Ideas

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Child wealth-building programs can create lasting opportunity only when the financial account is connected to trusted relationships, family supports, and multiple pathways for young people. The Beyond the Account framework helps funders, nonprofits, and local governments decide what to build around the account and what to measure beyond enrollment and balances.

Child wealth-building programs are growing rapidly. Funders are deciding where to invest the next dollar, while nonprofits, local governments, and other partners are deciding where to focus their time and effort. This post uses our Beyond the Account framework to make the case for continuing to strengthen the infrastructure around the account—not just the deposit itself. Many child wealth-building initiatives already pair financial investments with trusted partnerships and family support. The next opportunity is to sustain, strengthen, and better connect those investments over time.

In our last post, Beyond the Account: What Should We Be Paying Attention to As Child Wealth-building Programs Grow?, we explored what it takes to help families move from enrolling in a child wealth-building program to actively using it. This post builds on that discussion. As Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs), baby bonds, and similar programs continue to expand, funders and communities face a more challenging question: now that we’ve built the account, what should we build around it? More importantly, how do we continue strengthening the ecosystem — the network of families, schools, community organizations, financial institutions, employers, and public agencies — that helps families turn that investment into lasting opportunity?

The Tension Families Are Caught In

Early wealth-building is receiving more attention and investment than ever before. At the same time, the public supports that help families actually use those investments are facing significant cuts.

Imagine a family whose child has just received a $1,000 or $3,000 wealth-building investment through a child wealth-building program. That’s real news and a real reason for hope. But during that same year, the family may also be facing:

• Less help paying for child care. Several states have reduced or frozen child care subsidy funding or enrollment in 2026 because of federal funding pauses and state budget pressures. CLASP estimates that flat federal child care funding could mean approximately 24,000 fewer children have access to care this year, rising to nearly 50,000 within two years if nothing changes.
• Less help paying for food. The 2025 federal reconciliation law made the largest reduction to SNAP in the program’s history by expanding work requirements to parents of teenagers and older adults. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has already documented that more than 4 million people have lost food benefits since the law took effect.
• Rising costs for transportation, diapers, and housing, on top of everything else. Many families are already under financial strain. In 2023, only 63% of U.S. adults reported they could cover a $400 emergency expense using cash or savings.

None of this is a reason to stop investing in child wealth-building. Instead, it’s a reason to be realistic about what these programs can accomplish and what they are up against.

Financial hardship doesn’t only create immediate stress. It can also erode the hope and long-term thinking these programs are designed to encourage. When a family’s everyday supports are shrinking at the same time a program asks them to think years into the future, the account alone is not sufficient. It must be connected to the broader network of supports families rely on every day.

Child Wealth-building Programs Are Ecosystem-building Strategies

This idea sits at the center of our Beyond the Account framework: the account is the starting point—not the entire strategy. Building on the progress already made across the field, the framework brings together the ecosystem of families, schools, community organizations, financial institutions, employers, and public agencies that helps families translate financial investments into lasting opportunity.

Figure 1. The Beyond the Account Framework. Child wealth-building programs create lasting opportunity by connecting financial investments with trusted relationships, coordinated supports, and long-term pathways for children and families.

The tree offers a simple way to understand how the different elements of child wealth-building programs work together to create lasting opportunity.

Think of a child wealth-building program as a tree. The account is the trunk. It is essential, but it cannot stand alone.

The canopy represents the long-term outcomes every child wealth-building program is working toward: education, career success, homeownership, financial security, and wealth that can be passed from one generation to the next.

The branches represent the coordinated supports that help families turn the account into lasting opportunity: financial coaching, community partnerships, assistance with immediate needs like food and housing, opportunities for young people to explore future possibilities, and access to banking relationships and financial knowledge.

All of this depends on roots that are easy to overlook because they rarely appear as a budget line. Trust, relationships, authentic family voice, community leadership, equity, and a commitment to learning and adapting as programs evolve are represented in the roots because they nourish the entire tree—from the account itself, to the coordinated supports that help families thrive, to the long-term opportunities child wealth-building programs are designed to create.

So why do child wealth-building programs matter—and why now?

Because when they are designed well, they are among the few initiatives that remain connected to a family across a meaningful portion of a child’s life. Whether that begins at birth, in elementary school, or during adolescence, child wealth-building programs offer something most social programs cannot: the opportunity to remain present over time.

That sustained relationship is the real opportunity. A program intentionally designed to stay connected to families throughout a child’s participation can do far more than provide a financial investment. It can help create the conditions that allow those savings to become lasting opportunity.

What This Means for Funders, Nonprofits, and Local Governments

The tree is a practical way to think about where the next dollar, and the next round of effort, should go.

Invest in the Roots

• Fund the relationships that build trust, not just the account itself. Families trust child wealth-building programs when they’re connected to people and places they already know—schools, community organizations, and familiar staff;
• Give families and communities a real voice in how programs are designed and evolve over time, not just through a survey at the end;
• Make fairness part of the design from the start, not something added later. Families don’t all face the same barriers to saving and building wealth, and a program that ignores those differences risks recreating the same gaps it is intended to close; and
• Fund the ongoing work of learning what is happening on the ground. Programs need the capacity to track trust, engagement, and how families experience the program—not just account balances—and to make changes based on what they learn.

Invest in the Branches

• Use data and family feedback to identify where opportunities are unevenly distributed and make adjustments over time. Equity is not achieved through a single program feature—it requires continuously examining who is benefiting, who is being left out, and how implementation can improve.
• Continue learning how families understand and experience financial coaching. In our experience, offering coaching is only part of the equation. Families may not recognize it as a resource for navigating everyday financial decisions, and their willingness to engage is often shaped by prior experiences with money, debt, and financial institutions. Understanding those perspectives can help programs better connect families with supports that already exist;
• Strengthen connections to food, housing, childcare, transportation, and healthcare so families can remain focused on long-term goals while navigating immediate needs;
• Connect savings to multiple pathways to success. Young people’s aspirations extend beyond a single educational pathway. Connecting the financial investment with career exploration, entrepreneurship, the skilled trades, postsecondary education, and mentoring helps young people see how these investments can support the future they envision; and
• Help families build basic financial skills and a relationship with a bank or credit union.

Don’t Ignore the Canopy

• Fund the work of connecting child wealth-building programs to the broader safety net instead of treating them as separate efforts competing for the same family’s attention.
• Track what’s happening around a program, not just inside it. If a state cuts a benefit that families rely on, it may affect how they engage with child wealth-building programs. Understanding those broader changes provides important context for interpreting participation and engagement over time.
• Support programs and funders in talking to one another and comparing notes. No single program can fix a shrinking safety net on its own, but a field that’s honest about the problem can build steadier, more consistent supports around families.

Measuring What Matters: Looking Beyond the Account

The Beyond the Account Framework provides a way to identify and measure the ecosystem surrounding child wealth-building programs. It recognizes that many initiatives already invest in partnerships and supports beyond the account, while highlighting how those investments help families translate financial assets into lasting opportunity.

Those conditions closely align with the Social Determinants of Health, including economic stability, education access and quality, social and community context, neighborhood environments, and access to resources. While child wealth-building initiatives cannot address every determinant directly, they often strengthen the relationships, connections, and supports that help families navigate these systems more successfully.

This perspective suggests the field may also need to broaden how it defines and measures success. Account balances, enrollment, and educational attainment remain important outcomes, but they tell only part of the story. If the goal is long-term wealth-building, evaluation should also examine whether families are becoming more financially resilient, more connected to community resources, more engaged with schools, and better able to navigate opportunities that support their children’s futures.

Download the full Beyond the Account Framework, including guiding questions for designing and strengthening your own child wealth-building initiative.

References

Center for Law and Social Policy. (2025). FY25 Continuing Resolution Means Fewer Children Have Access to Child Care Through CCDBG.

Center for Law and Social Policy. (2025). House Proposed Level Funding for CCDBG Would Mean Nearly 50,000 Children Lose Access Since Last Increase.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2026). SNAP Tracker: People Are Losing Food Assistance as the Harmful 2025 Republican Megabill Takes Effect.

Fernández, R. (2026). Republicans’ Reconciliation Bill Has Already Left Millions Without SNAP Benefits. NOTUS.

Congressional Budget Office. (2025). Estimated Effects of Public Law 119-21 on Participation and Benefits Under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2025). Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2024.

Urban Institute. (2025). Expanded SNAP Work Requirements Would Reduce Benefits for Millions of Families.

Urban Institute. (2025). How the Senate Budget Reconciliation SNAP Proposals Will Affect Families in Every US State.

Download the full Beyond the Account Framework, including guiding questions for designing and strengthening your own child wealth-building initiative.

About the Authors

Questions this post answers:

• Why are child wealth-building accounts alone not enough to create lasting opportunity?
• What is the Beyond the Account framework?
• How do trusted relationships and family support strengthen child wealth-building programs?
• How do cuts to childcare, food, housing, transportation, and healthcare supports affect families’ ability to benefit from these programs?
• What should funders invest in beyond the account deposit?
• What roles do family voice, community leadership, trust, and equity play in program design?
• How can nonprofits and local governments connect child wealth-building programs to broader support systems?
• How can programs link savings to education, careers, entrepreneurship, skilled trades, and mentoring?
• What should programs measure beyond enrollment and account balances?
• How can child wealth-building programs support financial resilience and long-term wealth?
• Why should these programs be viewed as ecosystem-building strategies?
• How can funders, programs, and communities coordinate their efforts more effectively?