Most young people don’t choose their first financial institution. They inherit it from their parents, walk into the branch down the street, or choose whatever account is easiest to open at the time.
Five years ago, Excite Credit Union ($618.1M, San Jose, CA) decided not to leave that relationship to chance. Instead, it set a goal that every child would have a savings account, reshaping how it approaches youth banking and even establishing Excite Foundation to realize that vision.
“A foundation makes a lot of sense,” says John Hogan, executive director of Excite Foundation. “It allowed us to expand our reach, create a vehicle for external funding, and work with automatic enrollment opportunities.”
In 2020, the foundation launched its signature program: College in My Future. Every year, it automatically enrolls approximately 600 incoming first graders in San Jose’s Franklin-McKinley School District in a savings account they can access after turning 18. The program aims to start building college savings early, particularly among underserved families who might otherwise delay or lack access to those tools.
Inspiration For Early Wealth Building
Another Path To Early Savings
Excite Credit Union also supports early savings through its Step Up Savings program, which matches deposits at key milestones. Whereas College in My Future focuses on broad access and automatic enrollment, Step Up Savings offers a more traditional, opt-in pathway for families.
Read more
The foundation modeled College in My Future in part off a playbook published by Prosperity Now, a nonprofit focused on economic equity and wellbeing, and the City of San Francisco’s Kindergarten to College program.
“This ties into the broader children’s savings movement, which has been around for about 15 years,” Hogan says. “Learning from others is key. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”
Upon enrollment, the program includes a $50 seed deposit from the foundation. There is also an annual deposit match, which is typically $25 or $50, depending on funding. Importantly, these are not bank accounts; they are ledger accounts, internal records the foundation holds to track balances on the student’s behalf until they access funds later.
“We don’t collect Social Security numbers or tax IDs,” Hogan explains. “That’s one reason you can’t scale this model with traditional bank accounts. You need more information to open those.”
This method removes certain barriers to access that identity requirements can present. It also reduces regulatory friction and protects the credit union from housing hundreds of dormant, inactive accounts.
Inclusion Is Easy. Engagement Takes Work.
A primary measure of success for the program is parent engagement, determined by how many parents have claimed their child’s account or whether they’ve started contributing on their own. According to Hogan, engagement is 20%-30%.
“With automatic enrollment, the benefit is inclusion, but the downside is that parents don’t always know about the account,” the executive director says.
The foundation has introduced incentives to encourage stronger engagement this. For example, parents receive a bonus when they find their account online and create login credentials.
The foundation also goes directly to parents for feedback.
“We recently implemented a parent advisory group,” Hogan says. “It includes seven moms — five native Spanish speakers and two native Vietnamese speakers. In this school district, about 60% of families are Hispanic and about 24% are Vietnamese, so representation is important.”
This council of local moms advised parents are more likely to engage if communication comes from the school. So, the foundation now often sends communications through the school’s parent portal.
“The school will send a message saying, ‘You’re going to receive communication from Excite Foundation. Be sure to check it.’ That’s helped move engagement closer to 30%,” Hogan says.
The Excite Foundation also mails home paper statements, using school district envelopes that include the logos of both entities. These communications provide a translation in Spanish or Vietnamese in addition to English, which Hogan says has further increased engagement and driven more inbound calls.
Relevance In A Crowded Landscape
Perhaps even harder to address than engagement is the fact College in My Future is not the only early college savings program, leaving parents to sort through competing messaging.
In 2022, California launched a program called CalKIDS, which provides $500 to low-income public school students. This accounts for approximately 85% of the school district the Excite Foundation supports. The federal government is also launching its own program under Tax Code Section 530A, commonly known as “Trump Accounts.” These provide $1,000 for children born in certain years, with additional funding coming from philanthropic sources like the Dell Foundation.
“That raises the question: is our program still needed?” Hogan asks. “We’ve continued, but we now spend more time talking about CalKids than our own program because we want families to access $500, not just $50.”
Thankfully, all these options do not have to be mutually exclusive.
“One limitation of CalKids is that parents can’t contribute additional funds,” Hogan says. “Our program could complement that.”
CalKids also functions more like a 529 plan with restrictions on qualifying expenses. Despite its name, College in My Future does not.
“Our program used to be restricted, but based on feedback from our parent advisory group, we removed those,” Hogan explains.
Now, when children turn 18, they can use the funds from their Excite Foundation accounts for anything, not just education expenses.
In 2023, Excite Credit Union and Excite Foundation received a $1 million grant from California’s ScholarShare Investment Board (SIB) to continue to raise awareness of early childhood savings. Looking ahead, Hogan says he hopes to identify more ways to consolidate options and maximize impact.