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Why We Need a Baby Bonds Learning Community Now More than Ever

December 17, 2025
Financial Security Program

Jason Ewas

Associate Director, Inclusive Saving and Investing

David Radcliffe

State and Local Policy Director, The New School’s Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy

Madeline Brown

Senior Policy Associate, Urban Institute

The December 2025 announcement of Michael and Susan Dell’s $6.25 billion donation to seed “Trump Accounts” or “530A Accounts” for 25 million U.S. children has brought renewed attention to early wealth-building in America. Our three organizations—New School’s Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, and Urban Institute—acknowledge the significance of the investment and appreciate the broader dialogue it has sparked about wealth building at birth.

But momentum in this field did not begin with the Dell announcement. For decades, state and local leaders, practitioners, and researchers have been designing and implementing early wealth-building programs that center equity, automatic enrollment, and meaningful capitalization. Even as a national policy rolls out, these leaders continue to innovate, implement, and learn—offering real-time insights into what helps families build long-term economic security.

One of the most promising examples of that work is Baby Bonds—publicly funded trust accounts created for children born into poverty, with larger investments for those who need it most and automatic enrollment to ensure universal participation among eligible families.

In this piece, we turn to those state and local leaders—the people who have built this movement from the ground up—to highlight what they are learning, what questions they are asking in light of the new federal landscape, and why we believe a more structured national learning community is essential to sustaining and scaling early wealth-building policy.

Why State and Local Leaders Matter

Early wealth building policy in America has largely been built from the ground up. State legislators, local treasurers, community-based practitioners, and researchers have taken the lead in designing programs that reflect the realities of families in their jurisdictions. That work has only accelerated. Even as a federal policy rolls out, state and local leaders are driving innovation, developing program designs, identifying funding strategies, and building evidence that can shape national policy. One prime example: Baby Bonds.

Over the past two years, Baby Bonds have moved from bold idea to operational public policy with transformative potential. Since Connecticut launched the nation’s first statewide program on July 1, 2023, more than 35,000 infants born into poverty have been automatically enrolled—each receiving more than $10,000 to use at age 18 for wealth-building investments such as higher education, homeownership, or entrepreneurship. Inspired by Connecticut’s breakthrough, nearly 20 states have introduced or are actively debating Baby Bonds legislation, and roughly 10 pilots are now operating in communities across the country—from Georgia and Maryland to St. Louis and New Mexico.

This rapid growth is creating momentum and a clear need: leaders want to share lessons, coordinate strategies, and deepen the evidence base necessary to take Baby Bonds to scale.

What Are Baby Bonds, and What Is Their Connection to 530A Accounts?

Baby Bonds were created to solve a structural problem: Millions of children are born into families without assets, and without assets it is nearly impossible to build wealth over a lifetime. By providing automatically enrolled, publicly funded, progressively invested accounts at birth, Baby Bonds give young adults the capital to make meaningful wealth-building choices—and are specifically designed to narrow racial and economic wealth gaps.

530A Accounts take a very different approach. They currently rely on families to voluntarily enroll in the accounts—a step that has historically excluded many households with low incomes and is likely to make participation rates fairly low. (Though the government has the authority to automatically enroll participants, they chose not to for at least this upcoming year). And although the Accounts are being launched at a large scale with a seed deposit from the government for children born between 2025-2028, the level of funding for eligible families ($1,000) is uniform rather than progressive, and therefore not guaranteed to offer the kind of transformative capital that Baby Bonds provide.

Instead, 530A Accounts rely on external contributions from employers, state and local governments, philanthropy, and families themselves. In our view, they certainly do not replace the need for meaningful, equitable, publicly funded Baby Bonds programs in the coming years.

What a Baby Bonds Community of Practice Would Do

These differences between Baby Bonds and 530A Accounts underscore the need for shared guidance, shared learning, and shared standards, especially as states navigate a rapidly evolving national landscape. Since Senator Booker introduced federal Baby Bonds legislation in 2018, all three of our organizations have hosted events, webinars, and cross-sector conversations to support evidence-based legislation, program design, and delivery. These efforts have yielded real pilots that are actively enrolling and funding baby bonds programs, and it is time to create a vehicle to support and accelerate their success.

Through surveys and conversations with baby bond leaders across more than 20 states, we have heard a consistent message: Such a community would strengthen existing work, increase the likelihood of success for emerging programs, and provide the space for shared learning, sleeves-rolled-up discussions about program design and implementation, and durable relationship-building.

Why a Community of Practice?

The need for this community has only grown more urgent. Local and state Baby Bonds programs already offer bold, ambitious, people-centered models that demonstrate how to build wealth from birth in equitable, lasting ways. These state efforts are the laboratories of democracy—spaces where innovation, learning, and momentum are already happening. And given the early movement on recommending improvements to 530A Accounts, we think now is the time to both learn from existing work on baby bond-inspired efforts and invest in additional laboratories to apply any learnings and best practices to future federal policy updates or proposals.

The case for a formal learning community is clear:

  • Sharpen implementation: States like Connecticut and California are leading with Baby Bonds and HOPE Accounts, while others are exploring related models. A CoP allows leaders to test, refine, and strengthen these efforts. Previous implementation learnings shared include best ways to reach families, successful messaging for building public support, and how to design these programs to avoid tax penalties for low-income families.
  • Accelerate momentum: With legislation introduced in more than a dozen states and pilot projects under construction or underway in ten states, coordination can help ensure these efforts build on one another, not in silos.
  • Create a long-term coalition: By aligning around shared principles—such as meaningful public funding, automatic enrollment, and progressive investment—we can set the standard for what wealth-building policy should look like nationally.
  • Inform federal policy: Lessons from the states can directly shape and improve federal programs, ensuring they don’t replicate challenges driving lack of takeup by households with low- to moderate-income in many existing systems like 529 college savings plans. We would document these lessons by publishing best practices.

The need for a Baby Bonds Community of Practice has never been greater. A Baby Bonds Community of Practice would give policymakers, practitioners, and researchers a place to exchange real-world insights, coordinate strategies, and build a stronger foundation for every child. It’s about setting bold examples and ensuring that early wealth-building policies everywhere reflect our values of an economy that works for all of us and helping young people build meaningful wealth for the future. And if we are serious about this goal, we will need more than one public policy to solve it—we will need a reimagined portfolio and system of family-focused investments.

We, and local and state baby bonds leaders themselves, think the next few years will be crucial to maintain momentum on programs that can complement any federal policy, or vice versa. It is clear we need a space for shared learning and collective action to advance Baby Bonds and early wealth building efforts that shape the future of our young people and wealth-building policy in America.

If you are interested in supporting the Community of Practice or learning more about the opportunity, please reach out to David Radcliffe at [email protected], Jason Ewas at [email protected], or Madeline Brown at [email protected].

The Community of Practice would be led by The New School’s Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, which brings nationally recognized leadership on Baby Bonds policy and a deep network of practitioners. They would be joined by the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, known for its convening power and cross-sector partnerships, and the Urban Institute, whose research and coalition-building expertise anchor the early wealth-building field. Fully launching this Community of Practice will require dedicated support, and we welcome partners interested in helping bring this collaborative national effort to life.