Looking Backward…

… is not something I often indulge. Partly this is because a leader is supposed to imagine, and then co-create, the future.  But the present day for Brooklyn Coop is so astounding that I can’t help but continually compare what it felt like 16 months ago.  Remember this Time Capsule?  Last March 12 all our baseline expectations for work and school and home and our City disintegrated. The air around us held menace; the future was fogged over.

For much of the BCoop staff each day felt like ‘Groundhog Day’ within this eerie reality where our work *looked* the same, but the context was completely different.  The spring and summer months passed in a blur. We were always playing catch-up with local public health mandates, with new laws from NY State, with growing-then-shrinking-then-growing aid programs from the federal government.  I filed my call reports but couldn’t keep up the blog. We were chronically short of hands as individual staff members separated away for reasons of their own.  Daily I miss Manny’s generosity and Michael’s gchats and Luz’s thoroughness.

But, just as suddenly, it changed again. One Saturday morning early last winter Tammy and I heard hollering outside the Dekalb branch on Throop Avenue — a new President and VP were going to be inaugurated and a pinprick of light appeared at the end of this tunnel. By the turn of the year, BCoop had won $1.2 million dollars and I no longer feared that COVID-19 would mark our demise. Our loan portfolio was holding and our deposits were growing. I kept recognizing members, having learned to see faces despite the mask coverings.  Then, one day in March, the credit union crossed $50 million in assets. It is a phenomenal landmark and I didn’t even see it coming. Now its like we’re in a whole different universe of financial institution.

By now we’re midway through 2021: another giant grant awards arrived, we have chosen an architect for the renovation of 1474 Myrtle Avenue, and we are investing in a bottom-up overhaul of BCoop’s computer software. I am hopeful that Town Halls can resume this fall and that the hundreds of new businesses that took their PPP loans with BCoop will stay on. And I celebrate our expanding staff: an Accountant, a Loan Officer, a Communications Manager, and 2 new Tellers have joined us in the past 12 months. With luck, a Business Mentor, Compliance Associate, and more MSRs will follow in the next three.  COVID-19 may not be done yet, but a view towards the future is clearing.  🙂