How to Save Small Credit Unions: Keeping Building New Ones

At the recent Blossom Collective in Miami, three students from the University of North Carolina discussed the credit union they’re creating as a counter to the big bank on campus.

By John San Filippo

Blossom Collective 2026, the user meeting for Blossom credit unions, was held Feb. 16-18 at the Coral Gables Biltmore. Blossom, a CUSO committed to making modern technology accessible to credit unions of all sizes, acquired both the HomeCU digital banking platform in 2020 and the Prodigy core processing platform in 2024. This commitment to smaller credit unions was clearly demonstrated by three UNC students who spoke about an on-campus, student-run credit union that a 31-student team is building from scratch. The project is being aided by several organizations, chief among them Blossom and Wasatch Peaks Credit Union.

The Problem: A Campus Banking Monopoly

(l-r) Mark Zamudio, Sheldon Thomas and Aadya Gattu tell the Blossom Collective audience about the credit union they're building at UNC.

Sophomore Aadya Gattu opened the session by highlighting the lack of financial choice currently available to students at the University of North Carolina. She noted that the university’s existing partnership with Wells Fargo has created a banking monopoly that often overlooks the specific needs of the student body. Gattu explained that the initiative was born out of a desire to provide a safer, more educational alternative to predatory loan pricing and a lack of transparency. “So right now, on UNC’s campus, there are no credit unions available to the Carolina student body,” she said. “Basically, there aren’t financial options for students, especially with the partnership our university has with Wells Fargo.”

The Mission: An Ethical Learning Lab

Sheldon Thomas, a fellow sophomore, emphasized that the credit union’s primary goal is to serve as an experiential learning laboratory for the next generation of financial leaders. The goal is to help students in their financial growth and education, not just provide financial services. “One of the best ways to do that is to be an ethical bank, which means to be not-for-profit, which means all the proceeds of money that we get, we want to reinvest into our community, want to reinvest into our students and in Orange County as a whole,” explained Thomas. “We want to be used as a resource for that, as well as being able to just be there to empower the next leaders of UNC and Carolina, especially when it comes to finances.”

The Blueprint: Georgetown and Scalability

To prove the viability of their cooperative business banking model, freshman Mark Zamudio pointed to the success of Georgetown University’s student-run credit union, which has been in operation since 1983 and currently manages $15 million in assets. The UNC team, which is comprised of 31 students across 13 different majors, is already building a “guidebook” to help other public universities replicate their success.

“We are the credit union leaders of the future,” said Zamudio. “We realize that keeping track of every point in our journey, keeping well-documented notes—we’re creating a guidebook so that we can apply this for any public university across the United States.”

Regulatory Milestones and the Road to 2026

The team has already achieved significant regulatory progress. Gattu shared that they received proof of concept approval from the North Carolina Credit Union Division (NCCUD) last August and completed a field-of-membership survey with over 800 responses. The group is currently on track to submit their formal charter and insurance applications by the end of April, if not sooner.

“We will be chartered by the first day of class next year, which is August 2026,” said Gattu, further explaining that as a fallback measure, Wasatch Peaks Credit Union has agreed to grant the credit union use of its charter in a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) arrangement as an interim measure.

The Final Stretch: Capital and Continuity

The students have raised approximately $425,000 toward their $500,000 startup capital goal through a blend of grassroots fundraising, pitch competitions, and soft commitments from corporate partners. Zamudio noted that they are entering the final phase of their fundraising efforts to bridge the remaining gap.

“We are using a blended finance approach,” noted Zamudio. “We need that little bit more—we need that $500,000 to charter and start this up as a student-run credit union.”

Thomas concluded the session by addressing the issue of student turnover, explaining that the team has built a robust succession plan with their board of advisors to ensure the institution remains a fixture at UNC for decades to come.