00;00;08;13 - 00;00;33;06

Lauren Panameno

Afternoon and happy Friday. I am Lauren Panameno and I'd like to welcome you to the 2023 Annual Meeting for Civic Federal Credit Union. We are excited to have you guys with us today. Over the next hour, we are going to be bringing you updates on your Credit Union. And after that, as always, we will have room for questions and comments I believe.

 

00;00;33;06 - 00;00;57;13

Lauren Panameno

The Board is filing in and as soon as they are set, we will have Ms. Jeanne Erwin, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors, get us started. Ms. Erwin, are you ready to begin? So welcome to the 2023 Annual Meeting for Civic Federal Credit Union. Please give a round of applause for our Chairwoman Jeanne Erwin.

 

00;01;00;24 - 00;01;27;02

Jeanne Erwin

OK. At this time, I'd like to call the fourth Annual Meeting of Civic Federal Credit Union to order. The meeting is for the members of the Credit Union who are entitled by their membership to participate in the meeting. For a point of clarity, this meeting will follow Robert's Rules of Order. Today, Mr. Ken Soo of Tharrington Smith LLP will serve as our parliamentarian.

 

00;01;28;18 - 00;01;50;09

Jeanne Erwin

A quorum of at least 15 members is required for this Annual Meeting. Seeing that we certainly have more than 15, the chair recognizes and declares a quorum for this meeting. The assistant to the secretary shall record the minutes of this meeting. We now ask board member Paul Miller to give the invocation. Paul!

 

00;01;50;16 - 00;02;28;18

Paul Miller

Thank you Jeanne. May we pray? Dear Lord, we come to this meeting of Civic today with joy and thanksgiving in our hearts. It is such an exciting time for everyone involved in the creation of a new digital Credit Union. This is truly a Credit Union that will deliver services to our members in new and exciting ways. It is a Credit Union that will be with our members 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, wherever they might be.

 

00;02;28;18 - 00;02;50;08

Paul Miller

And we have been able to see God's hand in the progress and process from day one. God has opened doors that we thought could not be opened and God has guided the Board and the staff and the leadership through the entire process. This Credit Union will improve the lives of our members and do it with new and creative ways of delivering our services.

 

00;02;50;21 - 00;03;18;06

Paul Miller

So many people and organizations have contributed to the creation of Civic, and the most important contributor has been State Employees Credit Union. The partnership between LGFCU, Civic and SECU is a wonderful example of organizations dedicating their energies to helping others. SECU has been unselfish of their support for Civic and they have stood by us throughout the entire process.

 

00;03;18;19 - 00;03;55;00

Paul Miller

This relationship has been a blessing to so many and will continue to be for years to come. 40 years from now we will look back on Civic and marvel at what was created just as we look back on LGFCU now and see what was created 40 years ago there. We pray that God will continue to bless our efforts and help us to be a viable resource to all we serve, and we will continue to seek God's help each and every day. God bless all of our members and their families. Amen.

 

00;03;57;26 - 00;04;28;01

Jeanne Erwin

Thank you, Paul, for that very inspirational invocation. The first order of business is the approval of the 2022 Meeting minutes. These minutes are available for inspection by members of the Credit Union upon proper request. The Chair will entertain a motion for approval of the minutes. Is there a second? All right we have a motion and second. All those in favor say “aye.”

 

00;04;28;08 - 00;05;23;07

Jeanne Erwin

OK. Hearing a majority in favor, the motion is approved. At this time, I would like to introduce your Civic Board members and ask that they stand as I call their names. Vice Chair Dr. Aaron Noble Jr. from Burlington. Secretary Lin Jones, Durham. Treasurer Kellie Blue, Robeson County. Ruth Barnes, Atlantic Beach. Tony Brown, Halifax County, and Paul Miller, Snow Hill. Also in attendance we have two independent directors of Local Government Federal Credit Union joining us. Please recognize Chair Ken Noland, Wilkesboro, and Vice Chair David Dear from Shelby. OK. Please give all these dedicated volunteers a round of applause.

 

00;05;26;04 - 00;05;54;12

Jeanne Erwin

The Chair's report is available in your 2022 Annual Report to membership. A link to the Annual Report has been provided on our website. At this time I would like to call on Emily Lucas for the Supervisory Committee Report.

 

00;05;54;25 - 00;06;55;23

Emily Lucas

Thank you, Jeanne, and good afternoon members. On behalf of the Supervisory Committee, it is a pleasure to present this report for the Annual Meeting of Civic Federal Credit Union. It is the duty of the Supervisory Committee to ensure that all financial records present fairly the operations of the Credit Union and that procedures and practices are sound, thereby protecting members’ deposits and rights. In accordance with the National Credit Union Administration requirements, other Supervisory Committee Audit NCUA Section 715.7, the Committee approved the required audit be completed by the Audit Services Department, which is a part of the internal audit function available to Civic. The audit found that the financial statements fairly presented the financial position of Civic, accounting practices and procedures are sound and the system of internal controls is effective for the year reviewed.

 

00;06;56;25 - 00;07;27;25

Emily Lucas

Additionally, to conform with the accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America, Civic is classified as a variable interest entity of the Local Government Federal Credit Union. This classification is based upon management and financial support received from LGFCU. The accounting principles also direct that Civic's financial statements are included in the consolidated financial statements of LGFCU for financial audit purposes.

 

00;07;28;19 - 00;08;07;20

Emily Lucas

Since the variable interest entity classification is not permanent, there is an annual review to determine if Civic continues to meet the definition. The Supervisory Committee also reviews policies for fairness, soundness and efficiency. Civic employs an internal audit department that tests the internal systems and processes. The internal audit team conducts periodic consultative, operational and compliance reviews of various functions within the Credit Union. I wish to thank the Board and members for their confidence in the work that we do for the Credit Union. Thank you.

 

00;08;13;00 - 00;08;43;10

Jeanne Erwin

As you can see, the Supervisory Committee provides an important service to the membership by ensuring sustainability, safeness and soundness of the Credit Union. Thanks Emily, for providing your report and please relay our appreciation to the rest of the committee for the valuable services that you all perform. I now call on Neal Chaloupka for the Loan Review Committee report.

 

00;08;47;07 - 00;09;18;25

Neal Chaloupka

Good afternoon. I'm here to present the 2022 Loan Review Committee report for this year's Annual Meeting. This committee offers a vital service to our members, a benefit that speaks directly to the values here at Civic, and serves as an opportunity to prove that our members are more to us than just a number. Although we work hard to extend credit to our members, as many members as possible, sometimes applications are denied.

 

00;09;19;15 - 00;09;49;29

Neal Chaloupka

However, for loan applications that's not the end of the story. At Civic, you have the opportunity to appeal the loan decision and this committee will take a second look. We ensure that we will treat you fairly and in each instance we handle the matter confidentially and respectfully. Members can present their application by mail, by phone, or even with the committee to share the details of their situation.

 

00;09;50;15 - 00;10;35;06

Neal Chaloupka

This is one of the true differences that make Civic membership exceptional. The Civic Loan Committee is currently six staff members with various backgrounds and areas of expertise. They are fellow Civic members that work with a shared purpose of meeting the needs of our membership. Last year, the Loan Review Committee met as often as needed to consider members’ needs and requests. I would like to thank the committee and the Board of Directors for the hard work and dedication and consistency to this effort. We are truly making a difference in the lives of our members. Thank you.

 

00;10;40;04 - 00;11;12;13

Jeanne Erwin

Our Loan Review Committee is made up of people who dedicate their time to help in the most direct way, opening doors to prosperity for folks that otherwise might not get that chance. Thanks, Neal. Please let the rest of the Loan Review Committee know how much we appreciate their hard work. Next, I'd like to call on Dr. Aaron Noble to give the Nominating Committee report.

 

00;11;13;12 - 00;11;33;04

Dr. Aaron Noble

Good afternoon and thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity to present the report from the Nominating Committee. Before I proceed, I would like to thank my fellow committee members with whom I had the pleasure to serve in this capacity, David Dear and Paul Miller. In accordance with the Credit Union bylaws, the Chairman of the Board appoints the Nominating Committee.

 

00;11;34;06 - 00;12;05;16

Dr. Aaron Noble

It is the charge of this committee to review the qualifications that are prospective candidates for the Board and make nominations to the membership. The Committee has voted to submit the following nominations. Ruth Barnes, Atlantic Beach, for a three-year term, Tony Brown, Halifax Count,y for a two-year term, and Jeanne Erwin, carrying for three-year term. The Nominating Committee respectfully submits these nominations and recommendations to the membership.

 

00;12;10;24 - 00;12;53;06

Jeanne Erwin

Thank you very much Aaron for your report, and our appreciation to the Nominating Committee for their work. There is only one person nominated for each open seat, and the time for nominations allowed under our bylaws has closed. Our bylaws do not require an election when there are no contested seats, therefore we declare the nominees elected. Congratulations to the newly elected Board members. Next, we turn to our CEO Dwayne Naylor for his report.

 

00;12;57;13 - 00;13;47;29

Dwayne Naylor

It has been an exciting year for Civic and we've reached some incredible milestones, but before I talk about that, and we also have Lamar Heyward is going to be talking about marketing, and we have Jazmine Kilpatrick that’s going to give a Foundation's report in this section. Willie Best was the first Chairman of Civic Federal Credit Union when it was coming out of the ground and we did not have a member at all and he was the first member. Now there's a story behind that. There's a picture in the hallway, I saw it earlier. It took three and a half hours to open up that first account. And that's kind of cheating, because when I'd walk in the other room, there were three groups of operations people trying to call everybody so they could get this thing open.

 

00;13;47;29 - 00;14;40;01

Dwayne Naylor

But anyway, the picture was joy, because we've been sitting there for three and a half hours trying to get that account open. We've got it down to ... Pete, four minutes? OK, will go with four. OK. So but three and a half hours and but his vision for the organization and he said once, he said every household in North Carolina is going to know Civic and its work. And so, his spirit and his vision and his commitment along with our Board, that we have to serve the people that no one else is serving. Right? That we have to never lose our mission. And it just rings in my ear. And he was such a passionate leader and honestly it was tough, it was a tough year for the Board to lose someone that was so passionate about what we're doing,

 

00;14;40;02 - 00;15;29;22

Dwayne Naylor

and and it kind of happened suddenly. So it was something that we went through, but he's with us now. And as the first Chair, he was always funny with me because he would listen to me then he would say one word and slap his hand down on the table, and that was that. So he always cut through the little stuff and brought us back to the point which was about our members. So at Civic, every single meeting that we start, starts off with a member story. It doesn't always have to be a good member story, but we seem to be leaning that way, right Pete? Because that centers our entire team, all of our staff on why we're there and what the meeting's about. It's very, very powerful to make certain that what's happening in that meeting is about our members.

 

00;15;29;22 - 00;15;56;17

Dwayne Naylor

So that always motivates all of us as we get going. Civic doubled membership last year. So the goal was to grow more consumers and we went from 2,500 to about 5,000. Somebody told me we have 5,600. And how many are they? OK, 5,600? And those are pioneers, right? And many of them in the room. Chief Penland, I think you're here.

 

00;15;56;17 - 00;16;29;10

Dwayne Naylor

He was the first person that said, “yeah, let's do this” and supported us and still is supporting us today as a fire advisor, and on the Advisory Council meeting. So it's been a wonderful year. We have done a lot of changes on how easy it is to do. We say we have a war on clicks and so as we're moving towards independence, it's going to allow us to have full real-time integrations that will allow us to know our members better than anybody else.

 

00;16;29;12 - 00;16;55;20

Dwayne Naylor

So our challenge is we want to know you better than Spotify and Amazon. And so you're doing all your work with us. But it was such an amazing year and I could just go through a long list of all the incremental improvements as we were going along. With that and preparing to come together, we have been bringing in mortgages, Health Savings Accounts, IRAs, on and on and on.

 

00;16;55;20 - 00;17;52;09

Dwayne Naylor

Every single service Local Government has, Civic is going to have. And so why is that important? The Board has challenged us to make sure that we continue to innovate and to continue to create products and services that are better than anyone in the market. So the team, our whole team, to a person across the organization, are so passionate about this and they're working so hard and we're recruiting like 150 people to come in to help us understand this. But the most important thing is the members, the staff that we have on staff right now, all the way down to the person that they're teaching these new employees of talent of what our culture is and what family first means and what being purpose driven is and serving the local government community and how that's an honor. So it's not new people coming in that's doing this,

 

00;17;52;09 - 00;18;57;09

Dwayne Naylor

this is collectively all of us. And I think Pete's looking for work. If you have partners, spouses, anybody that you know that is passionate about what we do and, you know, they're a real talent, but maybe they can't drive an hour to work every day. Please keep an eye on our site. We're looking for the best, most dedicated talent anywhere in the industry. So that was my commercial pitch for the thing. So but gosh, we're just getting started and it's so exciting that the vision that it took, and Paul, when you were saying your prayer and you said, ‘look out 40 years and look back and we will be as proud as the last 40 years,’ I think we need to put that on our wall so we never forget that. Because sometimes when that, you're going through change and it feels like disruption and everything, we got to go to our strength-based side and our aspirational side to be able to innovate better than anybody anywhere, because in that space a possibility is when you ...

 

00;18;59;09 - 00;19;57;04

Dwayne Naylor

Sandy, I think Sandy Steward has a saying, “Mission Possible.” Is that what you guys used for your, “Mission Possible.” So everything we look at, like if it's cash deposits and things like that, everything we look at is through an appreciative angle where it is possible. I mean, the answer always is yes. It's just you have to get, you have to move beyond deficit thinking and stay in the appreciative inquiry space in your mind. And our group, when we lean into our group and lean into our strengths, they come in with so much innovation. It far exceeds what I could ever come up with myself. And so now let's expand that to our Advisory Council members and the talented Advisory Council members, and our members to help build this Credit Union and help build some, something that we're so proud of.

 

00;19;57;04 - 00;20;25;16

Dwayne Naylor

And so that is the most exciting thing about cooperative finance. It's exciting that our Board chooses the possible, they choose to focus on the great things in life, right? The relationships and there's so much other stuff and noise and white noise in the world today. So we lean into each other and we believe in each other and that we create something that nobody's ever created.

 

00;20;26;10 - 00;21;17;09

Dwayne Naylor

But with that, I have Mark Caverly is going to be speaking about numbers. We're going to speak about values or speak about numbers. But the main thing, it's been a remarkable, remarkable 2022 for Civic. What a lot of people don't know is on the business services and nonprofits opening online, we have the most innovative online, that means opening accounts, doing loans, servicing, closing, than any other credit union in the nation and any of the smaller banks. So our team has innovated at the very highest level for the best experience and so and we're just getting started. But it's been a great year.

 

00;21;17;09 - 00;22;04;14

Mark Caverly

All right, thank you Dwayne. As Dwayne mentioned, we are now getting to the most exciting part of the meeting. We're going to talk a little bit about numbers, right? OK, I'll try to make this as painless as possible. But seriously, this is exciting. When you see growth numbers like this, there's a, there's a saying in business, if you're not growing, you're dying. And Civic is clearly growing. So as you see these numbers, you'll see the peer info in gray. Our peers would be credit unions between $100 million and $500 million in assets, and that's approximately 1,100 credit Unions across this country. So we were one of the fastest growing credit unions in history, yeah, the fastest growing Credit Union in history to reach $100 million in assets.

 

00;22;04;23 - 00;23;14;26

Mark Caverly

And that growth just continues as you can see. Our investments have declined. It's the only bar that is showing any kind of decline whatsoever, but that's actually a good thing. So when we bring in our members’ deposits, we've got two things that we can do with those member deposits. We can invest them in marketable securities or overnight funds or we can invest them in you, our membership. And we would much prefer to invest in you through loans. And so you can see the reason why that investments are declining, is because of that phenomenal loan growth. Net worth is also growing. So essentially that's our rainy-day fund or our reserves for uncertain times in the future. It also facilitates future growth. So to continue to grow like this, we need to build our net worth. It also allows us to make the kind of investments in infrastructure that Dwayne mentioned in the future, to provide that kind of value back to the members. We need to have that net worth to do that. Finally, Dwayne mentioned this, look at the membership bar. I mean, it's probably, you could take it off the screen here, 100%. We've doubled the membership.

 

00;23;15;24 - 00;24;23;16

Mark Caverly

That is amazing. And Dwayne also mentioned you know, that that we tell these member stories, you know, at the start of every meeting and each one of these numbers represents our member story. And Dwayne also just mentioned the our focus on nonprofits and the ability or the ease that our nonprofits have to open up accounts with Civic. In fact, bring you great news that Roots of Recovery out of Pender County just opened up their Civic account, sitting right out there in the lobby. Yes! So Roots of Recovery provides transitional housing and employment resources for women recovering from substance abuse. They also received a $25,000 community grant last year from the Civic Local Foundation. So again, we do have a focus on nonprofits. We believe that we can make a difference even with nonprofits who are making amazing differences in your communities.

 

00;24;23;16 - 00;25;19;09

Mark Caverly

We want to partner with them, we want to provide them affordable financial services. And we hope to do that with Roots of Recovery. All right, we're going to move on here. How we compare, just a couple of quick comments here. Cost of funds, that is what we pay our members for their deposits. As you can see, that ratio is three times the peer ratio and then return on assets, very, very healthy income generation for Civic. And that’s that income generation that again allows us to build net worth, that allows us to continue to invest, and the value proposition that we have for the membership. And then lastly, a little bit about safety and soundness. We, we operate in a very heavily regulated environment. You heard from Emily, the Supervisory Committee report earlier about the financial statement audit that we undergo every year.

 

00;25;19;22 - 00;26;19;09

Mark Caverly

We also undergo an examination by the National Credit Union Administration, which is our federal regulator. And we’re just proud to say that we also, we received once again a very favorable examination report from the NCUA. It's the NCUA that insures your deposits up to $250,000 per person. So they take a very keen, close eye on the operations of any credit union, and they're trying to protect that insurance fund to make sure that there's enough insurance for the credit union industry. So having said all that, we know that you've seen many stories, many headlines over the last couple of weeks about some recent bank failures, Silicon Valley Bank in particular. So, yes, Silicon Valley Bank was also, I'm sure, went to have its own financial statement, audit.

 

00;26;19;09 - 00;27;26;10

Mark Caverly

They're regulated and examined by the FDIC. So they had some of the same sort of watchdogs that we have. However, Silicon Valley Bank operated in a much, much different manner than Civic does. So Silicon Valley Bank, as the name implies, their customer base was made up primarily of startups in Silicon Valley, venture capitalists who deposited significant sums of money. In fact, their average deposit was over $4 million. Civic's average deposit per member is only $18,000. So that's one huge, huge difference between Silicon Valley Bank and Civic. And so that $4 million that wasn't the typical savings that you all have at the Credit Union, that's what we would call in many cases hot money, in the industry. As soon as rates started to rise elsewhere, those customers were moving their funds out of Silicon Valley Bank or those funds represent operational accounts.

 

00;27;27;00 - 00;28;43;27

Mark Caverly

And so they are typically very volatile in terms of the cash inflows and outflows. And Silicon Valley Bank simply wasn't really prepared to deal with the, the cash outflows. What exacerbated their issue was their investment portfolio. So they were chasing yield. So they look to longer term investments to generate more income. And that's another key difference between any bank and any credit union. The banks are typically going to chase income because they want to have this outstanding performance to show the stock market, and then their stock will continue to rise. At the Credit Union, it's again, it's not about generating income, it's about serving our members. And so they'll chase yield. They want out longer term investments. At Civic and within our investment portfolio, when we do invest, we use this approach we call SLY (Safety, Liquidity and Yield), in that order. So we're going to make the most safe investment we can and liquid investment we can, but last is yield. We are not going to chase yield. We're not going to put the Credit Union in the kind of position that Silicon Valley Bank was in with its investment decisions.

 

00;28;44;24 - 00;29;58;29

Mark Caverly

So I wanted to make very clear on that point. It's also important to note that the same team that has, sort of has led LGFCU through the Great Recession, that same team that not only led through the Great Recession, but has been involved in this financial services industry for decades and probably combined all of our experience and many, many, many decades. We have seen this before, what we're going through right now, this kind of liquidity crunch, these types of issues. We've managed our way through that before. So that same team that successfully led other institutions through the Great Recession, we're in place at Civic. And so we are keeping a very close eye on your funds. We know that as a member-owned cooperative, it is one of our greatest responsibilities to care for your funds. And so having said that, that is the end of the numbers presentation. Again, the most exciting part of this meeting. So now I'm going to turn it over to Lamar Heyward, who is our Chief Marketing Officer.

 

00;30;01;04 - 00;30;59;04

Lamar Heyward

Good afternoon, everyone. So ... our old Chair of Civic, Willie Best, was mentioned earlier and I love what Dwayne brought out, which is this idea that every household in the state is going to know what Civic stands for. That's a great North Star for us to focus on, especially as marketers, but really in the entire organization, something that we say a lot in the Credit Union is that, marketing, you know, it's an important department, but it is not, you know, all on the marketing department to do the job of getting the word out about the Credit Union. And since we've started Civic, there's been this emphasis on how we can use both of the brands to be able to reach into the local government community in North Carolina. And in the very beginning we were very intentional about taking what Civic had to offer and trying to cover those areas that may have been a gap for Local Government Federal Credit Union.

 

00;30;59;12 - 00;32;15;21

Lamar Heyward

And one of the main things we've talked about, you know, previously, is this idea that the organizational accounts that Civic was built to serve was helping us to be able to stay committed and connected to local government and not produce a situation where those folks would go without service, especially, you know, in some of the communities like the fire service if Civic didn't exist. And the reason that's important is when we were in the infancy of the new Credit Union, we would be out in the market working to cover those spaces and targeting business accounts and organizational accounts, but not putting a whole lot of emphasis on the consumer side. So our first strategy as a new Credit Union was really about that, let's work to make sure that all of those businesses, all those organizations that need to be transferred out of LGFCU and into Civic have a place to go. And so that was the focus. As we moved forward, we looked at, OK, now that we've gotten that taken care of, how can we start to focus on the consumers in North Carolina, those who may still have a gap presented if there are digital services that may be more attractive, folks that really are interested in banking online and don't have as strong of a need for the branch, let's let the Civic marketing focus on that group and the LGFCU marketing will continue to focus on the folks

 

00;32;15;21 - 00;33;02;21

Lamar Heyward

that are being serviced by the SECU network. The reason that historical reference is so critical is because up until probably last year, that was the way that we were intentionally going into local government. You have these two brands that are really working together to serve the needs of our local government community and doing it in different ways. Now, this isn't unusual in business or in marketing because there are lots of examples that you probably have going on in your household right now. In fact, if there's anybody in who, who drives a Lexus and a Toyota, then you're kind of experiencing the same thing because the umbrella company, Toyota, created the Lexus because what they wanted to be able to do was serve a segment of the market that was able to connect with consumers that they were losing to some of those high-end car companies, that they didn't have a high-end car.

 

00;33;02;21 - 00;34;02;02

Lamar Heyward

Hey, you know what we should do? We should create a high-end car so that they're not going to Mercedes and BMW. They're staying with us. On the Credit Union it was a similar scenario where we had members who were wanting to do more contemporary banking years ago, and so we looked at a way to be able to service those needs through what we have with Civic. So if you fast forward to about last year, internally, we started to have a lot of conversations about the importance of really taking what we have to offer with Civic and targeting it to the LGFCU membership. And this was really important because what we wanted to make sure was happening is if you're a member of LGFCU and you too were thinking, Well man, I'd really like to have, you know, remote deposit capture, I’d really like to have this really, really competitive auto loan rate, and you weren't getting that at LGFCU. You may have thought, well, I need to go over to Bank of America or Chase because you just weren't as aware about Civic because we weren't talking to LGFCU as much about Civic as we were talking to the general local government population or the general North Carolina population.

 

00;34;02;05 - 00;34;32;01

Lamar Heyward

And so that changed last year. And you've probably seen and are familiar with, especially in this room, a lot of the marketing that we have on the screen right now. What we're getting ready to do this year is step that up a notch and really be able to focus not just on LGFCU membership, but the entire, you know, local government community and North Carolina at large, because the goal here is to hit this message and to hit it hard that while we're two different Credit Unions right now, we all have that.

 

00;34;32;01 - 00;35;53;15

Lamar Heyward

Wait a minute. Let's see, here's the thing about this clicker. You see your boy was on the floor. He was going right. And Ashley! ... what happened here? OK, I'm gonna put this down. I'm a stay right there. Until it's time for Jaz to come on for you. So, spoiler alert, Jazmine Kilpatrick is after me. Sorry if I took anybody's thunder. But here two Credit Unions, one purpose. And what this is really all about is the campaigning that you're going to see kicking off hard and fast after this Annual Meeting going out, not just into LGFCU and not even just into the local government community, but across the state of North Carolina with this message that Civic Federal Credit Union and Local Government Federal Credit Union, they exist today in 2023 for the sole purpose of improving the lives of our members in North Carolina and very specifically within our local government community. And as I said before, the goal of that work is to be able to elevate and celebrate the super-hard workers that are doing so much to keep our cities and towns and counties running in North Carolina. Now, with that said, we will advance the slide, and I will bring on the wonderful, the incomparable Jazmine Kilpatrick.

 

00;35;53;15 - 00;37;13;02

Jazmine Kilpatrick

Thank you, Lamar, for those kind words. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jaz Kilpatrick. I'm going to talk to you about Civic Local Foundation, your Credit Unions’ philanthropic arm. During this presentation, I will provide an overview of the impact of your Credit Unions’ philanthropic arm and how it's made wonderful impact across our state. The Foundation, which launched in the fall of 2021, is supported by Civic Federal Credit Union and Local Government Federal Credit Union. In 2022, the Foundation was successful in operating for a full year. The Foundation would not be successful without the support and vision of the Board of Directors for the Foundation. I would like to recognize each of them. Foundation Chair Ruth Barnes, Vice Chair Dr. Aaron Noble, Treasurer Kellie Blue, Secretary David Dear, followed by independent Directors Reginald Johnson, Tharesa Lee and Lee Worsley. Thank you all for your commitment for serving on the Foundation Board.

 

00;37;13;02 - 00;37;39;03

Jazmine Kilpatrick

The Foundation recently rebranded and changed its name from Local Foundation of North Carolina to Civic Local Foundation. The name has changed, but the commitment remains to invest in local communities through grants, scholarships and working with existing nonprofits to generate significant impact across the state. At this time, I will show a short video highlighting our impact from the year 2022.

 

00;37;51;11 - 00;38;57;26

Jazmine Kilpatrick

In 2022 we awarded $250,000 to local nonprofit organizations focused on addressing the challenges of health care, housing, human services and hunger across North Carolina. Each of these organization has had an incredible impact in their communities, and we're proud to be a part of their stories. We've also awarded $250,000 in scholarships to local government professionals, high school seniors and college students who are members of Civic and Local Government Federal Credit Unions. In 2023, we've changed our name, but our commitment to supporting North Carolina communities and our purpose as neighbors helping neighbors remain the same. We are Civic Local Foundation, supported by Civic and Local Government Federal Credit Unions. Learn more about our organization at CivicLF.org.

 

00;38;57;26 - 00;40;28;01

Jazmine Kilpatrick

As the video stated, the Foundation awards community grants to nonprofits that provide programing, allocates a, bridging the gaps in the areas of housing, health care, hunger and human services. In 2022, we awarded ten community grants that were diverse in funding categories and the areas of impact. It’s noteworthy to mention, three of those grant recipients provide statewide service and resources throughout the entire state. Next slide, please. Your Credit Unions’ philanthropic arm has made a significant impact across North Carolina for the year 2022. This picture captures some of that impact. The funding has supported remarkable initiatives such as implementing a pay-as-you-can mobile market to address food insecurities in rural areas of Nash and Edgecombe counties, assisting first-time homebuyers with a savings fund to help 85 individuals find stable housing in Durham County and Orange County. Funded completed medical treatment for breast cancer patients in rural areas across the state, funded 45 airline tickets to health care facilities for children needing specialized medical care for rare and complex diseases, increase the number of bilingual home-based child care facilities in

 

00;40;28;01 - 00;41;38;27

Jazmine Kilpatrick

underserved areas in Cabarrus County and so much more. We are truly bridging the gaps and living out our mission and changing North Carolina one heart at a time. The Foundation also provides funding for three types of scholarships programs, student scholarships, UNC School of Government professional development scholarships, and NC State University's Public Safety Leadership Initiative. The funding for all the scholarships programs are invested back into our Credit Union members. In 2022, we awarded 25 student scholarships, 86 professional development scholarships and 16 Public Safety Leadership Initiative scholarships. The recipients were diverse in geography across the state, diverse in their college university enrollment and in the types of professional development courses that were taken. We are extremely honored to financially support the education of our members and invest in professional development of local government employees.

 

00;41;38;27 - 00;42;32;28

Jazmine Kilpatrick

I would like to take a moment to recognize committee members who volunteer their time to ensure the success of the Foundation. Our grant selection committee is made up of Credit Union employees who are passionate about making a difference in communities across the state and helping nonprofits with the resources they need to thrive. The School of Government Scholarship Committee plays an important role in making sure local government professionals receive training and professional development courses that will enhance their career paths in the public administration field. The Student Scholarship Committee is a mix of employees and Advisory Council members who commit their time to review applications of Credit Union members wanting to pursue trade school or enroll in a college or university. Last, but certainly not least, the Foundation program manager, Crystal Prevatte, is the liaison for all of those committees and she does a phenomenal job.

 

00;42;33;08 - 00;43;10;22

Jazmine Kilpatrick

So at this time, if you serve on any of the Foundation committees, please stand and join me in giving them a round of applause. Before I close out, I want to share a heartfelt story with one of our recent 2022 grant recipients, Children's Light of Hope. This organization provides airline flights to specialty medical care for children in need. Here is their story.

 

00;43;31;16 - 00;44;07;28

Children's Flight of Hope Video

At Children's Flight of Hope, we believe that distance and the cost of travel should never prevent a child from getting the care they need. That is why we provide air transportation and specialized medical care for children as many times as they need, no matter the distance. The impact that Children's Flight of Hope has on the children and their families really, is that opportunity and chance for hope. Sometimes giving them more time with their child, sometimes giving them more ability to have the attention with their child so they're not sitting down and stressing over booking the flights or canceled flight or things of that nature.

 

00;44;08;22 - 00;44;40;11

Children's Flight of Hope Video

You know, as much as we specialize in children's care at different institutions, there are so many conditions that children have. And what you'll find is there are certain very rare conditions that are only treated well in one or two places throughout the country. So it's very important that even though we provide excellent care here in the Triangle for children, that if a child has one of those rare conditions, that we get them to where they need to be so they can get the care that, that is the best care in the country.

 

00;44;42;08 - 00;45;21;21

Children's Flight of Hope Video

My name is Parvathy Krishnan. I'm mom to two children, Yash and Ira, and it is because of Yash and Ira that we came to know about Children's Flight of Hope. When diagnosed with a rare disease or when diagnosed with a condition where you're being told either there's no cure for your child or for your loved one, or when you're told we don't know what to do in the hospital that you are, you don't give up hope. You find a doctor or a center where you have to be to provide that care your child needs. This organization helps you get there. This organization has helped us through the years, support both of our children for their different needs.

 

00;45;22;00 - 00;46;16;05

Children's Flight of Hope Video

Children's Flight of Hope has been phenomenal. They've been our saving grace in so many ways. They don't only get us from point A to point B, but they also care about our family and they care about my son. Even times when he has had to be airlifted out of state with medical evac and stabilized out of state, they were there to make sure that I didn't have to stress about getting home when he was cleared to fly home commercially. I see the workings of the operation and cannot speak highly enough of the staff and their mission and the work that they do and the way that they carry it out and the way that they go about it is, is truly phenomenal. Before the pandemic, we were flying up to 1,300 children a year, and of course, a lot of that slowed down and those children couldn't get the help they needed.

 

00;46;16;20 - 00;46;57;22

Children's Flight of Hope Video

And we are starting to see those same numbers again in leaps and bounds. So this year, we're hoping to end with 1200 flights. Next year the goal is to get to 1600 flights. And if we are long term the next couple of years, we'd love to be doing 2000 flights. Children's Flight of Hope is in an amazing growth pattern right now. We're serving more families than ever from the state of North Carolina and across the country and even internationally. We deliver our mission through the kindness of others, and we are forever grateful to the corporate sponsors, the grant and foundation providers, the individual donors, and our airline partners such as American Airlines, that help us deliver this mission to families in need.

 

00;46;58;14 - 00;47;41;27

Children's Flight of Hope Video

I'm Diane Black with American Airlines. I'm a corporate sales manager in the Southeast region for American Airlines. As an airline, we have a unique opportunity to connect children with lifesaving treatments, an undertaking that's incredibly important to American Airlines and Children's Flight of Hope has been an integral part of that mission. We have three traditional fundraising events that have driven our mission forward for many years. We have a golf tournament in the spring, Hops for Hope, which is very fun, in September, and Denim & Diamonds, our largest fundraiser of the year in November. As we have seen in recent years with the pandemic, event funding can be risky and we have made it a priority to focus on grant and foundation opportunities to help drive our mission further.

 

00;47;42;01 - 00;48;31;05

Children's Flight of Hope Video

We're especially happy this year that we have a new partnership with Local Foundation of North Carolina to help us drive our mission further. So a special thank you to the Local Foundation of North Carolina for their support of Children's Flight of Hope. We are so grateful to partner with them, to be a part of their community as they serve and grow all of the community here in North Carolina. We have lots of children and lots of families here from our home state. We are proud North Carolinians and we are proud to have the support of an organization such as the Local Foundation of North Carolina.

 

00;48;31;05 - 00;48;47;16

Jazmine Kilpatrick

To learn more about your Credit Unions’ philanthropic arm, Civic Local Foundation, visit our website. Thank you for your time. And I'll turn it back over to Dwayne.

 

00;48;49;07 - 00;49;45;05

Dwayne Naylor

Thank you, Jazmine. The most wonderful thing about being a part of this organization is the Foundation is going to be so critical of the impact and how we measure that and report it back to the members so they see the impact they're having across the state. So thank you for your work. I almost tear up every time I see that video. It's incremental investments and people that bring back that joy to us so we can return it. So it is, it's such a remarkable vision for the Foundation. And it's a critical part of not only impact and sustainability and things like that, but that whole impact area, including financial literacy and financial education and things like that, that's how we're going to measure and we'll measure and report back out to the membership.

 

00;49;45;15 - 00;50;21;03

Dwayne Naylor

And so if something doesn't have the biggest impact as we wanted, we'll tell you why then we'll go back and we'll start doing the work again. But the membership will keep us accountable to what we're saying. But with that, I think we're ready to open it up for questions. So if there are any questions, there's mics on this side of the room and on this side of the room.

 

00;50;21;24 - 00;50;56;22

Question 1

Quick question about mobile deposits. My husband and I had a check, like reimbursement checks. Two checks with the same amount, small amount, about $12.97. But they saw those as duplicate deposits because we were depositing it all on the same day. So they said, we'll try the next day to deposit the second check and see if it goes through. Well, it did not go through. Yet we're having to drive to the branch to deposit a $12.97 check. So I was wondering how does Civic handle that? A duplicate amount, but it’s two separate checks.

 

00;50;57;28 - 00;51;52;13

Dwayne Naylor

OK, I'm going to repeat back the question. Is the remote deposit capture you're trying to deposit a large amount and you're having to wait? Small amounts, but the same issue. OK. OK. Sherry Bear, come on up. OK, I had a feeling that was coming my way. It did sound like to me that was not at Civic? OK, OK. The technology, which remote deposit capture is a software that reads numerous items from that check, when that happens, we have a team, and I believe I've got some folks, I know Julie’s here, we have a team in our deposit operations department that reviews the rejections.

 

00;51;52;28 - 00;53;06;14

Dwayne Naylor

And if it’s rejected for any reason right now, because of the size of Civic, we do have the opportunity to do that. But the software should catch that, that there was a difference in those checks. So I don't know what software the financial institution was using, but we can catch that. And if it's rejected, we do have the ability to review it to make sure if it should not have rejected, we could process that item. I hope that helps. I know some of that is very technical because it is a high-tech software that's being used, but it should be able to detect that that was not an actual duplicate. So we have people that nothing gets kicked out and never looked at. It gets kicked out and then our people look at it and if something like that happens, but it's my understanding we're not having that issue now with Civic. We should not be. OK. All right. So. So we're OK. We're OK there. And I'm sorry you’re having a problem at another financial institution. We'd love for you to open up an account in the hallway and we will take care of that for you. But thank you for that question.

 

00;53;07;26 - 00;54;05;10

Question 2

Good afternoon. In following up the presentation by the Foundation, it's very exciting. Historically, the State Employees’ Credit Union, a dollar, the members can choose to direct the dollar that's subtracted from or taken out of their checking account each month going into their charitable foundation, which I've been doing for decades. And now with Local Government’s understanding it just says maintenance fees or whatever that dollar. I'm not real clear about where that dollar, you know, if it's just kept internally or if that's redirected there or not. I'm not sure. I know Civic does not have anything being taken out at this time. So I'm wondering with the combination of everything, is it possible at some point in the future that there could be like that dollar a month from an account if the member would choose to have that directed into the Local Foundation?

 

00;54;07;20 - 00;55;49;11

Question 2

Sherry Bear? I heard some of it but can we repeat the question because up here you can't hear very well? I will try my best. The question is concerning the dollar that is deducted from the Local Government checking account that goes to fee income and we do not have the dollar fee at Civic. We are discussing when independence takes place, and again in the previous meeting, LGFCU is the surviving Credit Union, so that checking account is surviving. Internal conversations, do we continue to charge the dollar or do we charge the dollar and it does go to the Foundation. We are trying to look at what Civic has, what LGFCU has and what that will look like after independence. And that dollar has been a critical part of our conversation. So I really appreciate you bringing that up. That's a great question. We're modeling the cost of the checking account. We've talked about refunding ATM fees, which is very important, that as we're creating the digital services, that we get probably 75 to 85% of our members that want to use digital and then we can offer different services like that and lower fees. But the fee question concerning the dollar, we are in very deep conversations that, that will probably go to the Foundation. So great question.

 

00;55;50;14 - 00;57;04;01

Dwayne Naylor

OK. I'm going to temper probably since that has not been presented to the board yet. In fact. So, Dale, thank you for that question. And that's an opportunity, right, with independence. But one thing I want to get in front of that question is in the Annual Report, we say we're exploring merging with Local Government Federal Credit Union. The Civic members have to vote on that. OK. There'll be a lot more products and services and a large balance sheet and things like that. But governance wise, the members will vote on that later in the year, much later in the year. I think I wasn’t going to call on Dayatra now, but it'll be much later in the year, but you'll know well in advance before a vote like that, but we're not making any assumptions at all. But that's an opportunity. That's an opportunity for us to fund the Foundation. And I believe that's the way State Employees is doing it now. But any way we can do that with all the other fees that were taken away. I'm sure the Board will consider that strongly, and we'll be able to do that before independence. OK. Next question,

 

00;57;04;01 - 00;58;02;28

Question 3

Dwayne, first I'd like to thank you, your staff and the Board for your hospitality over the last two days. My name is Anthony and I live in Murphy, so I'm part of the slogan that we've grown up with, “from Murphy to Manteo,” and I believe that geographic spot would say a lot about the remote and rural areas. I can speak for Cherokee County and Murphy. We have four utility companies that bring power to our homes. We have only one telephone company who is no longer installing new service. We have one small family-run cable company. Our infrastructure for internet is not where it should be. I'm wondering what resources Civic can provide to encourage our local utility infrastructure to increase the bandwidth so that it will truly support this digital financial institution that we're moving toward.

 

00;58;04;04 - 00;59;25;25

Dwayne Naylor

And thank you Anthony, and thank you for driving all this way. And you do not have to drive home after this meeting. You can stay tonight. Everybody make sure he can stay tonight. That's a long drive. I've done it. And so, Anthony, I'll answer in two different ways. One is you don't have to have the internet to be able to do the online banking. Now you might not get the video chat, right? Because I was in Halifax and it was a little shaky. But if you, as our Board members have said, you can call a number and then we're going to find out a way to help you. Now, we've talked about this at the Summit and we had dinner the other night and Anthony, I want to, really I hope you don't mind me sharing this, because this really means a great deal. But Anthony lost his home just a few weeks ago and it's a traumatic event. And Anthony is such a dedicated member. He said he needed to be here. And so Anthony, and I know I'm not trying to draw attention to you, it just shows you how much love our volunteers and our members have for us.

 

00;59;25;25 - 01;00;39;21

Dwayne Naylor

And but we're all with you and we're praying. And I'm not trying to defer from the question, by the way, but thank you for making this trip and spending this time means everything. So I don't know if we can fix the telephone system in Murphy in the next 11 and a half months but when we're independent, we can actually look at a lot of things that would allow us to expand that. We have some Advisory Council members, and I don't think I got to share that with you, but when I was in Halifax, it actually was coming from the sheriff that he was saying at a meeting we had and he was saying, you know this is it. I know the answer is no when everybody hears this, but hey, if we could lock into the emergency system, and when no one else has cell power, when our member goes on there, we're paying for that member to be able to do business there, that would be remarkable. Well, the answer, this is part of the answer is no, no, you can't do that. But what if we increase the capacity of that emergency network by five? Where if the emergency services needed that it would be so large, and so much better for that community anyway, maybe we could do that.

 

01;00;39;21 - 01;01;52;18

Question 3

Now I'm just giving that as an idea, so we're not going to be able to fix the telephone company. I remember you going through that with me that night. I'm sorry everybody's pulling out. Like you said, no one's laying new cable and all that other stuff, but I know when we're independent, we can focus on things like that. We are actively involved, like North Carolina emerging issues and in the state legislature keeps talking about billions of dollars is going into broadband and things like that. That's what the state needs right for development. But I'm kind of talking around it. I don't know if we can fix it in the next 11 and a half months. If they have cell coverage and they can get out from around that mountain and they got the cell coverage, they can do banking. Because if they get ahold of us we can take care of them. OK. But we do need to come in on those really big North Carolina problems and be able to fix it. And we can do that with independence. Anthony again, I didn't want to draw attention, I just wanted to show the love that you have and that you gave me when you came down here. Thank you.

 

01;01;57;12 - 01;02;02;29

Dwayne Naylor

Any other questions? OK. We have one.

 

01;02;02;29 - 01;02;31;05

Question 4

I work in Human Resources and we promote the Credit Union. When we have new hires, you know, we share information about Local Government Federal Credit Union, and of course we want to add this Civic also, but are the rates comparable within the two organizations? OK, are the rates going to be comparable on the other side of independence? Or are they going to be the same?

 

01;02;31;05 - 01;04;19;09

Dwayne Naylor

Well, I know the answer to that. So let me think it through first. I'll answer the question then I have something else I want to say about HR departments that are so critical to what we're going through right now. We pay a portion of our gross revenue to State Employees’ Credit Union, 25% and it is the deal of the century. Thank you Leigh Brady... called you out. She's the number two at State Employees’ Credit Union. It’s the deal of the century. But we're going to take that money and not have as much invested in brick and mortar. But we're investing in people. So the entire plan is, if it can't be better, then why would we be doing it? Right? So we should have more money to invest in the integrated, wow experiences of how we know you and financial education and all that other stuff and to be able to give our members back more. Now, I'm not going to let Garland, our CFO, talk because he always argues with me on that. But that is the end state. If it's not better than what we're giving right now, then our Board would not be so excited about what we're doing. And the other part on HR that we've been talking a lot in the last couple of days is that when we're talking to our HR professionals, they're saying these are my employees, right? And one of our Board members said these are my employees. That is an opportunity for us to win your trust and give a chance for us to come and show you how we can love on the members and listen to them and create an experience where we really will take care of them.

 

01;04;20;06 - 01;04;58;29

Question 4

OK, so I'm talking to our staff too. Mark went to IPMA Conference I think last week, and we're just starting with our communication. And so think of a volunteer network around the state and then when the HR director says you need to be here for four hours on this day, and then we're there, and not only can we open their accounts and make loans and car loans and all that other stuff and show them exactly how to do it, we can also just counsel and things like that. So thank you for your question. Now, did that adequately answer your question?

 

01;04;59;14 - 01;05;23;18

Question 4

It did. It seemed like it's coming. It's coming. And you couldn't quite let it out of the bag. But it's coming, baby. It's good. I just want, I just want to, how to be able to promote both of them to our. We do new hire sessions twice a month, you know I want to be able to say, look, now you've got a third option, and what are the benefits to join in? Both.

 

01;05;24;25 - 01;06;08;11

Dwayne Naylor

OK. What we're telling members is if they see something really cool, and there's a bunch of cool stuff at Civic, right? Any ATM in the world that you see, you can use it for free. You know, automated services. You can get a car loan through a text chat and you can do a virtual notary. Who ever thought of that? We put it in three or four years ago that so members can kind of come over and go ahead and join Civic and already be there. But if they stay at Local Government, if the member votes for merger and it's all coming together, then everything automatically moves over. The ACH, the funds transfers. And to your point, people are asking, how does this affect me?

 

01;06;09;00 - 01;07;58;21

Dwayne Naylor

You know, I love the ecosystem and all this, how does this affect me and my employees? So the way this is going to go is every single month we're going to be communicating with our members about our progress and the milestones and things like that. If the membership votes for a merger, we hope that would be sometime in January. And then when it comes together in March, somewhere around, I'm not going to ask Sherry Bear any more questions, somewhere around February, you're going to get a new debit card and a credit card, if you have one, you're going to get a checkbook and we're going to have all kinds of instructions. And the members are telling us, you better be teaching us like nobody's ever taught anyone, right? on this really big change. And so on the day after, and that's what all this work, these hundreds of employees, the State Employees and our people and professionals that do this all the time to make sure we do it right, you would put down your Local Government card and then you would pick up your Civic card. So if you're already all the way over at Civic, when that happens, nothing happens. You just use that card the next day, right? So they can join one or both, or they could just join Civic, but they don't have to do anything right now. Because I had a member that called and said, “I don't want to close out my account,” I said, you don't have to. I said, we're going to, we're working very hard, our team is working so hard to just move it over. And this is not something that's never been done before. They have. It's called a conversion. And I know, don't give any acronyms from HR to me, but a conversion is when all that moves over or there's about 60 of those taking place all year long. And so ours is just one of those.

 

01;07;58;21 - 01;08;49;19

Dwayne Naylor

So it's not like there's not a lot of really smart people figuring this out. But I won't have to change my funds transfer, I don't have to change ACH. I don't have to change all this. I just pick up the other checkbook, I start writing there and I start swiping with the new card. I'm holding myself back. My inner Garland Avent, at a better rate, lower fees. And that's the goal. That's why our Board is so passionate about where we're going. We are going to return more value directly to our Local Government members. And whoever MDO is in her area, make sure let's put her on a team for the communication. Thank you. Hi!

 

01;08;49;26 - 01;09;32;13

Question 5

Hey. OK, so I'm going to piggyback on her question. I used to be in HR, I have recently retired, so I'm going to look at it from the other side. The people that are actively employed, you have a way of getting in touch with them. What about those of us who are no longer engaged with an active employment HR department? How are we going to get the communication to know when we can meet with you? If there's a possibility to meet with you? How are you going to communicate to those that are no longer affiliated with a local government HR agency or someone on the Advisory Council that can get them that communication.

 

01;09;32;13 - 01;10;22;26

Question 5

Thank you for that. Because that is what we've heard from all the Summits. That's what we're hearing from our members. We're going to have a communication plan. Lamar is working on this and we're working with HR professionals. And it is very, very important that we, and we're building some systems that we can have updates regularly and then we're bringing it in. But our education and coaching for those members that may be fearful, Therman are you still here? He's going to help us, not only help design like an education plan, but he's going to help us work with a broader team and more Advisory Council members of how we can have that communication reaching all those people. But Lamar, could you come in here so you can see? Lamar has been working on this project, so I want to let him talk about it.

 

01;10;24;06 - 01;11;57;15

Lamar Heyward

So to that point, and even one of the things I was talking about earlier, is this idea of the work that we're doing to promote the Credit Union outside of the channels that we've used a lot of previously. And so I'll give one great example which kind of speaks both to the person asking the question, and even Therman in your ability to help us know the best ways to connect to folks outside of the local government unit, it's going to be critically important. Earlier this week and then even next week, we were in some conversations with the folks who currently manage, you know, I think this was Wayne County, so down in Goldsboro who manage, you know, the city of Goldsboro was HR. And in addition to wanting to connect with their employees as a part of the work that we're going to be doing with Goldsboro, is they're pulling in a lot of the retirees and other members and even prospective members in the surrounding areas. So our outreach is now not only going to be focused on the local government unit, but also focused on those outside of that. And it's for this very reason our ability to connect with and communicate with folks who don't have that channel of coming into work and being able to get the information from within that area. But then going back to that other point, the best way for us to know how to do it and to do it successfully is actually going to come from these conversations with you, and you helping us to design that, because what we can bring is the resources and the expertise from technical, you know, marketing standpoint, but the how to talk to folks in these communities, it's going to be known best by the people in the communities. And so we're going to really be leaning on you to help us figure that out.

 

01;11;57;15 - 01;13;18;24

Dwayne Naylor

Ed, I don't think you're at the mic now, but if you could, before you leave, if you can kind of talk to us and give us your contact information. Communication ... and I had a member tell me a couple of days ago that so much has come in at all of us so fast you can't read all of it. Right? So we need to be more innovative. And I think we're going to be working on videos because people learn a different way. But it's even like when we're communicating to the State Employees’ branch managers with frequently asked questions, well, they have so much responsibility and so much other stuff they get to, they might not get to it. So we do know this and the Board is very clear on this. We've got to do better, right? We've got these ideas and everything out, but we have got to communicate and get in front and tell our story that is so exciting. But start calming members’ fears on how we're going to be helping them. So please, let's get you on that team that helps us communicate effectively. We messed up on the HR stuff, but we've learned and I think we sent some stuff out, but it's going to be ready. Every time we have an update it needs to be coming out. This is a solution for cash. This is solution for this, this is the solution for this. So we're celebrating the solutions that we could start sending out to the members. And thank you.

 

01;13;19;17 - 01;14;34;09

Question 6

Good afternoon. And I'm Catherine McDowell from Roots of Recovery, your newest nonprofit member. And so this is why our Board treasurer sent me a text saying ‘sign up now.’ In five years we have been through three different banking institutions. We've had two different accounting firms one year using zero accounting software, and now we've gone to QuickBooks for nonprofit. None of them work for us. They just took QuickBooks and put the word nonprofit on it. We need services that help our specific nonprofit needs. We get grants, we get donations. We have so many responsibilities tracking the funding and we spend so many hours trying to keep up with that, that we're missing time that we need to be spending with single moms. So I'm hoping the answer to this is yes. Are you speaking with nonprofits, are you learning our needs, and are you going to be able to help us?

 

01;14;35;29 - 01;15;16;07

Dwayne Naylor

So thank you for that question. Sherry Bear, make your way to the stage. But what I do want to say is, and we talked about it in an early part of the day, is our Board made a very bold decision to not close nonprofit organization and business accounts, which included the whole firefighting community. And we created Civic for that reason. And now that we can focus on our services with Civic, with all our collective talents of our team, being independent allows us to innovate and correct that. But Sherry Bear has been working on that as well.

 

01;15;20;09 - 01;16;39;19

Sherry Bear

I want Pete to join me up here because there's a big element of that, that is the online mobile banking. It's not just the accounts, the services. As Dwayne has been stating, I would like to get your contact information because I want to hear directly from you, what it is you're looking for. That's how we're building this. We know traditional treasury management type services that organizations and businesses use, such as if you need a check scan or if you need a origination, if you need a zero balance account activity, we want to hear what it is you need for your type of organization so that we are building that accurately. I will tell you right now, we're not completely there, but we do want to hear from you. We do have a very robust online banking platform that has a component that is business, which is why I’ve asked Pete to step up here with me. So I would like to hear from you. We do have services available. I actually talked to Chief Penland earlier today about what his needs are, for example with ACH origination to get a good understanding of that and what solutions we have that we can solve for that. So, I would like to talk to you, but I want Pete to talk a little bit about the online mobile piece.

 

01;16;39;19 - 01;17;35;05

Pete VanGraafeiland

Thank you. Excuse me. I'm losing my voice. I'm from Raleigh and all the pollen here each year, it gets worse and worse for me. So I apologize. But we were talking at lunch. You're down by the beach. I'm coming down next week. One, because I want to talk to you, but also because you're down by the beach. So but because we want to talk to you first and foremost. I think what we want to do is more of a consultative approach. I think if we can sit down with you, we can show you some of the neat functionality that we have with our business banking platforms. And there are different types of ... we, a year ago, had one business banking platform. Today we have three different types of business banking platforms. You know, small business, a little bit larger and like a medium-sized business. And so I think that we can sit down and maybe spend an hour together in person. We can get everything hashed out. And I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. So, yeah. So you're OK if we come see you next week? OK. OK. All right!

 

01;17;35;17 - 01;18;39;15

Dwayne Naylor

Pete needs a sun block 50. But that's what’s so exciting about this, right? We get to learn from our members and we get to come together and start innovating and thinking. But that's another reason why independence is so important, because we can find the solutions and we can be the first organization just like business accounts, be able to treat nonprofits. We've got goals of being able to provide a bunch of service to nonprofits and businesses, but we have to get to the other side first. An example is the firefighters have been asking for payroll. We want payroll, but when we do it, we've got to really do it right. So we've said, yes, payroll is coming, but let's get to the other side of independence and then we'll innovate and use just like Pete's going to do with you, bring our firefighters in and work and innovate and not take no for an answer and create the experience that our members want.

 

01;18;41;01 - 01;18;41;13

Question 7

Okay

 

01;18;43;02 - 01;18;51;10

Question 7

If you have BillPay set up in Civic and BillPay set up in LGFCU, how do you migrate those two?

 

01;18;51;13 - 01;20;03;24

Dwayne Naylor

Leigh Brady, how's that going to go? We don't know yet, but there has been many BillPay conversions. Sandy Steward ... where’s Sandy? She put in three different BillPays over three years. Did you ever, please answer this correctly. Did the members ever have to re-key any of their bills? Be honest ... a small amount. So, we're going to do everything we can to be able to automate that for the members. The one thing that I would say is if we had to do that and you guys just embrace and help and support us through that, if we had to do something like that or something else, it's one time, right? And once we get it set up, it's there. Now we hope that that is not the case. We do not want to do that and we have a team working on that, but we can't answer that question yet. But I'm telling you the answer is yes. So there's got to be a way to do it. And we might have to pay a little bit more ... the ultimate goal is we’re going to map the data.

 

01;20;05;20 - 01;20;47;27

Dwayne Naylor

The ultimate goal is we're going to map the data. That means if I'm paying Duke Energy and then it comes over to the new BillPay system and we're paying Duke Energy. And so we're mapping and trying to connect all of that. So the disruption to the members is as minimal as possible. But it can be done with only a little bit of changes. I guess, working through some tweaks. But that's what we would update our members. When we know that, when we got all these teams and we've worked through everything, if something's going to be different that there's monthly, bimonthly updates to our members, we would be letting them know. That was a great one because we've been kind of scratching our head. I know it can be done.

 

01;20;47;27 - 01;21;31;06

Dwayne Naylor

We're going to do everything we can to make make sure that those BillPays come over. Now the new BillPay system will look different, but very cool. But it is an adjustment, right? Until you pay bills two or three times. It's just an adjustment that after about three months, that's with Civic, when people come on and they're really, really worried. Pete, how long does it take? ... two or three months before they start going, “Hey, this is kind of cool,” right? Yeah, it's just change, right? So you get through that and then then it's OK. But we're doing everything we can to minimize. And the Board told us that you minimize change, any change coming over on the other side.

 

01;21;31;06 - 01;22;05;10

Dwayne Naylor

Are there any other questions? Is anyone sitting in the chair going, “I really want to ask this, but I don't want to because ...” OK, thank you so much. Thank you for loving your Credit Union and thank you for being on this journey with us. We need your help to design the most exciting financial cooperative that exists. Thank you.

 

01;22;05;10 - 01;24;08;08

Jeanne Erwin

Thank you, Dwayne and members of the Executive team for your reports. And thank you all who ask questions. Those were great questions. It's very helpful to us. These are exciting times as we build Civic for the future. Our Civic team is working very hard to build out products and services that are needed by our members to improve their financial well-being. I'm especially excited about our emphasis on serving as a values-based institution, focusing on our values of people first, planet and prosperity. And I am very proud that we now have Dwayne to take us into Civic’s future. We are in good hands. OK, at this point, move into new business. Does any member have any new business to come before the Board today? Hearing none. Does any member have any old business? OK. Are there any announcements from the membership? I would just like to recognize at this point the staff of Civic. They work tirelessly each day to launch innovative new products and services to help members achieve their goals and to provide the best possible personal experience. I would like for our staff to stand at this time so that we can thank them for all their hard work and dedication to Civic. And I would sincerely like to thank all of you for being part of Civic's fourth Annual Meeting. The business meeting is now adjourned. Safe travels home.