How investing changes what students know, save, and believe about money.
From Campus to Capital
Executive summary
The evidence is clear. The model works.
Financial wellness programs typically treat the investing gap as a knowledge gap, on the assumption that education closes it. Stackwell and SFI's Student Investment Program, Phase 2 (SIP 2) tested a different premise: what closes the investing gap is the act of investing itself, made possible by real capital.
Among a matched cohort of 300 students from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and minority-serving institutions (MSIs), participants experienced significant improvements in financial well-being, emergency savings, goal confidence, and financial knowledge, and 21.3% went on to invest their own money. We read this as consistent with the idea that the experience of investing contributes to changes that education alone has struggled to produce.
Photo placeholder — swap in a licensed participant photo here before publishing (the original stock image isn't reproduced in this file).
A note from our CEO
Why this research matters
Investment in the public financial markets is the single greatest wealth-building tool this country has ever seen. There is more than a century of data to prove it. And yet for the communities Stackwell was built to serve, access to that tool has never been equal.
For years, the financial services industry has treated that inequity as a knowledge problem — better curricula, more workshops, another financial literacy campaign. It hasn't worked, and this paper explains why. The underserved aren't disengaged. They're undercapitalized and under-confident, and education alone doesn't close either gap. Until something does, it won't close the wealth gap behind it either.
What closes it is what SIP 2 documents: real capital that turns into real experience, paired with the knowledge to make sense of what's happening. Give someone the means to open an account and the understanding to read what they're seeing, and something happens that no curriculum can produce alone. It gives them agency — the ability to choose what happens to something that is actually theirs. It builds confidence that's grounded in experience, not theory. And somewhere in that process, they stop describing themselves as someone learning about investing and start describing themselves as an investor. That's what it means to become an owner — not just holding an asset, but recognizing yourself in it.
This cohort shows exactly how far that shift travels. More than a fifth of participants went on to invest their own money beyond what we seeded. Emergency savings rose by half. Financial well-being rose from 51.6 to 55.0 on the CFPB scale, a meaningful shift in how students experience their financial lives. Those numbers aren't the finding. The identity change underneath them is.
SIP 2 is one study, but it sits on top of more than four years of programmatic work Stackwell has led across students, young professionals, small business owners, and families — from Newark to Los Angeles. Across nearly 30 cohorts, we've now reached nearly 18,000 participants, seeded more than 4,500 investment accounts with nearly $3 million in capital, and watched those accounts return an average of 27.2%, with 98.5% all-time participant retention. That consistency is exactly why we're not stopping here. We've spent four years proving this model works. What's left isn't more proof. It's scale — and later this year, we'll share the next chapter of how we intend to bring it to millions of people who have been standing on the sidelines for too long.
The evidence is in front of you. Read it, then ask what it would take to build this everywhere.
The problem
The stock market participation gap is the wealth gap
The racial wealth gap in the United States is one of the most persistent and consequential economic divides of our time. The typical Black family holds about 15 percent of what the typical white family holds, a disparity rooted in centuries of structural exclusion and compounded by every generation in which it continues.1
At the center of that compounding is one dynamic: who participates in the stock market and who does not. Stock market ownership is not a luxury; it plays an important role in how American families build intergenerational wealth, and in the size of the gap between them. And the data on who owns it is stark.2
of Black families own stock, compared with 66% of white families.3
Four times the stock wealth. Among stock-owning families, the median white family holds about $68,000, compared with $17,000 for the median Black family.3
Half the market, one percent. The wealthiest 1% own 50.2% of corporate equities and mutual fund shares; the entire bottom half of households owns just 1.1%.4
These numbers do not reflect a lack of interest. Research consistently shows that the communities most underrepresented in financial markets are aware of the wealth-building potential of investing. What they face are structural barriers of access, confidence, and capital that no amount of financial education in isolation has proven capable of removing.
The core insight
Education tells people to invest. Doing it is what makes them investors.
Education can build understanding, but it leaves participants responsible for taking the hardest step on their own: putting scarce personal money into the market for the first time.
Fractional shares and commission-free trading have lowered the technical cost of investing, but they have not eliminated the practical barriers. For students managing tuition, living expenses, and financial uncertainty, even a small first investment can feel risky or out of reach.
SIP 2 was built around a different premise: people build investing confidence by investing. Seed capital removes the initial financial trade-off, education helps participants understand what they are experiencing, and continued access to the market turns a lesson into a repeated behavior. The result is not simply greater financial knowledge. It is the experience of becoming an investor.
Why the model works
Education tells people to invest. Doing it is what makes them investors.
The racial wealth gap persists in part because of an investing gap. Households outside the market do not accumulate market returns, and that difference compounds with every year and every generation it goes unclosed.
The financial wellness sector has largely treated that investing gap as a knowledge gap, on the assumption that people would invest if only they understood it better. That assumption is why decades of workshops, webinars, and literacy curricula have not closed it. The communities most underrepresented in the market are not confused about the value of investing. They are undercapitalized and under-confident, two conditions knowledge alone cannot remedy.
What closes the investing gap is the act of investing: real money in a real account, watched, moved, and decided over, until the behavior becomes an identity. Capital is what makes that act possible in the first place.
We documented a four-stage behavioral journey that participants moved through, from initial financial awareness to a durable investor identity (Figure 1). Each stage is necessary, and none of them can be skipped through education alone.
The Stackwell Investor Activation Model
The Stackwell Investor Activation Model brings three elements together in one connected experience: real investment capital, education tied to that experience, and continued participation through a trusted investing platform.
Participants do not simply receive financial education alongside a grant. Their seed capital is activated through the Stackwell platform, their learning is connected to real market participation, and their behavior is supported and measured over time. This integrated experience helps participants move from understanding investing to seeing themselves as investors.
No single element creates that change on its own. The model's value lies in how Stackwell combines them to turn access into action, and action into a repeatable wealth-building behavior.
About the program
Student Investment Program
How we ran and measured the program
How it works
Students received up to $1,000 in seed capital, financial education workshops, and access to the Stackwell investing app over 12 months.
Who participated
596 students enrolled across HBCUs and MSIs. This report follows the 300 who completed both the pre- and post-program surveys.
How we measured impact
Participants completed pre- and post-program surveys built from validated survey questions covering financial well-being, knowledge, confidence, and savings behavior.
Qualitative research
21 in-depth interviews and open-ended survey responses, analyzed by independent researchers.
The Stackwell and SFI's Student Investment Program is a 12-month financial wellness and investment experience for undergraduate students at HBCUs and MSIs. The program was delivered in partnership with Student Freedom Initiative, a national nonprofit working to reduce the wealth gap through the lens of education. Participants received a seed investment of up to $1,000 alongside structured education, investment workshops, and access to the Stackwell mobile investment platform. The program was made possible through seed funding and program support that The Prudential Foundation, the Institute for Consumer Money Management, and other philanthropic organizations provided to Student Freedom Initiative.
Who was in the cohort
Participant profile: matched research cohort, 300 students
Developed and operates the investing platform. Stackwell provided participants with access to funded stock market investment accounts, automated portfolio construction, and financial wellness education designed for first-generation investors.
A nonprofit supporting more than 200,000 students at 60-plus minority-serving institutions across 23 states. SFI managed program outreach and enrollment, recruiting participants from HBCUs and MSIs within its national network.
The corporate foundation of Prudential Financial, a global financial services leader with approximately $1.5 trillion in assets under management. The Prudential Foundation provided Student Freedom Initiative with seed funding for student investment accounts.
ICMM provided seed funding for student investment accounts, research support, and financial education resources to strengthen the program's evidence base and curriculum.
SIP 2 was made possible with additional philanthropic support for research and program management.
Research findings
What the data shows
Students became investors, not just students who learned about investing. Participants moved through a four-stage journey from financial awareness to investor identity, and the funded account was central to carrying them across it.
Financial well-being improved. The share of participants in the high well-being range rose from 24.0% to 32.7%, and the share in the low range fell from 13.4% to 7.6%.
Emergency savings and confidence grew substantially. The share of students holding emergency savings rose from a third to a half, 33.6% to 50.4%.
Real investing experience produced real learning. Self-assessed knowledge rose sharply while comfort recalibrated downward, a pattern consistent with genuine learning rather than a setback.
Investing created the choice, and how participants used their accounts is what varied. Some left their capital in the market and watched it grow. Others drew on it to meet immediate needs. Both reflect the value of having capital to decide over.
Finding 1
Students became investors, not just students who learned about investing
The most striking thing we found is not a single data point. It is a pattern. Across pre-program interviews, post-program interviews, and survey responses, participants described a consistent progression: from financial awareness, through active engagement, to the emergence of a genuine investor identity.
Figure 1
The Stackwell Investor Activation Model
Financial awareness
Recognizing financial reality, often through the lens of barriers, stress, and uncertainty about investing.
Learning
Gaining structured, applied financial knowledge through the platform; moving from passive to embedded experience.
Engagement
Monitoring accounts, setting goals, planning investments; transitioning from conceptual to behavioral participation.
Investor identity
Describing oneself as an investor; an internalized shift from external observer to active market participant.
This progression is consistent with identity-based motivation research, which suggests that behaviors are more likely to persist when they become aligned with how people see themselves.5 Participants did not just learn what investors do. They began to see themselves as investors.
My advice to the next person in the Stackwell program would be to stay consistent and patient with your investments. Even if you can only invest small amounts at first, it's important to keep contributing regularly and think about the long term.Jaylen, Texas Southern University
If it's your first time being involved with investing do not be afraid to learn what you don't know.Reese, Fayetteville State University
The funded account helped carry them across
Qualitative data point to the funded account as a critical mechanism, one of three product drivers participants consistently described alongside ease of use and applied learning. The presence of a funded account turned abstract concepts like compound growth and long-term investing into lived experience.
Financial education on its own explains only a small fraction of variance in financial behavior, which is why researchers have argued for a narrower role for education delivered close to the decisions it is meant to inform.6 That is the pattern SIP 2 reproduces, in a population that programs of this kind have historically struggled to reach.
Before SIP 2, many participants expressed interest in investing but had not taken the first step. The funded account moved them across that threshold. By the program's end, participants were not describing a product they had used. They were describing a relationship with money that had changed.
I have not withdrawn any money from my Stackwell account because I want it to grow. I am patient and I know that the more that's left in there, the more it has the opportunity to grow.Kofi, Morehouse College
Finding 2
Financial well-being improved
Participants' financial well-being rose over the course of the program, measured on the CFPB Financial Well-Being Scale. The cohort average moved from 51.6 to 55.0 on a 0 to 100 scale. Four of the scale's five items improved.
For context, the CFPB's national survey places the average score at 54 for adults overall.7 Overall, SIP 2 participants entered lower than the average (52) and ended above it (55), in a cohort where nearly two-thirds reported household income under $15,000.
This sits in a literature where most financial education interventions produce modest or inconsistent effects.8
Figure 2
CFPB Financial Well-Being Score, distribution shift pre vs. post
CFPB Financial Well-Being Score (0–100 scale). Bin-level heights are approximated from the published chart to match the reported aggregates (below 40: 13.3% → 7.7%; 60 or above: 24.0% → 32.7%) — check against your source data before publishing.
The scale measures something concrete: how much control a person feels over their financial life, how confident they are in their ability to absorb a financial shock, and whether they feel free to enjoy life rather than just manage money.
For students navigating financial independence for the first time, often without family wealth or a safety net to fall back on, a gain of this size is not a minor outcome.
A meaningful shift in perceived financial security
Students were markedly less likely after the program to agree that they were "concerned my money won't last," that finances "control my life," or that they "can't have things they want because of money." These shifts represent a change in psychological relationship to financial life, not merely to investing.
One item did not move: whether participants had money left over at the end of the month. Perceived financial security improved while actual cash flow constraints remained, which is consistent with the structural financial pressures college students face.
Finding 3
Emergency savings and confidence grew substantially
The single most practically significant outcome in this study: the share of students holding emergency savings rose from 33.6% to 50.4%. Confidence in reaching financial goals rose as well, and students reported finding it easier to pay their bills (Figure 3).
Half of participants now hold emergency savings, up from a third
Even small amounts of unrestricted savings appear to play a protective role for low-to-moderate income households, with savers reporting less material hardship years later.9
The mechanism is direct. A financial buffer, even a small one, means an unexpected expense does not have to become a debt. For a cohort where 64% reported household incomes below $15,000, that protection is not theoretical. It is the difference between a setback and a spiral.
One caveat we want to state plainly. Some participants may have counted their Stackwell account balance as emergency savings, a reasonable interpretation given the program design. Even accounting for that, moving from a third of students to half represents a real shift in financial preparedness for this cohort.
Figure 3
Emergency savings, budget to invest, and confidence measures
Finding 4
Real investing experience came with real learning
Self-assessed financial knowledge showed the largest gain of any measure in the study, rising from 4.05 to 4.72 on a 7-point scale (Figure 4).
Figure 4
Financial knowledge, pre vs. post
Confidence in one's own knowledge grew faster than measured knowledge itself. A divergence between self-assessed and measured financial knowledge is well documented in the literature,10 and exposure to financial tools may strengthen confidence before it produces gains across every knowledge domain.
Learning while actually investing made it stick more than just reading about it.Marcus, Texas Southern University
Comfort recalibrated, and that is a feature
Alongside those knowledge gains, participants' comfort with investing declined slightly, from 2.96 to 2.78 on a 5-point scale. These two results are not in conflict. Students who engaged with real money in a real account developed a more accurate picture of what investing actually involves. Greater knowledge brought greater awareness of complexity, not greater anxiety. This pattern is well documented: as competence grows, so does awareness of complexity, producing a more accurate and more useful self-assessment.11
A student who has watched their portfolio respond to real market movements has learned something no curriculum can teach. That kind of grounded understanding also makes for better decisions: a student who leaves with an accurate sense of what investing requires is better positioned to make sound choices than one whose confidence outpaces their knowledge. Overconfidence can be a strong predictor of poor investment behavior, so the students who gained knowledge and recalibrated their comfort are not less ready to invest. They are more ready, because their confidence is now grounded in experience.
The Stackwell program provided a solid amount of knowledge on the different types of investing, different types of portfolio, aggressive and etc. And it has made me much more confident in investing. I was a little bit nervous about it prior to gaining this knowledge and I now feel anyone is capable of investing.Elijah, Morehouse College
Finding 5
Investing created the choice, and how participants used their accounts varied
Nearly $300,000 in seed capital was deposited into the accounts of the 300 students in the research cohort, and 21.3% went on to invest their own money on top of it. Over 88% of participants received at least the full $1,000 seed, and the median student opened the app roughly 152 times over the year. What they did with that capital falls into four distinct patterns (Figure 5).
Figure 5
User behavior typology
- Withdrawer only56.7%
- Passive, no transactions22%
- Both deposit and withdraw15.7%
- Depositor only5.7%
Roughly a quarter of participants never withdrew anything, and roughly a third withdrew the entirety of their seed capital plus gains earned on it; relatively few sat in between (Figure 6). Those who left their capital untouched saw their accounts grow to an average of $1,036, an average gain of 8.0%, with 92.4% ending above the credits they received. Participants who also added their own money and never withdrew it (5.7% of the cohort) finished higher still, averaging $1,235, reflecting the additional capital they contributed as well as market growth.
Figure 6
Withdrawal intensity, a bimodal distribution
Percent of participants, by share of program credits withdrawn.
We do not read this as a simple story of success or disengagement. Participants used an asset they owned in different ways: some treated the program as a long-term investing foundation, while others withdrew funds to meet immediate financial needs, much the way higher-wealth households routinely use assets to absorb shocks or fund priorities. We do not think participants with lower incomes should be held to a different standard, one in which success requires never touching their money.
Leaving funds invested supports long-term compounding, but an accessible asset also provides flexibility and reduces reliance on debt. Both behaviors reflect the same underlying value: participants had choices because they had capital.
I did, because I had to pay a lot of bills and everything, and I had to make sure I had enough money to support myself because I don't have a lot of money at the moment.Marcus, Texas Southern University
Variation across the cohort
Women entered with less and gained more
The SIP 1 report documented a striking starting disparity: women entered that program far less confident than men, with only 14% feeling comfortable making investment decisions compared to 51% of men.12 By its end, three times as many women felt comfortable making investment decisions, and four times as many reported a high degree of investing knowledge.
SIP 2 continues that trajectory. Both men and women improved in financial well-being, and the data suggest women, who started lower, closed part of the gap, though that difference between men and women was not large enough to rule out chance. Where women clearly outpaced men was confidence in reaching their financial goals: they gained more than twice as much.
Women's comfort with investing also appears to have recalibrated somewhat more than men's: it entered higher than men's and ended slightly lower, converging with men by the end of the program. This is consistent with what SIP 1 identified as a confidence gap driven more by perception than by actual knowledge. Real investing experience appears to correct that perception. Across both programs, women respond to the experience of investing with meaningful and measurable growth.
The implication reaches past this cohort. Women are systematically underrepresented in financial markets, and that underrepresentation compounds. The longer women remain outside the market, the more wealth-building opportunity is lost. Programs that give women real investing experience early, in an environment that supports rather than intimidates, have a specific role to play in closing that gap.
Implications & recommendations
Building on what works
We think SIP 2 does more than add to the evidence base on financial capability programs. It points to what may be working, and why. In this cohort, structured education gave the experience meaning, and real investing experience accompanied gains in knowledge, confidence, and investor identity.
Recommendation 1
Meet participants where they are financially
Program design should account for the economic realities participants bring with them. The majority of SIP 2 participants reported household incomes below $15,000 annually. For these students, an investment account is one of very few financial resources available. Programs should anticipate that participants facing income volatility may need to access funds, and should plan for that rather than reading it as disengagement.
Recommendation 2
Pair capital with structured, progressive education
Seed capital alone is not sufficient. SIP 2 participants moved quickly from basic financial awareness to more complex questions about investing strategy, portfolio management, and long-term planning. Programs that offer only introductory education will leave that demand unmet. Sustained financial learning, matched to where participants are in their investing journey, is a core component of an effective model.
Recommendation 3
Invest in programs that close capital and confidence gaps together
Education alone explains only a small fraction of variance in financial behavior, and capital alone leaves the hardest step — putting scarce money into the market — to the participant. SIP 2 addressed both at once, and the confidence that followed came from experience rather than instruction: participants gained in financial well-being and self-assessed knowledge, and 21.3% went on to invest their own money beyond the seed. Funders and institutional partners should back models that pay for both halves, and reach people early, while decades of compounding are still ahead of them.
Conclusion
From access to investing, and investing to identity
SIP 2 provides participant-level evidence that access to real investment capital, paired with structured education and ongoing support, does more than increase financial knowledge. Across the matched cohort of 300 students, participants reported improvements in financial well-being, emergency savings, goal confidence, and financial knowledge. Many also began to see themselves not simply as people learning about investing, but as investors.
These findings reinforce the premise at the center of our model: people build investing confidence by investing. Seed capital creates the opportunity to begin, education helps participants understand the experience, and continued engagement supports the development of lasting financial behaviors and investor identity.
SIP 2 does not stand alone. It adds to more than four years of implementation experience across nearly 30 cohorts nationally — reaching nearly 18,000 participants, seeding more than 4,500 investment accounts, and returning an average of 27.2% with 98.5% all-time participant retention. Taken together, the results are consistent across cohorts, partner institutions, and participant populations.
What SIP 2 leaves us with is a model worth both continued study and serious investment. Now, philanthropists, nonprofits, and the financial inclusion ecosystem must work together to resource this model — so that it can drive impact at national scale.
With thanks
This report was produced with contributions from two independent researchers: Jeremy Wright-Kim, PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan's Marsal Family School of Education, who led the quantitative analysis, and Zina Alaswad, PhD, an independent research consultant who led the qualitative analysis. Their rigor and expertise were essential to the findings presented here.
We also wish to thank the 300 students who participated in the SIP 2 research cohort and shared their experiences openly. This report would not exist without them.
We are grateful to our program partners, Student Freedom Initiative, The Prudential Foundation, and the Institute of Consumer Money Management, for their sustained commitment to closing the racial wealth gap through access to financial markets.
Methodology
SIP 2 was evaluated with a pre-post survey design: participants completed a survey before the program and again after, matched at the individual level. Of 596 students enrolled, 300 completed both surveys and make up the primary analytic sample; a robustness check against a broader 360-student sample produced consistent results.
Financial well-being was measured using the CFPB Financial Well-Being Scale; financial knowledge using FINRA National Financial Capability Study items; and behavioral outcomes from platform data as of March 13, 2026. Results were tested using standard paired-sample statistical methods. Sample sizes vary by item, from 197 to 300.
This is a pre-post design without a control group, so we can document change but not attribute it to the program, and the matched sample was more engaged with the platform than non-completers, which may overstate effects. Subgroup comparisons by gender and income are exploratory.
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