At its 2016 Leadership Conference on June 17th, CU*Answers recognized rkGoBig, a collaboration of credit unions in the eastern U.S. and headquartered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as the winner of the 6th annual “Spirit of CU*Answers” award.

rkGoBig is a CUSO started by six credit unions in the eastern U.S. Based on the work of Mid-Atlantic Corporate FCU’s Rekindle Initiative (rekindlecu.org), the foundation of the business is to help save the small credit union. Peter Barnard, rkGOBig CEO and facilitator, accepted the award, along with four of the six rkGoBig credit union founding partners who were also present at the conference, which was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. According to Barnard, “Our first tactic is to address the very real limits of our size in a market that increasingly values large scale. We believe that only through collaboration can we achieve the scale efficiency and reduced costs critical to survival.”

The Spirit of CU*Answers award, established in 2011, recognizes a client credit union for excellence in a variety of areas. In addition to the focus on collaboration and cooperation exemplified by this year’s winner, the award also allows the CUSO to recognize credit unions who have strong volunteer programs, who’ve demonstrated particularly strong execution and performance or a high level of adoption of CU*Answers tools, who have found new ways to demonstrate commitment to the 7 Cooperative Principles, or who’ve started new businesses in the network.