More, but not enough, Californians are accessing free money for college, career development

The doors of the Golden 1 Credit Union remained ajar on April 5 as elementary-aged kids played games or had their faces painted outside while families inside circled the display tables featuring material from the bank and CalKIDS.

The event was to encourage families to open a youth education savings account as well as learn about and claim at least $500 in free scholarship money already sitting in a state-funded account.

Erica Wade-Lamas registered for the interest-bearing money for three of her four Fresno Unified students, an eighth grader and twin seventh graders. (Her twelfth grader was at a prom and would claim his own money later at home.)

The bank event is one of the noticeable changes to community outreach work by CalKIDS, the California Kids Investment and Development Savings program, a state initiative to help children from low-income families save money for college or a career.

“It’s going to be easier on me and my husband, knowing that there’s an extra cushion when they do graduate, to have the ability to use that money for a laptop or something additional that’s not going to have to come out of our pockets,” said Wade-Lamas. “That’s what I’m excited about.”

Even though the money is automatically deposited into the savings account under a student’s name, families must claim the accounts by registering online. Students can claim the money up until age 26.

In 2024, EdSource found that fewer than 8.3% of eligible families had claimed their account, despite fanfare surrounding the launch.

To expand its reach and create more awareness, CalKIDS is drawing on lessons from the past, plus the perspective of a new director. The program has changed its approach to marketing and expanded its multilingual and community engagement.

Over 3.9 million school-aged children across the state now qualify for at least $500 with CalKIDS, the savings account launched by the state in 2022. It automatically awards at least $500 to low-income students and English learners with the goal of helping families save for college or career training.

Low-income public school students and English learners are automatically awarded $500 if they:

• Were in grades 1-12 during the 2021-22 school year.
• Were enrolled in first grade during the 2022-23 school year.
• Are first graders in subsequent years, meaning the number of accounts grows annually. 

An additional $500 is deposited for students identified as foster youth and another $500 for students classified as homeless.

Since last year, the number of students who have claimed their funds has gone up 4 percentage points, and 475,862 or 12% of all accounts statewide have been claimed, still far from reaching most of the state’s students.

And since hundreds of thousands of new accounts are automatically added each year, maintaining and increasing the percentage of claimed accounts will be an ever-elusive target, especially as the program starts tackling new challenges created by Assembly Bill 2508, which will expand program eligibility.

The struggle to reach more families

The program’s new director, Cassandra DiBenedetto, appointed in October 2024, has visited various communities to learn about the unique barriers and experiences of those who qualify for CalKIDS.

“What children in Modoc County are experiencing is very different than what children in LA County are experiencing,” she said. “So I’ve really tried to reach out to our partners in various communities and learn about their experiences so that we make well-informed decisions … based on the lived experience of the people we’re trying to reach.”

Awareness — or a lack thereof — has been the No. 1 challenge related to CalKIDS account access.

To improve that, DiBenedetto and her team have, in the past six months, focused on partnering with organizations across the state.

From its inception in summer 2022 through the end of 2023, CalKIDS partnered with about 550 organizations to promote the program, according to the state treasurer’s office. Now it works with more than 1,000 community-based organizations, school districts and financial institutions.

“More and more people are approaching us saying, ‘Hey, we know you’re doing this thing. We want to be involved,’” DiBenedetto said. “I don’t know that, in the first two years of the program, that was necessarily the case, so I think that has been a huge change for us.”

Partnerships, targeted outreach are key

Thanh-Truc “April” Hoang, a second-year student at the University of California Riverside, remembers attending an open house on campus as a high school senior in 2023 and seeing a display table with Riverside County Office of Education material about free money for college. Hoang learned about CalKIDS and what the $500 could be used for. She and her three younger siblings would go on to claim their accounts.

“I was just really glad that we were able to find out about this resource,” said Hoang, who helped her younger cousins claim their accounts.

In its back-to-school campaign from July to October 2024, CalKIDS used social media and mailers to inform high schoolers and high-school graduates about the money waiting to be claimed.

DiBenedetto said that more than 94,000 accounts were claimed in that one targeted marketing campaign; 73% of the new accounts belonged to high school graduates or college students, who could use their money right away.

She said a new partnership with the California Cradle-to-Career Data System will further help reach that population of students, as will partnerships with the California Student Aid Commission and the community college chancellor’s office, which can connect with college students who haven’t claimed their funds.

Addressing language, literacy barriers

Last year, advocates, such as those at End Poverty in California, suggested ways for local communities and the CalKIDS program to address the barriers limiting account access, including:

• Rewriting informational materials to a third-grade reading level so more families understand the content.
• Advocating for multilingual outreach at the state level.

The CalKIDS team has expanded its multilingual media campaigns, too, ensuring materials, such as event fliers, are available in at least the top 10 languages spoken in California — something that wasn’t available a year ago, DiBenedetto said.

“We are meeting people where they are in the language that they speak,” she said.

Subtle shifts in the way CalKIDS is framed and talked about are just as important as language and literacy, said many interviewed.

According to DiBenedetto, instead of using the term “savings account,” CalKIDS materials now say “scholarship,” “a baby’s first scholarship,” “the easiest scholarship your child will ever get” and simply “claim your money.”

“Sometimes it’s things like the word ‘account’ (that) can be scary in some populations,” she said. “These populations understand the word scholarship.”

Increased awareness, access

Awareness is growing as a result of increased partnerships, targeted outreach and changes in material to address language access and reading comprehension, DiBenedetto said.

“More kids are taking advantage of their CalKIDS scholarship accounts,” she said about the more than 475,000 student accounts claimed as of March 31.

But hundreds of thousands of accounts for first graders are added annually, making the percentage of claimed accounts a “moving target,” she said.

More than 400,000 accounts are added annually for newborns as well, and children born in California after June 2023, regardless of their parents’ income, are granted $100.

Nearly 96,000 of over 1 million eligible newborn accounts have been claimed as of March 31.

Altogether, the claimed student and newborn accounts total 571,631, representing an 82% increase from this time last year.

Challenges ahead

Due to September 2024 legislation, CalKIDS’ eligibility will expand to all foster youth in grades 1-12, starting next school year until 2029.

The CalKIDS team does not yet know the numbers for all eligible foster youth but reported that 3,093 claimed their accounts so far. Based on 2023-24 state data, nearly 30,000 students are foster youth, a number that will likely remain consistent next school year when the legislation takes effect.

Millions of dollars have been allocated to program outreach and collaboration.

But in the 2025 budget approved in June, $5 million was reverted back to the general fund, a maneuver often taken to share funds with other programs.

Because the program was still in its early stages, DiBenedetto said, it had a minimal impact on outreach efforts.

The expanded program eligibility and funding changes may present unforeseen obstacles, but the CalKIDS team plans to tackle those challenges by using them as learning opportunities.

“I think that we’ve learned a lot over the last couple years,” DiBenedetto said. “I’ve learned a lot over the last (six) months, and we are ready for whatever comes our way. Every challenge is really just opportunity.”