The Importance of Placekeeping — And Why it Matters for Credit Unions
When I travel, I’m always on the lookout for the things that capture the spirit of a place—the big and little differences that tell me I’m in Milwaukee not Memphis, Seattle not St. Louis. Amidst the swirl of Starbucks, Targets, and Home Depots, finding that vibe can sometimes be a challenge—like you’re simultaneously both anywhere and nowhere.
But get away from the deserts of big box stores and fast food, not to mention the carefully curated tourist destinations, and you’ll likely discover the true soul of the community and a unique sense of place.
I’ve been thinking about the importance of place more in recent years, especially as so much of our lives has moved online. Before Covid, when my company PixelSpoke still had a physical office, I used to bike downtown to work four or five days a week. The commute was time-consuming, sometimes stressful, and in the drizzly Pacific Northwest, often rather damp.
To be honest, it’s hard to imagine returning to my pre-Covid life, and as a busy working parent, I’m grateful that my commute is now a 10-second walk downstairs. But amidst all the hype around remote work, I sometimes fear we’ve lost sight of the importance of place. When I worked downtown, not only did I feel connected to the heart of my city, but I felt more connected to the coworkers with whom I shared desk space for hours a day.
The intention that PixelSpoke has put into building a thriving remote culture proves that it is possible to foster connection digitally, but it’s also important to acknowledge that it’s not quite the same. There is a certain magic to sharing physical space with other people. We’re more present with them, more attuned to our surroundings, and more aware of our shared experience.
As Ed McMahon, the chairman emeritus of Main Street America and a Senior Fellow at the Urban Land Institute, said in his article, Main Spotlight: The Importance of Place:
“Place is more than just a location or a spot on a map. A sense of place is a unique collection of qualities and characteristics—visual, cultural, natural, and social—that provide meaning to a location. Sense of place is what makes one location (e.g. your hometown) different from another location (e.g. my hometown), but sense of place is also that which makes our physical environment valuable and worth caring about.”
Furthermore, McMahon stresses we shouldn’t focus just on creating interesting spaces—as public planners have done with the Highline in New York or Millennium Park in Chicago—we should also prioritize placekeeping. This means not only caring for and maintaining the buildings and landscapes of a place but striving to preserve social memories and support residents’ way of life.
What does placekeeping have to do with credit unions and credit union marketing? Quite a lot, actually. After all, credit unions are deeply committed to supporting and celebrating their local communities. A sense of place is in their DNA. And despite all the hype in recent years about fintech and the “death of branches,” credit unions are still investing in their physical locations.
If you serve a specific region, how are you contributing to a sense of place? Here are four key questions to consider:
How are you supporting local businesses?
Small local businesses play a foundational role in our communities. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 99.9% of U.S. companies fall into this category, which the SBA defines as independent businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Small businesses are engines for growth, with 63% of new jobs created by small businesses from 1995 to 2021.
With Americans filing 5.5 million new business applications in 2023, credit unions have plenty of opportunity to provide loans and services—and the system is paying attention. According to Jack Henry’s 2024 Strategy Benchmark, 62% of credit unions planned to expand their business services in the next two years.
Serving individual existing small businesses is great, but perhaps even more important is thinking about the businesses that a community lacks—and the needs that subsequently aren’t being met. One great example is HOPE Credit Union’s Healthy Food Financing. In response to a startling drop in grocery store access in small towns and cities and low-income urban areas in the Deep South, Hope CU financed 12 healthy food projects, directly invested $16.8 million, and leveraged $44 million.
In a prior episode of The Remarkable Credit Union podcast, How a Deposit Account Can Transform an Underserved Community, we spoke with Kathy Saloy of Hope Credit Union, who shared that Hope has always focused on expanding access and capital to underserved entrepreneurs as a way to close the racial wealth gap. Their focus on healthy food financing is one way they are holistically assessing the needs of their communities and working to address problems that improve collective well-being.
What role do you play in community events?
Every community has “you can’t find this anywhere else” events that create a sense of togetherness and pride—and often generate a healthy income stream. What is your credit union doing to ensure these events take place? While sponsorships are certainly appreciated and critical to event success, volunteering to organize and run the events takes placekeeping support to the next level.
Citizens Bank’s Heard on Hurd street fair in Edmond, Oklahoma is a case study in community support. Every third Saturday from March to October, community members and visitors can enjoy entertainment, activities, live music, and delicious food and drink from local vendors. Over its 12-year history the event has generated $65 million in economic impact, attracted over one million attendees, and provided opportunity for more than 2000 vendors. And Citizens didn’t simply make a donation or send a few volunteers—they actually created and continue to manage this incredibly popular and successful event.
We had the chance to host Citizen’s CEO Jill Castilla on our podcast episode, How to Turn Around a Struggling Community Bank, and we learned that Castilla and her team started the event as a way to turn around her bank’s reputation. “We had no expectations to what we would result from it, monetarily,” stressed Castilla. “We just said, we want to build our community. We’re gonna invest in our community, and what comes from it, we’re hoping is goodness. We’re not looking for it to produce loans, or deposits. We want it to just be goodness, and we wanted to create excitement about this area where our bank is located, we want people to invest in this area of town. It doesn’t matter if they bank with us or not, we just want good things to happen here.”
To Castilla’s surprise, this approach led to people coming to Citizens in droves. “If we had just said we were going to do this event so we could get ten million dollars in loans, we would’ve lost all that magic,” said Castilla. “We would’ve lost out on all those additional benefits that come from something really happening organically. I think that can really happen when you really have good intentions, that you’re really present, that you’re really trying to meet a need that exists, and you’re doing it based upon the customers needs, or the community’s needs, and not your own.”
Another example is Abilene Teachers FCU's 325 Day. Abilene Teachers started this event in 2021, which takes place every year on March 25 as a nod to the city’s area code. The credit union saw this as a way for residents to show their pride in Abilene while supporting local businesses and promoting economic growth. According to the local chamber of commerce, each dollar spent in the community generates up to $7.00 in value over time, making 325 Day an invaluable opportunity for the city. More than 100 Abilene businesses participated in the 2024 event.
How are you contributing to a sense of place in residential neighborhoods?
Credit unions have long had a reputation for affordable, flexible mortgages—and that’s fantastic of course. But what else could your credit union do to support home ownership in your community, especially in this era of high interest rates, skyrocketing home prices, and a shortage of affordable housing?
The Self-Help Walltown project in Durham, North Carolina is the perfect place to look for inspiration. The program launched in 1994 in partnership with Duke University. Walltown is a neighborhood in Durham that had long struggled with economic and physical decline. Over a 10-year period, Self-Help built or rehabbed 77 affordable homes that were made available for low-income families. The neighborhood has seen a dramatic drop in crime, and increased homeownership rates and property values.
In a 2023 podcast episode of The Remarkable Credit Union, How Self-Help Credit Union Helps Communities Help Themselves, Self-Help President Randy Chambers talks about how ownership increases our investment in a sense of place. “When people own a home,” he says, “they get to think, okay, what sort of flowers do I want to plant? Or I’m not a florist, I’m going to dig the yard up and put a sculpture in it, whatever you want to do. You can paint the walls your favorite color. So there’s a certain part of ownership that is pride and investing in something that you control.”
Much like Hope Credit Union’s healthy food financing project, the power of the Walltown project lies in its community focus. This wasn’t just about giving mortgages to individual families; rather it was about cultivating an ownership mentality for an entire community.
How can we bring a sense of place online?
Placekeeping is absolutely about real, physical spaces, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reinforce a sense of place online. Look for ways to highlight the local landmarks, events, and people on your website to every interaction your credit union has with members, prospects, and the larger community. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Use place-centered images and copy with digital channels: Instead of relying on “you-could-be-anywhere” stock photos and verbiage on your website and other digital tools, tie them back to your location. Check out the distinct Pacific Northwest ambiance and vibe of Trailhead Credit Union’s website here.
- Look for unexpected opportunities for connection and delight in your mobile apps and digital tools: To offer another example from the Pacific Northwest, whenever I log into my credit union OnPoint’s online or mobile banking system, I’m greeted with an image of a trail winding through a lush evergreen forest as I wait for my account to load.
- Showcase community members: As we stressed in our January 16th post (Is anyone actually reading our credit union blog?), putting the focus on local people—whether employees, members, or local community groups—is a powerful way to celebrate place and create a sense of belonging.
Let me close with some more words of wisdom from Ed McMahon:
“These places and traditions are invested with rich symbolic importance that contribute to our identity and sense of belonging in a way no less fundamental than religion, language, or culture. In ancient Rome, there was a maxim that said that ‘cities should preserve the visible symbols of their identity to give citizens a sense of security in a dangerous world.’”
More than 2,000 years later, there’s still value to honoring that sentiment.
This article originally appeared on CUInsight.
