Between December 2002 and March 2005 ABCUL organised an action research project “Creating wealth in the West Midlands through sustainable credit unions”.

• Building beacon credit unions – a central part of the project based on the principle that the development of a number of strong credit unions in a region acts as a model and an inspiration for others.
• Cascading good practice across the region – a programme of training seminars and implementation support which disseminated learning arising from the Beacon programme and involved other credit unions in the process of thinking about effective action.
• Protecting low income credit unions – a series of interventions aimed at stabilising smaller credit unions that served low income communities and had difficulties in generating sufficient income or external subsidies to support their operations.