Notre Dame Federal Credit Union — Room 329 of the Main Building

1941 – present

The founding: Notre Dame Federal Credit Union was founded in May 1941 by Lou Buckley and John Sheehan, two university men who judged that the people who worked at Notre Dame needed a lender of their own. It opened in Room 329 of the Administration Building — the golden-domed Main Building — and thirty members joined on its first day. (The credit union's own press boilerplate tells the same founding with the office as "the night watchman's office in the Main Building"; its About page's Room 329 is carried here, with the variant noted.) Its first loan was $100, to a secretary in the Alumni Office. The credit union is and has always been independent of the University of Notre Dame — a separate, member-owned federal credit union serving the university's people and, as its field of membership widened, the wider Catholic and Michiana community — and it stands in the unincorporated Notre Dame CDP, which is part of this history's ground.

The credit union today: From Room 329 it grew to a headquarters at 1828 Moreau Drive, Notre Dame, Indiana, and a membership its own releases put between 57,000 and 66,000 across the years 2015–2025. It describes itself as the nation's largest Catholic-oriented credit union, and the description is printed as its own. With Everwise it gives South Bend a distinction few American cities hold: two of its largest hometown financial institutions are not banks at all, but credit unions founded in 1931 and 1941 by teachers and university staff, in the decades when the city's chartered banks were failing and consolidating around them.

Sources:

1. Notre Dame Federal Credit Union, "About" institutional history — the founding in May 1941 by Lou Buckley and John Sheehan, Room 329 of the Administration Building, thirty members on the first day, and the first loan of $100 to a secretary in the Alumni Office.
2. Notre Dame Federal Credit Union, press releases and boilerplate, 2015–2025 — the night watchman's office variant, the headquarters at 1828 Moreau Drive, the membership figures, independence from the University, and the "nation's largest Catholic-oriented credit union" description, printed as its own.