Marketing Director, Kathy Mayer, to talk about the evolution of the event and its growing impact. We also address this month’s BIG question:

During an era when so much is moving online, why is a sense of place still important and how does your credit union benefit by bringing people together in real life?

Key takeaways

• If you’re going to spearhead a community event like this, do it for the sake of doing it, not in service of a specific marketing or business development goal. When it comes from a place of authenticity, people can tell, and this generates good will that will provide lasting benefits to your credit union, even if you can’t necessarily quantify these benefits in a PPT deck. 
  
  
• Credit unions should think about how to be proactive when it comes to creating opportunities for joy and connection. There are unfortunately an increasing number of opportunities to react to disasters and tragedies. 325 Day intentionally sets aside space and time to simply celebrate community simply for the sake of celebration.  
  
  
• It's important to think about how you can bring a sense of place to your digital presence. This was a driving goal of Abilene Teachers FCU's website redesign, not only in the photography but even in the color scheme and general look and feel of the site. This is generally an untapped opportunity for credit unions, and it doesn't require a lot of resources. 

Resources & links:

• Abilene Teachers Federal Credit Union
• 325 Day
• Citizen Bank of Edmond's Heard on Hurd
• Abilene Chamber of Commerce Red Coat Ambassadors

Read transcript:

Katie Stone:
Welcome to another episode of The Remarkable Credit Union Podcast. We created our podcast to help credit union leaders think outside of the box about marketing, technology, and community impact. The remarkable Credit union is brought to you by PixelSpoke, a digital marketing agency that works with credit unions to create user-friendly, high-converting, award-winning websites. As a B Corp and an employee-owned cooperative, we believe that business can and should be a force for good.

Each episode we bring on expert guests from the credit union and broader cooperative movement for conversations about the intersection of marketing and social impact. Our goal is to challenge your preconceptions about business as usual, and provide you with actionable takeaways that you can use to grow your membership, improve the financial health of your cooperative and better serve your community. I'm Katie Stone, CEO, and co-owner at PixelSpoke.

Kerala Taylor:
And I'm Kerala Taylor, the director of Marketing and Impact, and also a co-owner here at PixelSpoke. And today we are excited to tackle this month's big question, which is during an era when so much is moving online, why is a sense of place still important and how does your credit union benefit by bringing people together in real life? So to help us answer this question today, we're very excited to welcome Elizabeth Gray and Kathy Mayer and full disclosure, they're both well-loved PixelSpoke clients as well, who have been working with us for a number of years. And Elizabeth has worked for Abilene Teachers Federal Credit Union for over 14 years. She currently serves as its community development officer and she's also attending Southwest CUNA Management School. When she's not working, she enjoys reading and drinking wine with her friends, which both sounds lovely. She'll be celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary and her youngest child is about to graduate from high school. Both pretty big milestones. Welcome Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Gray:
Thank you.

Kerala Taylor:
And we're also joined by Kathy, who is the director of marketing at Abilene. And if you thought 14 years was impressive, she has been with the credit union for over 20. The fun fact about Kathy, she was a remote employee before it was even cool. She started working at Abilene Teachers in 2004 and then in 2009 she moved to Lubbock, Texas when her husband was elected as a bishop in the Episcopal church and they set her up remotely, which was way before most people were working virtually. And she also has a serious addiction to Diet Coke. Thank you for joining us, Kathy.

Kathy Mayer:
Thank you.

Kerala Taylor:
This first question could be for either of you or both of you, but I know Texas is a huge state. I've only been to one city, so I have a lot more to explore in the state. And I'm just curious if you could start by talking a bit about the region you serve now. How would you describe your membership and what is special or noteworthy about your particular corner of Texas?

Kathy Mayer:
Well, this is Kathy. We live and work in West Texas. That is the part of Texas that's not growing because we are arid and there is not enough water in our area to support a large population. When you think about oil wells and cattle, that's where we live. Abilene, and I want to say we're isolated in that everything is two and a half hours away. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is two and a half hours away. The Lubbock is two and a half hours away. Midland, if you want to get into the very center of oil production is two and a half hours away. It's an interesting area. It's a grown-up railroad town.

Now that I've given you the back points, I'll tell you we also have three universities, at least three graduate schools, one college and cultural opportunities here that hunch way above our weight. It is an interesting place. It has benefited from philanthropists that have had the community needs at heart and even though people today may not recognize the names of those philanthropists, they have laid the groundwork for a cohesive community and we're not quite in the middle of nowhere, but on the way to the middle of nowhere.

Kerala Taylor:
That's really helpful. Elizabeth, I'm curious, what do you love about your region?

Elizabeth Gray:
I really like it because we aren't very far from, if we want to go to the Metroplex you can do a day trip, but I still live in a small big town or a big small town. I enjoy getting from one side to the other in 15 minutes and I enjoy seeing people I know out and about all the time. So there's definitely a homeliness and friendliness here in Abilene. And then if you want to go to a theme park or go to a professional sports game, football or baseball, it's just two and a half hours away, so it's not a huge deal to drive there. So I love where I live for sure.

Kathy Mayer:
I probably should have led off by telling you our population, which is, I just looked it up today, that's 129,000. We've grown 4,000 in the last five years, so it's a stable population. We serve a 16 county service area. Most of that is very rural and the population of that service area is 180,000 and that has not changed in the 21 years that I've been working.

Katie Stone:
Wow.

Kathy Mayer:
Oh, wow.

Katie Stone:
When you described it reminded me a little bit of Portland, obviously Portland where I lived-

Kerala Taylor:
I was going to say that, yeah.

Katie Stone:
Yeah, it's a bigger metro area, but a lot of the things you described are what I love about it, just having that small town feel, but easy access to a lot of big town resources. So I can relate a lot to what you're saying. Well, we're here to mostly talk today about 325 Day, and I love this name. It's a name that refers both to the date of the event, March 25th and also your local area code. I don't know, I guess I'm just really a sucker for clever double meanings like that. So I really love this. So we know it's really common for credit unions to sponsor or volunteer at community events, but this is a little different because it's actually a civic initiative that your credit union brought to [inaudible 00:06:52]. So I'd love it if you could share just a little bit more about how this idea came about and what the credit union initially hoped to accomplish when you launched this endeavor.

Kathy Mayer:
Well, I was a one-person marketing department until Elizabeth came to work with me in 2019, which you'll note was just in time for the pandemic.

Kerala Taylor:
Fun times.

Kathy Mayer:
Kerala knows this. We spent the next year practically putting a new website together, doing all the writing and choosing the photographs and having photo contests. And so we had that in 2020 and then in 2021, you probably didn't hear about it up in the northwest, but Texas had a terrible, we call it the snowpocalypse. Everybody lost our heat, we lost our water. In our little county we had seven people die of freezing to death and then more than a hundred in Texas, and it was just desolate. We lost our landscaping out here and Elizabeth and I had been charged with being the morale officers for the credit union during the pandemic, and we're sitting around with everybody else being depressed in February.
And I said, "Man, I said, March is we can have 325 Day." That was our area code. It would be spring. Again, I grew up in El Paso, Texas and I knew they have 915 Day out there, which is their area code and used to be the area code here. So it was an evolution. So I was lucky enough to come up with the idea. Elizabeth is the one that has put legs on it and made it walk.

Elizabeth Gray:
Yeah, I think Kathy and I self-imposed ourselves the morale stars of the credit union. No one else would do it, cared, and we did not want to be miserable all the time, but it was so cold and I believe Kathy and I would, so that snow began in, or the snowpocalypse happened in February of 2021 and we were talking the first part of March, just trying to come up with some new things and we were doing things internally for our employees but then also for the community and our members as a whole. So that's when Kathy had said, "El Paso does 915 Day, so maybe we could do something for 325 Day." And I was like, "Okay." Then she was like, "And do it."

I tried to research. There really wasn't a whole lot to find out about what El Paso does, so there wasn't a whole lot to go off of. And so we did a social media campaign and asked people why they liked living in the 325 or what they loved the most about the 325. And I went and bought a bunch of gift cards to local businesses that were struggling during that time. We had done a lot of restaurant giveaways for all during 2020. We would go buy gift cards just trying to support the business owners and do something fun for our members and community members. And so we picked winners out of that, and that was the first year that we did 325 Day. I don't know if we at the time thought about it continuing or that was just we were going to do it that year.

But then I guess a few months later, I was having lunch with the Chamber of Commerce here and talking to them about some of the financial education things that I do out in the community, and I just mentioned that we had done this 325 Day-

Kathy Mayer:
Give back.

Elizabeth Gray:
Campaign or whatever, and they were like, "Oh my gosh, that's so awesome. We should do more of that." So the next year, by that point, we had its own website, its own social media accounts and opened it up to the public for businesses to sign up to have their own take on 325 Day. It worked out really well the first two years because the first year that we opened it up to the community, it was a Friday and the next one was a Saturday. So it was great.

Kathy Mayer:
That's true.

Elizabeth Gray:
The credit union, we paid to have live music downtown and it was a lot of fun and I'm glad that it started on the weekend 'cause I think it would've been a little bit harder to take off if it was during the week, but we had so many businesses signed up to do a $3 and 25 cent margarita for that day.

Katie Stone:
Oh, nice.

Elizabeth Gray:
Or menu item. Boutiques have done buy three for $25 or buy three and get 25% off or I mean just anything, 32 and a half percent off people have done. And then a lot of places that don't have storefronts or one of my good friends that I do, he helps me a lot with my financial education stuff volunteers, he owns his own insurance agency, and so he's not selling insurance on 325 Day, but he just gives away $25 gift cards. He does some drawings on his social media for that. So people have gotten involved even if they don't have necessarily something to sell, but just wanting to be a part of the celebration. So it's a lot of fun.

Kathy Mayer:
I think for that particular year, that second year, we had just installed a new set of eight ATMs at one of our big drive-through branches and our competition was that anybody that made a transaction on the ATMs at that location that day by 3:25 in the afternoon would be entered into a drawing for $325.

Katie Stone:
Oh, I love that.

Kerala Taylor:
That is so much fun. You guys are so creative.

Elizabeth Gray:
Well, this year it's even, I'm excited because we've done that in the past of doing just cash giveaways or whatever for one reason or another. But this year we created a bingo card, but the bingo card, and it says things like eat at a participating business, share the 325 Day Facebook, take a picture in front of an art statue. We have a lot of art and murals here in town. Go to support live music. But people, once they get a bingo, they can turn it into the credit union and they don't have to be a member. It's just anybody can do it, and then we're going to draw winners for the bingo. So I think that is just a good incentive to get people out and utilizing the things that businesses are signing up and how they're participating. So I think it's going to be fun.

Kathy Mayer:
And additionally, this is not just 325 Day this year. This is 325 Month, because this is March 2025.

Kerala Taylor:
You're right. I didn't even think about that.

Kathy Mayer:
So it's like 325 squared, but truly we're not going to do that because we still have a lot of people going, why did you name it 325 Day?

Elizabeth Gray:
Yeah, we still have to explain sometimes what day 325 Day is. So we have a lot of businesses. I think so far today we are at about 70 businesses have signed up so far, and some of them are participating all month long. They're doing things and then others are still just doing on 325 Day they're doing their special on that day. So there are certain places you can go to all month long and enjoy the discounts, and then there's places that you can go on that day to participate.

Kathy Mayer:
And last year it was on a Monday, which we were dreading frankly because a lot of small businesses are closed on Mondays.

Katie Stone:
Yeah, that's true.

Kathy Mayer:
But some of our key businesses opened up, especially for the event, and one of them, the winery, which makes wine-

Elizabeth Gray:
Which I frequent.

Kathy Mayer:
She's on their coupon program. They opened up and brought food trucks out there and had vendors that wanted to just set up card tables and they made room for them too. And that was fantastic. And they had live music too, and their food trucks sold out even though that was a Monday and it was a fun event. It was packed.

Katie Stone:
This is just such an incredible story of really bringing a community together. I don't know, Kerala, we should make a trip down to Abilene for 325 Month.

Kerala Taylor:
Sounds like so much fun.

Kathy Mayer:
You can write it off.

Kerala Taylor:
It sounds like your credit union invests quite a bit into this day. Do you feel like, I mean, Kathy, with your marketing director hat on, do you feel like there are benefits to your credit union? I imagine you're not out there measuring ROI or anything like that, but I mean, how would you say it's helped your credit union?

Kathy Mayer:
It has definitely publicized the credit union too. And a lot of these business owners, they may have their business account somewhere else, but they have their personal accounts here and they talk. And gosh, for the last 10 years, one of our strategic goals has been to raise our profile in the community and this fulfills that goal. And no, there is no ROI or negative ROI because we're just putting in, not getting out. But the potential to add business banking by regulation, you'd have to have some experienced business lenders and we don't have any. We would have to be importing them from our competitors or hiring from outside. So we have no expertise either. And it'll come eventually, but it's not here now.

Kerala Taylor:
Well, I love that. We talked to someone many years ago on the podcast from Citizens Bank of Edmond in Oklahoma, and she does a monthly street fair called Herd on Herd, and it just sounds so similar. She said if we had gone into this with a goal of having X number of businesses apply for loans, we might've reached that goal, but it would've been a completely different event. We just went into it to have fun and to build goodwill and the returns just keep on coming as far as brand reputation in the community.

Elizabeth Gray:
Yeah, I think on that note, really this is the first year that we have even put our logo on our stuff. Now on the website, it's always said that the Credit Union started this initiative, but on any of our posts, on the billboards, on anything, we've never put the Credit Union's logo on it because I think for the first several years we didn't want people to think they have to be a member of the Credit Union to participate or that if they are with the larger financial institution in town, well then they can't do this because it's Abilene Teacher's thing.

And so this is the first year that we've put our name on it, which I think is good now, especially if there's a chance that the Chamber does want to partner more in a partnership way. I know they're going to want their name on it. So we were like, okay, well then we better put our name on it first. But it wasn't necessarily for the recognition so much for us, and that's still not the goal, yet it is good brand recognition and just doing stuff for the community that literally does not benefit our bottom line at all. It's solely just a community outreach.

Kerala Taylor:
And from a community development standpoint, Elizabeth, what kind of feedback have you gotten from people who just attend and participate and from businesses? How do you feel like it's impacting the community?

Elizabeth Gray:
I definitely know that I think the people that get out and participate have a lot of fun that day. There's actually one couple that I know that their anniversary is March 25th, and so they go to as many places as they can that day and they post pictures on all of them, they're like, "Look, they're celebrating our anniversary too." And we gave them 325 Day T-shirts 'cause we have them for all the employees and we gave them T-shirts so they wear around town. And then as far as the business owner, like Kathy said at the winery, they are slammed that whole day. They shortened their hours of operation. Now they're only open Thursday through Saturday, but they opened Monday and they're opening on Tuesday, and they'll be packed the whole time, not including who they bring in and they'll sell out of their things. So I know that it is beneficial to them.

I know that there may be some businesses that it's not as beneficial on the bottom line, but even just getting their name out there. I was talking to the lady in the mall yesterday who this will be her one-year anniversary, and she said that she felt like last year her participating in 325 Day gave her more recognition. She had more business from that and people seeing her participating in 325 Day than stuff that she's had to pay for and advertisement and stuff. And so I think that's why she's so excited to participate again. And she even moved storefronts into a bigger one because she's been super busy and been able to grow. And I know that's not all due to 325 Day, but just she kept telling me just the advertisement, even though it wasn't on TV, just on the social media, people sharing it, she saw more value in that than what she's paid thousands of dollars for in the past and not seeing much any return on that.

Kerala Taylor:
I think you need to get a testimonial from her. That's a great [inaudible 00:21:51]-

Elizabeth Gray:
I know, I do. She's one of our ambassadors for free.

Katie Stone:
I'm sure some of our listeners are curious. First of all, I bet they're feeling really inspired. I know I am. So for those credit unions that want to go out there and are thinking about spearheading an event in their community, what advice do you have for them?

Elizabeth Gray:
I would say for me, I know it was beneficial in my role to do this and open it up to the public because I was attending those Chamber events and meeting business owners and being out in the community. I think it would have been harder for me if I went from the teller line to now I'm going to just start this community-wide thing. So knowing people and getting them on board, because I have so many people that they spread the word just as much as I do, and they don't work for the Credit Union, but they're so excited about it. So I think just utilizing those relationships that you have within your community and them spreading the word to the people that they know, that's been probably the most beneficial thing for us.

Kathy Mayer:
Elizabeth is on the Redcoats at the Chamber of Commerce, and this is the group that goes to grand openings and reopenings and anniversaries. And so she's meeting small businesses every time she does this.

Elizabeth Gray:
And especially starting in February, I'll start carrying around our 325 Day rack cards. And so if I go in a place or we ate at a restaurant earlier this week and I just left the rack cards on the table or with the hostess, or we would love for you to participate. So it's not always about, I don't meet with businesses individually, asking them to participate. It's more of just, I'm in here and I am buying your stuff and here's this for if you want to participate. It's a little bit easier than to just be like, "Oh, can I have a meeting with you to talk about this?" It's a little more personal, I guess.

Kathy Mayer:
And that has worked for us, thankfully. If anyone's inspired and they can get their Chamber online, that is just key. I mean, those are the people that belong to the Chamber is the small local businesses.

Kerala Taylor:
Absolutely. So I just love hearing stories about people out in their communities, meeting with people in real life. We need more of that in our world today, I think. But I am going to talk about websites for a little bit because I just love the way that you were able to bring a sense of place online. I think the financial services industry is a bit infamous for, I mean, there's a lot of cheesy stock photography out there in general, but I feel like it's so prevalent on bank websites and yes, credit union websites, and when you go to your website, it feels unique. And I've never been to Abilene, I've never been to the other counties you serve, but I really get a sense of the place. So I'm curious, you're not a huge budget credit union. I know you didn't invest in some super fancy photo shoot or anything like that. So how did you source these photos, and what was your approach to imagery on your website?

Kathy Mayer:
This is interesting you asked because a sense of place was one of my primary drivers for this website. And Liz was probably going "What?" But it wasn't David. Dave worked with us. I mean, we have stock photos on there, but not on the landing pages and on the important most visited pages. We had a photo contest. We asked any residents in town that had pictures of local landmarks to send them in, and what did we give them for a price?

Elizabeth Gray:
I think like $50 if we chose their picture. I mean, not billions of dollars or anything.

Kathy Mayer:
And the publicity because they're credited on the page. We did source from some professional photographers from some of them, not a lot.

Elizabeth Gray:
That already had these images. We just bought a few. Most of them are from the photo contest though.

Kathy Mayer:
And the Abilene Cultural Affairs Council gave us entree into their media library too. And so we got a couple of them from there. We're excited now because we have a staff member that's a photographer and she's good, and we're going to, because those are now getting five years old, and that little boy in his giraffe costume is probably playing football now, but it's ageless as far as the website goes.

Kerala Taylor:
Yeah, I just love it because I think that it seems daunting to not just go straight to Adobe stock photos and there are decent stock photos out there. We actually recently launched a site where we were really intentional with the team about selecting which stock photos, and I think that's a pretty special looking site too. So not trying to throw too much shade at stock photos, but I do think that it's way more about intention than resources. Like you said, Kathy, you really wanted to have the sense of place on the website and I would say you succeeded.

Kathy Mayer:
And I even said out here, it's not a beautiful place. We have a beautiful sky and we have beautiful sunsets and we have the dirt. And so can we reflect those colors, the clay, the sky, the grass that grows two months a year. So that helps set the photography scheme too.

Kerala Taylor:
I love it.

Katie Stone:
Well, Kerala is not kidding when she says, we talk about your site a lot. We do use it as a great example of excellent photography, so. All right, well we have some rapid fire questions for both of you. My first question is what is your favorite movie? And Kathy, why don't we start with you for this first one.

Kathy Mayer:
Well, right now my favorite movie's Wicked.

Katie Stone:
Love it. How about you Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Gray:
Oh, gosh. I probably don't have a favorite movie, but I do love Dirty Dancing and Grease.

Katie Stone:
Yeah, classics. Good choices.

Elizabeth Gray:
Yes, I love their soundtracks. That may be even more of why those are my favorite 'cause I could sing all day long.

Kathy Mayer:
Wait a minute, Greatest Showman.

Elizabeth Gray:
Oh, yeah. The Greatest Showman movie for the music.

Katie Stone:
Very good. All right, how about your favorite meal? And why don't we go Elizabeth first this time?

Elizabeth Gray:
I love tacos. I mean, I will wake up in the mornings, that's what I want for breakfast, is just a regular taco and french fries. So I told my friends when they throw me a 50th birthday party, I still have five and a half years to go, but I'm having them go ahead and think these things through.

Katie Stone:
Good plan. Good plan, yes.

Elizabeth Gray:
That I need a taco and french fry bar where you can just make all the toppings.

Katie Stone:
Yep, yep, fair enough.

Kerala Taylor:
You can't go wrong with that really.

Elizabeth Gray:
I know.

Katie Stone:
How about you Kathy?

Kathy Mayer:
It's kind of serendipitous. My favorite meal is also a healthy meal and it's grilled salmon with grilled vegetables with it. Just love it. You can't get salmon a lot down here.

Katie Stone:
Yeah, yeah. Well that is a healthy choice.

Kathy Mayer:
I also like fish tacos. Okay. Those are healthy too.

Kerala Taylor:
That's [inaudible 00:29:47].

Katie Stone:
I think more importantly, I'm curious what wine you would pair with your fish tacos.

Kathy Mayer:
Oh gosh, I don't know anything about wine pairing. Okay. I just drink it.

Katie Stone:
You just drink the wine.

Elizabeth Gray:
I need the professional to tell me what to pair.

Katie Stone:
Fair enough.

Elizabeth Gray:
Let's be honest, I would pair a margarita with my tacos.

Katie Stone:
Margaritas are probably my favorite kind of wine, so that makes sense.

Elizabeth Gray:
Yes, mine too. That is my drink of choice. It's just since we always go to the winery, they don't have margaritas there.

Katie Stone:
All right.

Kerala Taylor:
New business opportunity.

Katie Stone:
That's true. Kathy, how about a place you'd like to visit that you've never visited so far?

Kathy Mayer:
That was the easiest question on here and it's New Zealand and Australia where my associate just returned. This was my bucket list item and she went.

Katie Stone:
All right, well Elizabeth, you can't choose that. So what's a place you would like to visit that you haven't?

Elizabeth Gray:
I want to go to either Fiji or Bora Bora.

Katie Stone:
Good choices.

Kerala Taylor:
All right, well now it's time for our final take. And just as a reminder for our listeners, our big question today was during an era when so much is moving online, why is a sense of place still important and how does your credit union benefit by bringing people together in real life or IRL as my kids would say? So in just a few sentences, can each of you summarize your thoughts on this question? You want to go first?

Kathy Mayer:
I think there's still a bit of frontier mentality out here. Make your own way, do your own thing. Sometimes that gets overbearing, but it's important in a place out here. We've been seeing some actual, before Covid, there was not much moving in and out, but with Covid and with now these three graduate schools, which are mostly nursing, pharmacy, public health, we're seeing a lot of circulation in and out of Abilene and some new ideas. But you do get a sense when you're here of place. This place has been here a long time and was started by, well, not started by, it was probably started by railroad engineers, but they were fortunate to have people from the very beginning that took an interest in how it grew and that it was just not a slipshod thing. And you could tell when you come here.

And I just think to honor that and to let these people become acquainted, even if they're only going to be here for school for three years, maybe sometime they'd like come back and maybe they would settle their family here because I'm going to tell you, this is a great place for kids to go to school and be raised. It is safe. My kids grew up at the Little League Park, then at the football stadium at the school. So the benefits are huge and we want to have people recognize that. We just presented to seven brand new employees and six of them were Abilene natives. And I could tell they were not all that thrilled about it. And so those are the people I want to just give a little shake and say, "Because this is the water you swim in, you don't recognize that it's good water."

Elizabeth Gray:
It's special.

Kathy Mayer:
And embrace it. Yes.

Kerala Taylor:
I love it.

Elizabeth Gray:
I think for me, I would say Abilene has always been really, really good about coming together in times of need or tragedy. I mean, the whole town, we're supporting each other and picking people up out of the Maury Clay and all of the things. And so that's awesome when we come together in times of need or devastation. And so for me, having 325 Day, it's like we can all come together and just have fun for fun's sake. And it's not, oh, so-and-so's house burnt down and we're trying to raise money to whatever. We just want to get out, have fun, support each other for no other reason than just support each other.

Kerala Taylor:
I often say that sometimes I feel like I only see my neighbors when there's an ice storm or a power outage or both. So I love that idea of proactively coming out and spending [inaudible 00:34:30]-

Kathy Mayer:
Yes, yes, yes.

Kerala Taylor:
Well, Kathy and Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining and offering your insights. We always have fun talking to you, but we really enjoyed this and look forward to sharing with our audience.

Kathy Mayer:
Okay. There's direct flights into Abilene from Dallas. [inaudible 00:34:48].

Kerala Taylor:
Yeah. All right, we'll paste some links in the show notes.

Elizabeth Gray:
[inaudible 00:34:52] flights to Dallas and then here.

Katie Stone:
Got it. Got it. Got it.

Kerala Taylor:
Wonderful. Okay, well thanks again.

Katie Stone:
Thank you all.

Elizabeth Gray:
Thank you.

Kathy Mayer:
Bye-bye.

Kerala Taylor:
Oh, what a fun conversation. I'm thinking about some takeaways here and I would say first off, if you're going to spearhead a community event like this, whatever form it might take, do it for the sake of doing it. Don't do it in service of a specific marketing or business development goal. I think when it comes from a place of authenticity, people can really tell, and this generates goodwill that will provide lasting benefits to your credit union, even if you can't necessarily quantify these benefits in a fancy PowerPoint deck. And as a case in point, getting new business accounts or making more business loans, as we talked about, had nothing to do with the motivation for a 325 Day because Abilene teachers at CU doesn't even offer business services. But I am willing to bet that if they do, at some point, they will have absolutely no trouble getting business members.

Secondly, I'd really encourage credit unions to think about how to be proactive when it comes to creating opportunities for joy and connection. As Elizabeth alluded to, there are unfortunately an increasing number of opportunities to react to disasters and tragedies, and there are so many inspiring examples of credit unions that are stepping in the wake of disaster. But I love how 325 Day intentionally sets aside space and time to simply celebrate the community for the sake of celebration. I think we could all use a little bit more of that in our lives.

And lastly, I'd encourage our listeners to think about how to bring a sense of place to your digital presence. Kathy mentioned that that was a driving goal of their website redesign. It wasn't only about the photography, but also about the color scheme and the general look and feel of the site. I've probably said this before, but I'm going to say it again.

This is such an untapped opportunity for credit unions and you don't need a lot of resources. In fact, I would argue that the credit unions who are generally doing the best job of this are the smaller ones or the mid-sized ones. Maybe it's because they're the ones that are most intimately connected with their surrounding communities. Well thanks for joining us again for another great episode, the Remarkable Credit Union is brought to you by PixelSpoke, a digital marketing agency that works with credit unions to create user-friendly, high-converting, award-winning websites. As a B Corp, an employee-owned cooperative, we believe that business can and should be a force for good. You can learn more and check out our work at PixelSpoke.coop. That's PixelSpoke, all one word dot C-O-O-P. Until the next time, I wish you the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable.