Like any financial institution, credit unions have the financial resources. Credit unions also differ from the traditional consumer cooperatives. 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. In some cases, the initiators of credit unions can be trade unions, associations such as social support centers and others. Credit unions, like today's credit unions, emerged in the 19th century in Germany as a result of crop failure and famine. 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.