Building Wealth Through Cooperation.
We are working to build a member-owned financial cooperative designed to expand responsible financial opportunity, strengthen financial capability, support ownership and entrepreneurship, and create lasting economic value for members and future generations.
Current status: Community First Credit Union is in the organizing and charter-development stage. It is not currently operating as a chartered credit union or accepting deposits, opening accounts, or issuing loans.
More than a financial institution.
Community First is being organized around a larger purpose: connect financial access with financial capability and build a durable cooperative through which eligible members can pursue greater stability, resilience, ownership, opportunity, and long-term prosperity.
Protect
Protect what members entrust to the institution.
Opportunity
Expand responsible financial opportunity.
Capability
Build practical lifelong financial capability.
Cooperative
Strengthen a member-owned institution.
Generations
Build an institution capable of serving generations.
Purpose with financial strength.
Community First Credit Union exists to expand access to affordable financial services, wealth-building opportunities, and financial education, with a primary focus on empowering descendants of American Freedmen and other historically underserved communities. Through cooperative ownership, responsible lending, and community investment, the credit union seeks to help members build generational wealth, strengthen local businesses, and promote long-term economic resilience.
Future membership eligibility will be governed by the approved field of membership established under the credit union’s charter and applicable law.
Legacy • Wealth • Growth • Community
Legacy
Build beyond the present and create an institution designed to serve generations.
Wealth
Strengthen financial capability, ownership, resilience, and responsible asset development.
Growth
Grow opportunity and institutional capacity without sacrificing governance or stewardship.
Community
Keep cooperative ownership, participation, dignity, service, and shared progress at the center.
The people served by the institution should have a stake in its purpose.
Community First adopts the cooperative model as an institutional philosophy—not simply a marketing identity. Members collectively own the cooperative. Directors temporarily govern it. Management professionally operates it. Employees faithfully serve it.
Capital protects it. Earnings strengthen it. Responsible lending advances its purpose. Education increases member capability. Accountability protects its integrity. Every generation of leadership is responsible for passing it forward stronger than it received it.
Ten Core Values guide how Community First should behave.
Integrity
Member First
Financial Stewardship
Inclusion
Education
Innovation
Community Impact
Accountability
Collaboration
Long-Term Legacy
Build the institution before opening the doors.
Preserve the Foundation
Mission, Vision, values, cooperative identity, governance philosophy and stewardship.
Build the Community
Gather prospective-member support and understand the community’s financial needs.
Develop Responsibly
Build governance, capital, operations, risk, compliance, technology and financial-service capacity.
Pursue Approvals
Complete the appropriate charter and regulatory process. Approval is not guaranteed.
Help build the community before we build the institution.
Our campaign goal is 300+ prospective-member pledges. A pledge is a non-binding expression of interest—no deposit, investment, purchase, or account opening is required.
Community First Credit Union is not ours to consume. It is ours to protect, strengthen, improve, and pass forward.
The founders are temporary. Leadership is temporary. Products and technology will change. The responsibility of stewardship must continue.