Our project was featured in an article on Talent Egg, a Canadian career website for students and recent grads. Not only does the organization offer job listings, but it writes articles on student initiatives and career advice. True to their mission, they get students and recent grads to write the articles.

Enter the Waterloo Banking Project, a small initiative striving to be the first student-run credit union in Canada. The project gives volunteers incredible experience they can take to the job market while also providing financial solutions and information tailored to students.
[...]
Currently, the team is focused on research and putting together a business plan. They are also developing their staff and sharing their ideas with others. They keep the world updated on the organization’s progress through its blog.

Chen-Wing says they have three main goals: the first is research and planning, the second is human resources and training, and the third is marketing and communications. They know what they need to accomplish in the next year in order to stay on track. “Waterloo students have a can-do attitude and enterprising spirit. We think that if this can be done in Canada, it can be done here.”
— Waterloo students open first student-run credit union in Canada TalentEgg 25 May 2010

We appreciate the extra exposure as we work to spread the word about our plans and share our ideas.

The headline does, however, overstate our progress. We intend to launch in two years, so won’t have started our actual financial services until then.

They posted a photo of Abhi, Melanie, Margarita and me. Unfortunately, Erica wasn’t able to make the meeting at which we took the photo.

They also embedded our organizational overview video, which probably got us several more views.

• Project overview video explains our initiative 10 May 2010
• TechVibes interviews Abhi about our initiative 1 May 2010

Waterloo Banking Project Organizational Meeting (UW)
Wednesday 26 May 2010 5:30 p.m.
SLC 2143

Update: We added another meeting at WLU campus
Waterloo Banking Project Organizational Meeting (WLU)
Wednesday 26 May 2010 3:30 p.m.
SBE 1230

If you plan to attend the meeting or are interested in participating, please fill out this online form:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dEktQTJ2UUxGSUpxMExsb1JkV1VoZnc6MQ

The purpose of these questions is to collect information about potential staff members. We want to know about people, what they expect from the project, what they can offer, and when they’ll be available. As well we want to know people’s ideas.

Email questions or comments to waterloobanking.com@gmail.com.

In it we describe our problem statement, our vision for student-run financial services, and the basics of our plan. We also outline our plans for the next two years and tell interested people how they can contribute to our efforts.

Please watch the video and tell your friends.

He posted the interview in question-answer format. Abhi’s answers describe the project well and he mentioned Megan’s contribution too.

Here’s an excerpt.

In two years, we hope to launch the Waterloo Banking Project with a professionally trained student staff, sufficient investment capital, a partner credit union, a full suite of financial services structured to best serve students, and a share of the student market that we can expect to grow each year after that.

Through our project, we want to improve students’ financial situations through financial services and education, and reduce the burden of debt that hampers most students. It’s our hope that the Project Waterloo raises the profile of Waterloo students amongst all universities, for their stellar financial stability and confidence.
— A Bold New World: Face-off with Abhi Jayakumar and the Waterloo Banking Project TechVibes 20 April 2010

About a week later she sent us the link.

It is written in Chinese zhong wen, but we can recognize where she had to write our names and the name of the project.

Local students want to start Canada’s first credit union for the university and college community here.
[...]
The students like the idea of a banking system run by its own membership, with a special focus on offering money management advice, better returns on investment, and other benefits.

“If we can work on helping students manage their money more wisely and offer services that make financial sense, we might be able to make a real difference,” said Chen-Wing, who also works as a copy editor at the Waterloo Region Record.

— Local students look to launch credit union for university and college community Waterloo Region Record 6 April 2010

Follow the link to read the full article. The story was limited by the space in the newspaper, but covered the project well. It unfortunately didn’t acknowledge Megan Chan’s contribution in co-founding the project and her strong contribution to developing the idea.

After the article we heard from a lot of different people voicing their support and offering advice and assistance.

• Media release about launch of Waterloo Banking Project 21 April 2010

After we launched the survey we sent out a media release to try to inform more people about our vision and to attract more respondents to the survey.

This is what we sent out:

5 April 2010

Waterloo students launch financial services project

A new banking initiative by students for students aims to save students money at a time when tuition is steadily climbing and trust in the banking sector is at an unprecedented low. Waterloo students have started a project to explore the founding of a student-run credit union to help students better manage their money.

The group, called Waterloo Banking Project, is dedicated to developing financial services that better meet students needs, offering student staff valuable experience, and educating students about contolling their personal finances.

“Students often fight things like tuition increases with little impact,” said Ryan Chen-Wing, a 3rd year of economics and history student at UW and one of the project’s leaders. “If we can work on helping students manage their money more wisely and offer services that make financial sense, we might be able to make a real difference.”

The volunteers working on the project envision a setup such as the student-run credit unions at some universities in the United States, including Georgetown University and the University of Pennsylvania, or the high school student caisses in Quebec. They may end up working with an established credit union to realize their goals but want to analyze their survey data first.

“Credit unions are about people in a community co-operating to help each other. That is what we are trying to achieve,” said Abhilash Jayakumar, who is a 3rd year mechatronics student and organized the
survey.

The group wants to know what financial services are lacking for students. To that end, they’re launching a survey and giving out an Apple iPad in hopes of hearing from as many students as they can.

Current students, who are registered in Waterloo Region, at University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Conestoga College are invited to fill out the survey and enter to win the Apple iPad.

Alumni, staff, and other people connected with those schools are also invited to respond to the survey, but will not be eligible for the prize.

Read more about the project or find a link to the survey at the group’s project blog: WaterlooBanking.com

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With the responses we hope to find out more about Waterloo students’ financial situations and requirements for financial and banking services. The responses will help us as we work to develop and improve financial services for students in Waterloo.

As an incentive for answering our questions, respondents will be eligible for a draw prize of an Apple iPad. Only current students at University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College, who are registered at campuses in Waterloo Region, are eligible for a chance at the prize.

Alumni, faculty and staff and other people with relationships to the local university are welcome to respond, but are not eligible for the draw.

You can find the survey at:
http://www.askitonline.com/survey/waterloo-banking-project/

If you have questions, please comment below or e-mail us at:
waterloobanking.com@gmail.com

In planning the full survey, we made a test survey specifically about personal financial management. The survey was not meant to represent the population, but help us with subsequent surveys. The results gave us an insight into people’s financial habits and ideas of how we might structure questions differently.

Here is a review of some of the results:

• 38 people responded
• Most people rated their personal financial management 4 or 5 out of 5, but 40% responded 3 or worse.
• 37% of people reported sometimes spending more than they could afford.
• 84% said they could benefit from learning about personal financial management

For open ended questions:

• When asked how people determined whether they could afford a purchase: just under a third of respondents referred to having a budget or tracking spending; about half said they checked how much money was in their accounts or how much money they had on hand; and about 15% said that they were just generally frugal or put savings away before spending anything.
• Asked what tools people used to manage their own finances: 29 % said they used a spreadsheet; the same number 29% said none, they used no tools; 18% reported using a finance program like Quicken, Mint.com, one responded with GnuCash; another 18% said they used their bank’s website; and 5% responded that they used common sense.
• When asked what thinks people thought they could benefit from learning answers were all over the board and difficult to put in categories. Budgeting was one that came up several times and investing was another need. Respondents were also concerned about saving, avoiding, debt, tracking spending, getting a job, credit rating, and long-term planning.
• Others responded uniquely saying: “you don’t know what you don’t know;” “keeping spending down at a night at the bar;” and “Don’t take more of my money Feds.”

The wording of some questions was ambiguous or flawed in some other way.

Some people responded to the question of how they knew they could afford something by saying they checked how much money they had, which is a sensible answer. Others said that they used budgeting, which makes us wonder that the two groups of respondents may have interpreted the questions differently.

A later question asked how they thought personal financial management could be best taught and a list with check boxes was given. Several answers got similar number of check marks, leading us to think it may have been better to ask for a ranking or to limit the number of choices, or both (rank the top three).

Overall, the survey results give us ideas of how we can implement an education program, but we need to find out more. It will be interesting to get the results of our full survey, which will cover more topics.

Yesterday night I presented this project idea at Waterloo StartupCamp. It starts out with people putting up ideas for presentation on a whiteboard. We each talk for 30 seconds. Then attendees would then vote on which ones they wanted to hear.

My 30 second pitch was like this:

Hello, I am Ryan Chen-Wing. We want to start co-operative student-run financial services for students. There would be three main benefits. One, student staff would have an amazing experience. Two, students could use financial services that not only save them money, but make them money. Three, students would be educated about personal financial management. I want to get ideas for possible innovative financial products that make sense for students and would be pleased to answer your questions. So, please vote for me.

Out of 12 ideas, I was voted tied for seventh.

Then when it was my turn to give my five minutes, I said:

So, our project name is Waterloo Banking Project. In offering the services of a deposit-taking institution there are two possible was to set up. One is to get a charter independently and the other is to operate in partnership with an existing credit union. An example of the first one is at Georgetown University which is entirely student run and they control $10 million in assets. Examples of the partnership model exist in the student caisse system mainly in Quebec where high school groups operate a student branch of a local caisse
populaire or credit union.

We see four main keys to success in our operations: cultivating a good partnership, raising capital from sponsors and from alumni, developing the students staff and building the organization, and attracting
students as customers.

So, I’d like to get ideas for products and answer your questions. We expect to offer a full suite of products like chequing accounts and savings accounts, credit cards and things like that, but we also want
to have products that make sense for students. I’ll give you an example:

There are many students in co-op at Waterloo. About half of them in any given year will have two co-op work terms and may end up owing some income tax. But under the lifelong learning plan funds only have
to be in a registered plan for three months before they can be withdrawn to pay tuition. So, we could set it up that in September of the year to put savings for tuition in an RRSP. In December they can withdraw it to pay tuition, just as they would from their savings account, but come tax time they would get more of a rebate.

So, that’s something that gives the student more money for switching to us. So, that’s it. The project is called Waterloo Banking Project and our website is waterloobanking.com. That’s our project blog.

Then I got questions about stability, revenue model, and alumni retention. I also got suggestions like bidding to be provider of the alumni credit card.

After the event more people talked to me including designers, a guy suggesting a training program, and someone suggesting places to look for similar models.

update: A friend pointed out that the registered plan idea wouldn’t work as described. Since lifelong learning plan is a loan and doesn’t give additional deduction, in many cases it would be better to save your deductions for when your income is higher.