Teachers Credit Union — Everwise: ten dollars in a tin cash box

1931 – present

The founding: South Bend's first credit union was founded in the same year its banks were falling. Harold H. Blanchard, a mathematics teacher at South Bend Central High School, formed a committee in February 1931 to organize a credit union for the city's teachers; an Indiana state charter was granted in July 1931; the South Bend Teachers Federation Credit Union was formed by September; and it opened for business on 13 October 1931. Blanchard served as its secretary-treasurer for a salary of one dollar a year and kept the credit union's funds — ten dollars in shares — in a tin cash box at his own home. The credit union's own history adds the detail the charter record would never carry: six of the eight teachers who signed its charter were women, and its first member was Alice Craft. It was renamed Teachers Credit Union, and for ninety years it grew from that cash box into the largest credit union in Indiana.

Everwise: Teachers Credit Union passed 300,000 members and fifty branches, with assets of about five billion dollars, headquartered at 110 South Main Street in South Bend. On 26 June 2023 it took a new name, Everwise Credit Union, judging the teachers' name too narrow for a membership long since opened beyond the schools. The institution Blanchard organized in the Depression's worst year is, by assets and membership, one of the two or three largest financial institutions headquartered in South Bend today — larger than every bank in this section except 1st Source.

Sources:

1. Teachers Credit Union, 2021 annual report — the credit union's own account of Blanchard, the committee of February 1931, the state charter of July 1931, the opening of 13 October 1931, the dollar-a-year secretary-treasurer, the tin cash box and the ten dollars in shares; and its headquarters at 110 South Main Street.
2. Everwise Credit Union, the credit union's own institutional history — Alice Craft as first member and the six women among the eight charter signers.
3. GlobeNewswire release, 26 June 2023, and the Indianapolis Business Journal — the renaming of Teachers Credit Union as Everwise Credit Union, its membership above 300,000 and its standing as Indiana's largest credit union.