It often feels like kids grow up so quickly—from kindergarten one day to college the next! But for those working on Children’s Savings Account (CSA) programs, the wait for participants to reach college-age has felt long. But now the wait is over, at least in San Francisco. The first cohort of Kindergarten to College (K2C) participants has graduated high school! When Treasurer José Cisneros and then-Mayor (now Governor) Gavin Newsom kicked off the program in 2011, it was the first municipal, universal CSA program. Now K2C is leading the way as the first large program to have a graduating cohort.

I talked with K2C program manager, Mohan Kanungo, about this exciting time for the program and the CSA field.

[The interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

Shira: What does it mean to you and the rest of the staff to reach this milestone?

Mohan: It's momentous. Until now, we’ve only been able to talk to folks about the importance of saving and fostering that future orientation. But now the rubber hits the road, and we can actually get people their money. It gives a lot more credibility to the program. I'm excited to see how this might impact savings and participation.

Before, there were a lot of unknowns around distributing funds, which created a lot of excitement but also some anxiety. I can imagine it might feel that way for other programs too. But there's going be some insights and learnings we can share that can help others.

Shira: What was your outreach process for letting participants know how to obtain their money?

Mohan: Last fall, we attended financial aid workshops at schools to let students know they could get their K2C money in the spring. We used that opportunity to capture students’ contact information, since before we mainly had parents’ contact information.

In the spring, when the form for distribution of funds was live, we sent letters, texts and emails to participants explaining how to request the funds. We also leveraged district communications about graduation to share information. We created a new video celebrating our graduates that we could share on social media. Our most successful strategy was classroom events where we helped students fill out the form.

Shira: What is the process for participants to obtain their funds? 

Mohan: The form for requesting funds is on our website. It’s a dynamic form, rather than a pdf. We realized that with the volume of requests we would be getting, we needed a way to receive and process requests at scale. This form can also be used for other account requests, such as financial hardship withdrawals.

To complete the form, participants start by inputting their date of birth and account number or student ID, as an initial verification. Next, they select from the payment options—transfer to a bank account via Zelle, receiving a check or transferring funds to a 529 account. Then they affirm that they're going to use the money for postsecondary education.

Shira: What feedback have you heard from the participants about how they’re using the funds?

Mohan: We asked participants in the form about where they plan to go to school. About 75% said they’re going to a four-year university, about 20% said community college and the remainder was a mix of apprenticeships, training and vocational schools. For how they would use the money, 43% said for supplies, about a third said towards tuition, and about 22% said for other education-related expenses. Also, about half of participants requesting funds had only the initial $50 deposit in their accounts, about 25% had earned additional incentives and about 25% had made deposits.

Shira: Are you conducting any evaluations of this first cohort of graduates?

Mohan: Yes. We've already kicked off the design phase of the research. Even though this is a multi-year study, we'll probably have some insights to share in the next year or two from this first cohort and later on, there will be more findings from subsequent cohorts.

Shira: What has changed with K2C since the first cohort in 2011?

Mohan: One key programmatic change we made due to COVID, but are keeping, is that people who need to withdraw funds because of financial hardship don’t lose their incentives. We understand that the road to recovery from COVID looks different for families with low incomes and will remain so because of housing instability and financial insecurity. This change is important for building credibility and trust with the community.

We’ve also evolved around our priority on savings. Now we're looking at different forms of engagement as successful measures of participation. There are people who aren't in a place to make a deposit but that will, for example, view their balance. So, we’re charting a path of what successful engagement looks like and thinking about different entry points.

Shira: What ideas do you have for the future of K2C and CSAs?

Mohan: We need to acknowledge the changing perception and value that students attribute to a college education relative to other career paths. The cost of college is going up exponentially and students aren’t sure that jobs for college graduates will be around because of AI. That doesn’t mean that CSA initiatives aren’t valuable, but they need to remain flexible in how funds can be used. CSAs can be combined with other ways to address people's financial goals and needs to create more robust wraparound approaches that could help people with their financial success along with their college dreams.

So, I think there's a lot implementation-wise and around messaging for us to adjust and learn from. But I'm excited to see K2C and the field continue to grow. I think it's good for us all to think about larger policy developments with things like Baby Bonds and to see how we can complement each other so that it doesn't have to be an either/or proposition.

To learn more about the CSA field and Prosperity Now's work on child and family wealth-building, join the Campaign for Every Kid's Future.