While serving time at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn NY, Jake O’Hara and Melvin Lowe became friends – and, like many others there, they spent a lot of time pondering and talking about their circumstances and their futures. They also talked to many inmates who would be returning home after long stints in prison, almost all of whom had significant concerns about whether they would be able to successfully reintegrate into their communities and avoid reincarceration. The biggest challenges that most of those inmates said they would face were:
– Finding affordable housing; – Finding employment; and – Achieving financial stability.
O’Hara and Lowe faced many challenges themselves when they were released from MDC but – unlike many inmates – they had good professional contacts and financial support from friends and family. Even as they went about reestablishing themselves, however, they still nurtured the hope that they could help inmates less fortunate than themselves – and took steps to make that happen.
They started by doing more research on the problems facing Returning Citizens – which corroborated what they had been told by the inmates at MDC about the major barriers to successful re-entry. That same research also revealed the staggering scope of the problem: each year, about 700,000 individuals are released from federal and state prisons, and another 9,000,000 from county and local jails.
In discussions with newly released Returning Citizens, O’Hara and Lowe learned that many of them needed to borrow money for things that traditional banks and credit unions did not cover. This included money that was needed to: – Secure housing (e.g., first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and security deposit); – Attend technical training courses that were needed to obtain certain jobs; – Have the capital needed to start a business or purchase a low-cost franchise; – Pay for the license and/or tools they would need to return to their former trades; and – Obtain clothes that would be suitable for the jobs they hoped to obtain.
Based on these discussions, O’Hara suggested the possibility that they work to create a credit union that would focus on the unique financial needs of Returning Citizens. Determined to launch the first-ever such credit union, O’Hara recruited Ryan and Swede Tomazin, Dr. Denise F. Poli, and his son, N. Alexander O’Hara, to help him put together a proposal regarding the idea to the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the federal agency that charters and supervises all federal credit unions. Over the course of several months, the NCUA approved the general concept of the proposed New Leaf Federal Credit Union (NLFCU), whose members would be drawn from the membership of a to-be-formed nonprofit, tax-exempt organization named the New Leaf Coalition.
Working with the people he had recruited to help him – and whenever he had spare time – O’Hara was able to accomplish several important steps in transforming his idea into reality, such as: – Establishing the New Leaf Coalition as a nonprofit membership organization in the District of Columbia; – Obtaining a Federal Employer Identification Number for the Coalition from the IRS; – Securing Section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status for the Coalition from the IRS; and – Establishing a temporary Board of Directors – and enacting bylaws – for the Coalition.
Despite numerous attempts, O’Hara was unable to find financial backers in the District of Columbia for the proposed credit union. Thus, in early 2019, O’Hara met with Lowe in New York City to reassess how best to move forward. During that meeting, they made several key decisions. First, they would shift the focus of their efforts from Washington, DC to New York City. Second, they would seek to obtain enough funding to allow them to devote more of their time to the effort. Third, they would seek to create a linkage with an established entity that could provide the credibility and gravitas that the initiative needed in order to move forward.
In the ensuing months, O’Hara and Lowe met with Flores A. Forbes, an Associate Vice President for Strategic Policy and Program Implementation at Columbia University whose focus is economic development, entrepreneurship, community development, and criminal justice change. A former Black Panther who spent 5-years in a California prison, Forbes immediately understood the positive impact that the Coalition and the proposed credit union could have in helping Returning Citizens reintegrate into their communities and avoid reincarceration.
With Forbes’ guidance, the Coalition filed to do business in New York State, registered with the New York State Charities Bureau, and established an office in New York City. It also recruited a new Board of Directors that held its inaugural meeting – and elected officers – on August 22, 2019.
At this point, the Coalition is focused on raising the funds that are needed for it to become fully operational – and to undertake the remaining tasks that must be completed to establish the proposed New Leaf Federal Credit Union. The Coalition plans to begin full-scale operations as of January 1, 2023 – and hopes to have the proposed New Leaf Federal Credit Union up-and-running within 18-24 months.