Fund of Mutual Financial Aid of the credit union can be extended by sponsorship contributions from businesses, organizations, including on a returnable basis. Credit unions also differ from the traditional consumer cooperatives. Members of credit unions place in credit unions usually free fund balances, ie those that remain after expenses devoted to education of children, the acquisition of new properties, additional pension benefits, etc. 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. Shareholders in corporate organizations are basic credit unions, besides the same union can be a shareholder of several corporate organizations. Credit unions, like today's credit unions, emerged in the 19th century in Germany as a result of crop failure and famine. Standards by which credit unions build their work do not coincide with the standards and regulations of consumer cooperation of the usual type. Credit unions are financial institutions, financial cooperatives of citizens, and in this capacity they are above all associations of people, not unification of capitals, which is typical, for example, for public companies. To increase the number of credit unions in 1979 was adopted the corresponding law that serves as the legal basis of their activity.