GEMC Credit Union is celebrating 50 years of providing financial support to those who keep the lights on for a large percentage of Georgians.

“I love our credit union,” said Ronnie Crews, a former HR manager who retired from Okefenoke REMC in 2016. “Very few people in our coop ever broke membership with GEMC Credit Union. That says a lot because in this day and age, it can be hard to please people.”

Crews has been a member of GEMC since the late 1970s, when Okefenoke REMC was added to the credit union’s field of membership. Those were still early days for the financial institution.

GEMC began in 1969 as a way to provide personalized financial service to employees of the Georgia Electrical Membership Cooperatives. In those days, many employees working for the coops found themselves less than welcomed by for-profit financial institutions in the areas they served.  

“These employees weren’t making a ton of money, but they had steady jobs and they were doing important work,” said Mark Nofi, vice president of marketing at GEMC Credit Union. “Electric cooperatives were invented by former President Franklin Roosevelt specifically to solve the problem of getting affordable power to rural areas of Georgia. Most rural towns would be in the dark without them. Still, a lot of the banks in these towns didn’t want to serve EMC employees. They wanted customers with money.”

To solve this problem, the EMC managers decided their employees may benefit from pivoting away from for-profit banking. Instead, the managers turned toward a business model they already understood well – the cooperative.  GEMC Credit Union began at Planter EMC in Millen, Ga., and quickly gained popularity among employees of other EMCs across Georgia.

Today, the credit union serves employees and family members of almost every electric coop in the state, as well as the member consumers of GreyStone Power in the west Georgia market.

 “The people I worked with at the coop, they really were just like family to me – I knew their children and everything,” Crews said. “The EMC’s are a big family network all across Georgia, and the credit union became part of that network. There’s security in knowing that you’re part of a larger group that shares a common interest.”

Crews said he consistently found the credit union employees knew and respected him, affording him financial options he didn’t feel he had at other financial institutions.

“My cousin was the CEO at our local bank and he always made me feel that I had to have a cosigner to get anything,” Crews said. “The day we joined the credit union, I told him: ‘Today this stops. I will deal with the credit union from now on.’ I never needed a cosigner. I was just able to walk in and get what I needed.”

Over the years, GEMC Credit Union evolved its services to become increasingly convenient. Crews said he has become especially enamored with the mobile app since his retirement.

“My office has always acted as my local branch. After retiring, I didn’t want to run back to the office where I had worked for 44 years every time I had to deposit my checks,” Crews said. “I love the way I can use mobile check deposit. I don’t know how I would manage without my iPhone and my mobile app.”

GEMC isn’t done innovating.

“We expect 2019 to be a milestone year,” Nofi said. “On March 1, we’ll be holding a special annual meeting for our members at the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins, where we’ll unveil innovations that will take GEMC into the next 50 years.”

Crews hopes to make the trip to Warner Robins to experience GEMC’s annual meeting. Through all the credit union’s changes – and through his own retirement – Crews said he considers GEMC part of the EMC network and part of his work family.

 “That personal touch has remained the same over the years,” he said. “When I’ve called, I’ve never been treated like I wasn’t the most important person that they were talking to.”

In fact, Crews has trusted the credit union with his own family, opening savings accounts for first his parents and, later, for his two grandsons.

“I love GEMC Credit Union,” he said. “They’re just a fabulous group of people. I know they’ll be around for a long time – and I look forward to working with them for the rest of my life.”