St. Louis Community Credit Union Shares First-Place Honors for the 2026 Tekkie Award for People Helping People

By W.B. King

True to the credit union mission, the Finopotamus Tekkie Award for People Helping People recognizes an initiative, program, or team effort that significantly improved the lives of members or the community in 2025.

In the spirit of this category, which supports the ethos of the credit union movement, the judges determined that the first-place designation should be shared by the six nominees: Addition Financial Credit Union, Advia Credit Union, Holy Rosary Credit Union, NET Credit Union, TruStage Ventures Discovery Fund, St. Louis Community Credit Union, and United Consumers Credit Union. Presented in no particular order, St. Louis Community Credit Union is spotlighted next. The $263 million, St. Louis-based credit union supports more than 55,000 members.

Streamlining Accessibility

Serving one of the Midwest's most economically diverse regions, St. Louis Community Credit Union (SLCCU) adopted a solution in 2025 designed to directly improve the financial lives of its members.

“SLCCU partnered with Starlight to launch the Pathways Resource Connector, a white-label branded embedded benefits navigation platform enabling members to discover and access verified financial assistance programs in one place,” said Paul Woodruff, the credit unions’ Vice President of Strategic Initiatives.

Melissa Benn

The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Starlight bills itself as enabling financial institutions to help its members in financial need seamlessly discover, qualify for, and apply to financial assistance programs. Its AI-powered platform helps to streamline the process, making support faster, smarter, and more accessible, explained Chief of Staff Melissa Benn.

“The need was clear: SLCCU's members faced real, immediate crises: food insecurity, utility shutoffs, housing instability, and more. Government and community assistance programs existed, but members had no easy way to find what they qualified for,” Benn noted. “For example, when tornadoes struck the St. Louis region in May 2025, that gap became even more urgent, with 16% of members identified as eligible for FEMA disaster assistance.”

Application Guidance

The Pathways Resource Connector was designed to solve what SLCCU identified as a “discoverability problem” at the heart of benefits access, explained Woodruff. The technology works by meeting members where they are and removing the complexity that typically prevents eligible households from accessing support.

Benn further explained the platform’s approach:

• Instant eligibility matching: Members enter basic information—zip code, household size, income—and immediately see a personalized list of programs they qualify for, including SNAP, utility relief, childcare assistance, tax credits, FEMA disaster assistance, local programs and more. “This eliminated the need for members to self-navigate complex agency systems.”

  
  

• Step-by-step application guidance: For each program a member qualifies for, Starlight provides clear, guided application instructions.

  
  

• White-label branding: Deployed as Pathways Resource Connector, the platform was presented as a native SLCCU member benefit, reinforcing the credit union’s identity as a trusted community partner rather than a referral service.

  
  

• Integration with broader member support: Pathways Resource Connector sits alongside SLCCU’s financial education seminars, coaching sessions, and matched savings programs — functioning as a practical complement to the full suite of member support services rather than a standalone tool.

  
  

Building Trust

Since the program was launched, Pathways Resource Connector has delivered impact that extend well beyond the credit union's walls and into the daily lives of members and the broader St. Louis community, Woodruff said. In year one, $4.1 million in total potential benefits were unlocked; an average of $15,000 in potential annual benefits identified per member were realized; and 26% of members were found eligible for subsidized childcare (a program many had likely never known they could access).

Paul Woodruff

“The results also reveal a longer-term pattern consistent with the SLCCU’s mission: members who accessed benefits through Pathways Resource Connector went on to open savings accounts, take out loans, and build lasting financial stability. Helping someone through a crisis doesn't just solve an immediate problem - it builds the kind of trust that anchors a long-term relationship,” said Woodruff.

“SLCCU’s job doesn't end when a member opens an account or gets a loan approved. Starlight made it possible to act on that belief in a real, practical, and scalable way,” he continued. “For a credit union serving a community where the need is real and the margin for error is thin, that is not a side benefit of banking, it is the point.”