RICHMOND, Va. (1/14/15)--No one should be blindsided by a shabby credit score.

That's why the Credit Union Cares Foundation, a subsidiary of the Virginia Credit Union League, recently announced a new collaborative project to help educate members and communities about the importance of obtaining and monitoring credit reports to achieve financial safety and soundness.

Called Smart Credit Check, created by the foundation's financial education committee, the campaign also serves as a business development opportunity, as the project can lead to greater awareness for credit unions as trusted financial partners.

The league also plans to collect statistics from all participating credit unions to demonstrate the impact of the campaign and to seek potential funding for growing the project's visibility and service offerings.

Smart Credit Check is packaged into three free toolkits downloadable from the league's website.

The toolkits include:

• The educational toolkit, which provides content for teaching members and potential new members about how to pull their credit report safely and how to make sense of it;
• The marketing and public relations toolkit, which provides templates of marketing and advertising materials for the credit union to identify itself as a "Smart Credit Check" credit union; and
• The credit union enrichment toolkit, which focuses on how to implement the campaign. The kit contains a PowerPoint presentation for credit union staff, demonstrating how to review a credit report with a member while living up to the credit union philosophy of people helping people.