Our Story

MyPath (formerly Mission SF Community Financial Center) is a national nonprofit based in San Francisco. MyPath was initially established as the nonprofit affiliate of Mission SF Federal Credit Union. In 2011, MyPath spun off as an independent nonprofit.

Our Roots

In 1996, we were established as Mission Community Financial Assistance by the Board of Directors of the then Mission Area Federal Credit Union (MAFCU). Founded in 1971, MAFCU’s mission was to serve immigrant Latinos in San Francisco’s Mission District who were shut out of the financial services mainstream. Its Board sought to create a non-profit arm that could raise funds, develop and deliver programs for its members, and gather impact data on its services. With a federal grant to launch a Youth Credit Union Program (YCUP), the nonprofit arm of MAFCU was born.

Twenty young people from the Mission and South of Market neighborhoods met every Saturday for a year to dream big, envisioning and then creating California’s first-ever youth-run credit union. In 1997, the YCUP was launched, and by the early 2000s, it was the largest youth savings program in the Bay area and supported over 500 children and youth to get started with saving and asset accumulation.

These values have guided us all along– youth leadership in design, delivery and evaluation; ongoing data collection to feed continuous program improvement; and the importance of getting youth and young adult financial product design right. Given our roots as the nonprofit arm of a community development credit union, design and delivery of financial products for low-income people is in our DNA.