Teens Get Early Start to Wealth Building

DENVER, June 22, 2026 — Ignite Futures Fund, co-created by Impact Charitable and Gary Community Ventures, launched this month and will provide 125 Colorado high school students a $20,000 investment account as well as financial education and peer support. The goal of the program is to give young people access to capital markets in order to build wealth and to create a model where every person can have a stake in the prosperity of our state.

Participants — high‑school sophomores and juniors from families who qualify for Medicaid or CHP+ across Denver, Colorado Springs, Durango and Fort Morgan — will attend peer gatherings, receive financial education and have access to optional financial coaching to help them think about how to best leverage their investment. Participants in the program may only use the funds for one of four wealth-building purposes: post-secondary education or training, homeownership, investing in or starting a business, or long-term investments such as retirement. Funds to participants are distributed by Scholar Fund, a leading payments and benefits administrator. 

The capital is actively invested and paired with financial education through Everfi, a national digital-first financial education provider, and Rapunzl, a mobile app that lets students practice investing through a stock-market simulation. 

“We know that access to even a small amount of wealth early in life can open doors that often stay closed for too long,” said Jourdan McGinn, Ignite Futures Fund Co-Lead at Impact Charitable. “Ignite Futures Fund gives young people across Colorado a financial head start and the knowledge to make the most of it.”

Ignite Futures Fund invests in older teens, which will allow researchers to begin studying the impact of early wealth-building accounts years sooner and help inform and shape programs like Trump Accounts and other early wealth programs that begin at birth.

The program’s mixed‑methods evaluation will provide evidence for public and private‑sector strategies to expand early wealth‑building accounts, inform larger‑scale models and unlock public dollars through lasting policy. An independent evaluation of the program, led by Prosono, will use a matched comparison group to measure how early access to capital and financial education influences students’ confidence, decision‑making and long‑term opportunities.

“We often talk about income as a pathway to opportunity, but wealth is what gives families the ability to plan ahead, invest in their future and weather unexpected challenges,” said Jill Hawley, Chief Impact Officer at Gary Community Ventures. “Ignite Futures Fund is helping us understand how broader access to assets can create opportunity, while demonstrating how philanthropic and private capital can help more young people gain an early stake in our economy.”

Ignite Futures Fund was created against a backdrop of significant wealth inequality in the United States, where the bottom 50% of households hold just 2.5% of the nation’s wealth and the top 10% hold approximately 68%. The program is designed to explore whether earlier access to invested assets can help more young people participate in wealth-building.

About Ignite Futures Fund

Impact Charitable is a Denver-based philanthropic capital intermediary that serves as a bridge between funders and communities designing responsive pathways that unlock and accelerate the flow of impact first capital into communities, with a focus on expanding access to capital for communities often overlooked by traditional finance and philanthropy. Since its founding, Impact Charitable has moved more than $100 million into communities through grants, impact-first investments, and custom capital strategies. Impact Charitable has supported more than 29,000 individuals and families through direct cash, wealth-building, and financial mobility initiatives.

Gary Community Ventures is an impermanent philanthropic organization committed to using all of its resources by 2035 to transform systems and build wealth for Colorado kids and families. We use all of our tools – catalytic grantmaking, impact movements, policy and advocacy, and new ventures – to tackle complex challengesand create longer-lasting impact than any single approach could achieve alone.We partner with leaders across early childhood, education and workforce development, housing, benefits and more to ensure systems work best for the kids and families they serve and to invest in opportunities to help families build wealth and own assets that grow in value over time. 

Ignite Futures Fund is made possible with the support of philanthropic partners, including the Dakota Foundation, Gates Family Foundation, Gary Community Ventures, GE Johnson Foundation, Goodman Philanthropies, Joseph Henry Edmondson Foundation, the Lane Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Rose Community Foundation and the Windy Pines Foundation. A network of community-based partners provided accessible, community-centered outreach, including Aurora Public Schools, College Access Navigators, Compañeros, Denver Scholarship Foundation, Durango Public Schools, Peak Education, and United Way of Morgan County.

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