Like the credit cooperatives, credit unions form associations of a higher level, which are called corporate credit unions. Income derived from the provision of services to its members, does not become the profit of credit union and is distributed among its members in proportion to their savings. 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. The specifics of credit unions and, in some sense, their uniqueness lies in the fact that they work not for profit and do not appropriate profit.