Fund of Mutual Financial Aid of the credit union can be extended by sponsorship contributions from businesses, organizations, including on a returnable basis. The first credit union in the United States was founded in 1909. by the group of Franco-American Catholics in Manchester, New Hampshire, and was called "Cooperative Credit Association of St. Mary. " Principles of cooperative democracy and interaction were adequate to the purposes for which people joined credit unions. In the U.S. credit unions timely and full repayment of loans is a common phenomenon. Unpaid and delinquent loans are not more than 3% of their amount. At the organization of the credit union it is important that people know each other and know the extent to which each of them is trustworthy. Cooperation between credit unions, how they would not have been named, took place always, from the moment when the movement moved outside one credit union. As of the January 1, 2012 the national associations and confederations unite more than 196 million members participating in the 51,013 credit unions in 100 countries. Historically, credit unions have grown from the experience of credit cooperatives, but they took the experience of organizations of mutual aid of citizens by moving methods of social self-protection from labor and toward consumption. U.S. credit unions have another significant difference from the credit cooperatives of farmers: the first have major proportion of short-term loans, the second - long and mostly in real estate.