Area Credit Unions Win Prestigious Diamond Awards for Marketing

Credit unions across our region made a strong showing at the 2026 Diamond Awards, earning top honors for standout marketing achievements. The awards are presented by America's Credit Unions and recognize excellence and innovation in credit union marketing. They were presented last month during a ceremony in Aurora, Colorado.

Congratulations to the following Diamond Award Winners:

This marks SECU's first Diamond Award, recognizing its work on the redesigned website for the SECU MD Foundation-an independent nonprofit affiliated with SECU. The organization shared how the new site was designed to better reflect its evolving mission and messaging.

The SECU MD Foundation aims to create stronger Maryland communities by empowering individuals to achieve personal and financial wellness. The Foundation often acts as a warm welcome and first touch for non-members looking to engage with the credit union, and though part of SECU, the Foundation exists as its own entity - with a different mission and different stakeholders. In 2025, it became clear that a website redesign was the strongest path forward to ensure its updated messaging and mission statement were properly reflected, and aesthetics, user experience and information hierarchy were improved.

By including fresh infographics, new and clean photography from actual SECU events and programs, as well as clear calls to action, site visitors can now navigate the site intentionally and easily. Since the project completion and relaunch of the newly designed website, it has seen an over 37% increase in average daily traffic and a 35.1% increase in year-over-year annual views.

"The SECU MD Foundation's website redesign was rooted in a people-first approach. We sought to improve user experience, establish a thoughtful yet fun brand identity and ensure information related to our scholarships, grants and financial education programs was accessible and clearly mapped out for site visitors - whether their first or fortieth introduction to the SECU MD Foundation," said Charlotte Owsianny, Executive Director of the SECU MD Foundation. "I am so proud of the work that went into accomplishing this project and seeing it come to fruition, and to be recognized on a national scale amongst so many of our fellow credit union and nonprofit peers is truly special. We look forward to even more success and innovation as we carve out the future of the SECU MD Foundation."

"We are thrilled to be honored with an ACU Diamond Award," said David Sweiderk, SECU president and CEO. "This award reflects our strong marketing efforts, but also the incredible creativity, strategy, and dedication of our entire SECU and SECU MD Foundation teams. We are immensely proud of the thoughtful work they do every day to connect with our members in more meaningful ways."

In addition to this recent recognition by the ACU, SECU was recently named a 2025 Top Workplace by The Baltimore Sun for the fifth consecutive year. SECU President and CEO David Sweiderk was also awarded The Baltimore Sun's prestigious Leadership Award - one of just three awardees recognized in 2025. The credit union has been named to Forbes' 2024 list of Best-in-State Credit Unions and received a Future Branches Innovator Award for the implementation of digital-first technologies and rollout of its Virtual Financial Center.