Forty years of helping make big changes for kids

Nelea Lem was four years old the first time she walked through the doors of a children’s hospital. Her older sister was being treated for a rare muscular dystrophy at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and the family spent months far from home waiting, hoping, and leaning on a care team that looked after all of them. 

In a personal account shared with Children’s Miracle Network (CMN), Lem shared that the hospital didn’t just treat her sister. The staff helped her family with living arrangements, made sure Lem herself was looked after and entertained, and surrounded them with empathy and dignity during one of the hardest seasons of their lives.

Decades later, that experience still drives Lem’s work as VP of sales at iQ Credit Union in Vancouver, Washington. In 2025, she led Pints with Purpose, a CU4Kids fundraising social held during the GoWest MAXX conference, raising $80,000 in a single evening for Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. Her sister has since passed away, but Lem sees her CU4Kids involvement as a continuation of that legacy. In her words, credit unions possess a rare superpower: collaboration.

That superpower is on full display in 2026. Credit Unions for Kids (CU4Kids), the credit union movement’s fundraising partnership with CMN, is marking its 40th anniversary. At the same time, CMN has unveiled a refreshed brand identity and the Health For All Kids Impact Pledge, a $1 billion, two-year fundraising campaign. Since CU4Kids was founded in 1986, the credit union industry has raised $250 million for the network of children’s hospitals ($20.9 million in 2025 alone), making credit unions one of CMN’s top fundraising partners.

Where financial health meets children’s health

The partnership works because of the cooperative model itself. Credit unions are member-owned, not-for-profit institutions whose operating philosophy, people helping people, is baked into their structure rather than bolted onto a marketing campaign. And because medical debt remains the leading driver of financial ruin in the United States, investing in children’s hospitals addresses both sides of family well-being: the physical and the financial.

Tansley Stearns, president and CEO at orsa credit union and board chair of “In The Cellar,” a premier CU4Kids wine auction, put it this way: “Credit unions have always been generous in their giving, but sometimes it’s diffused and that makes it harder to tell our story. When we unite for a common cause, it allows us to elevate the impact we make.”

Nobody illustrates that bridge quite like Melissa Gehl, National CU4Kids Manager at Children’s Miracle Network, who previously served as chief marketing officer at Leading Edge Credit Union in Worthington, Minnesota. Her career arc, from a small-town cooperative to a national role managing the credit union industry’s largest charitable partnership, speaks to how deeply credit union values travel with the people who live them.

From hospital beds to classrooms

In New Mexico, the credit union difference shows up in a classroom most people never see. Connected Academy at UNM Children’s Hospital provides educational support to pediatric patients and their siblings during treatment. Credit unions statewide, working through the Credit Union Association of New Mexico, fund a full-time educator who adapts lesson plans to each child’s medical needs and advocates with schools back home. To date, New Mexico credit unions have donated more than $650,000 to sustain the program.

One Connected Academy student, Dylan, was critically injured in a motor vehicle accident at age 10. For months, he could not speak or move his head. But with creativity from his teacher Antoinette, Dylan was able to communicate with his family, share jokes and even compose a poem for Mother’s Day.  

“This is more than a program; it is a lifeline for children,” said Andy Ramos, president and CEO of State Employees Credit Union in New Mexico. “Standing behind something so impactful for our children has united us in a way that reflects the very best of who we are as credit unions.”

In Alabama, the connection between credit union employees and children’s hospitals is personal in a different way. Tyler Lewallen, a mortgage servicing specialist at AmFirst Credit Union in Birmingham, brought his seven-week-old son Noah to Children’s of Alabama the Tuesday before Thanksgiving 2024 for a routine checkup. Noah had a 103-degree fever. After two lumbar punctures, the diagnosis came the next morning: bacterial meningitis. The family spent two weeks in the hospital while Noah received IV antibiotics around the clock. In an account shared with CMN, Lewallen wrote that Noah is now almost 18 months old with zero residual effects, an outcome he credits entirely to the staff at Children’s of Alabama.

Collaboration as a superpower

In May 2025, 12 Oregon and Southwest Washington credit unions, including First Tech Federal, OnPoint Community, Rivermark Community, and iQ, launched a joint fundraising campaign through synchronized pop-ups on their online banking platforms. Those same institutions have raised more than $15.2 million through the CU4Kids Northwest Classic golf tournament since 2000.

On the national stage, the annual Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Mile & 5K in Washington, D.C., backed by more than 100 credit unions and partner organizations through Credit Union Miracle Day, presented CMN with a check for $506,000 this month, bringing the race’s 24-year cumulative total to $12.5 million.  

“We are thrilled to celebrate our 24th year as title sponsor of this iconic Washington tradition,” said John Bratsakis, Chair of Credit Union Miracle Day. “The generosity of credit unions, runners, and volunteers is truly inspiring.

“It’s credit unions’ ‘people helping people’ philosophy put into action,” said Catherine Porterfield, vice president of member engagement and service at America’s Credit Unions.

The same weekend on the West Coast, the Credit Union SACTOWN Run in Sacramento drew more than 1,700 runners and raised $208,000 for 11 CMN hospitals across California and Nevada.

Behind the statistics are stories that keep credit union professionals coming back. Chance Hartley, a risk manager at CapEd Credit Union in Idaho, knows that firsthand.  

His son Dean, nicknamed “Dean Burrito” by his nurses, was born at 30 weeks, weighing 1 pound 6 ounces. He spent 80 days in the NICU at St. Luke’s Boise, Idaho’s local CMN hospital. Five operations, seven hospitalizations and a feeding tube that supplied 100% of his nutrition until age four followed.  

Thanks to St. Luke’s and CMN, every hospital stay came with toys, resources, and support that helped Dean understand his procedures and feel less afraid. Today, he is a healthy, mischievous seven-year-old who loves to read and build Lego sets.

The next chapter

The Health for All Kids Impact Pledge arrives as children’s hospitals face mounting pressure from federal funding cuts and increasingly complex pediatric needs.  

“Children’s hospitals have to do more with less,” said Aimee J. Daily, Ph.D., president and CEO of Children’s Miracle Network. “The Impact Pledge demonstrates our expanded commitment to participate in the solution.” Every dollar raised through CU4Kids benefits the local children’s hospital to fund what is needed most.

For Lem, whose journey with CMN began in a hospital waiting room at age 4, the 40th anniversary is both a milestone and a starting line. In her written account, she traced the arc from the founding of CU4Kids in Portland in 1986, when local CEOs came together to help families pay medical bills, to 40 years later, funding an entire floor and a state-of-the-art operating room at Doernbecher. That arc, she wrote, is what “people helping people” truly looks like as we work together to make big changes for all kids.

Credit unions interested in activating CU4Kids fundraising can visit cu4kids.org. To sign the Health For All Kids Impact Pledge, visit cmn.org/pledge.