How Opportunity Passport Helped Young People in Foster Care in 2023

Youth in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port^® finan­cial learn­ing inter­ven­tion saved more than $895,000 toward their life, school­ing and career goals in 2023, new data show.

Cre­at­ed by the Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Ini­tia­tive^® in 2001 and launched in 2003, Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port fills a need for youth ages 14 to 26 who are in and tran­si­tion­ing from fos­ter care. Par­tic­i­pants receive a dol­lar-for-dol­lar match for their sav­ings when they are ready to make approved pur­chas­es for edu­ca­tion or job train­ing, safe and sta­ble hous­ing, trans­porta­tion and more.

This inter­ven­tion for youth — espe­cial­ly those who don’t have an adult care­giv­er to help them man­age their mon­ey or learn to bud­get — forges finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty by teach­ing young peo­ple the basics of per­son­al finance, bank­ing and how to set and save toward goals. Par­tic­i­pants put what they learn into prac­tice to build and sus­tain their abil­i­ty to live inde­pen­dent­ly after fos­ter care.

In 2023, 3,600 young peo­ple in Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port used their sav­ings and matched funds to invest more than $2.23 mil­lion in their future, accord­ing to data col­lect­ed in twice-a-year sur­veys of the par­tic­i­pants. With matched sav­ings from Jim Casey Ini­tia­tive part­ner sites, young peo­ple made 641 pur­chas­es that helped them achieve goals and meet long-term needs.

The sur­veys, which Child Trends ana­lyzes for the Foun­da­tion to pro­vide insights to improve finan­cial edu­ca­tion efforts, saw par­tic­i­pants also report out­comes such as:

• ade­quate access to work and school; 
• whether they have safe, sta­ble hous­ing; and
• their abil­i­ty to cov­er expenses.

Finan­cial Edu­ca­tion Leads to Stability

Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port par­tic­i­pa­tion begins with Keys to Your Finan­cial Future course­work pro­vid­ed through the Jim Casey Ini­tia­tive network’s 16 part­ner sites. The cur­ricu­lum cov­ers top­ics such as under­stand­ing cred­it, pay­ing bills and bud­get­ing, bank­ing and pro­tect­ing your iden­ti­ty. In 2023, more than 1,000 young peo­ple com­plet­ed the train­ing and enrolled in Oppor­tu­ni­ty Passport.

Young peo­ple who save and receive a match through the inter­ven­tion con­tin­ue to fare bet­ter across many key areas of well-being com­pared to their peers who did not make match­es and pur­chas­es, Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port data show.

For instance, 43% of year 2023 par­tic­i­pants who used Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port to make mul­ti­ple pur­chas­es report­ed work­ing full time for at least six months, com­pared to 30% of those who did not invest in a purchase.

The Pow­er of Connections

Long-term adult con­nec­tions play an essen­tial role in young peo­ple’s finan­cial suc­cess. Those par­tic­i­pants who had at least one strong adult rela­tion­ship in their lives were more like­ly to be able to cov­er their expens­es and save mon­ey. Accord­ing to sur­veys, 54% of year 2023 par­tic­i­pants who had fam­i­ly and non-fam­i­ly adult rela­tion­ships report­ed being able to cov­er expens­es and had sav­ings com­pared to the 25% of 2023 par­tic­i­pants with no adult con­nec­tions. Finan­cial coach­es and sup­port­ive staff in Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port bol­ster the need for a net­work of connections. 

“Data from Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port and sto­ries from par­tic­i­pants prove that, with the right sup­port, young peo­ple who spend time in fos­ter care have the capac­i­ty to save and invest in their future,” said Sandy Wilkie, a senior fel­low with the Foundation’s Fam­i­ly Well-Being Strat­e­gy Group who man­ages its youth finan­cial capa­bil­i­ty ini­tia­tives. ​“How­ev­er, num­bers don’t tell the full story.”

Mov­ing From Fos­ter Care to Adulthood 

Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port helped Monte Charl­ton Clay, Jr., a par­tic­i­pant from Des Moines, Iowa, open his first sav­ings account at age 18. Over the years, he has used his sav­ings and matched funds for a deposit on an apart­ment, a car pur­chase and month­ly expenses.

Clay also received noti­fi­ca­tions about job fairs and oth­er resources from his Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port coach, Robert Bibens. A cer­ti­fied finan­cial coach, Bibens works for the Eve­lyn K. Davis Cen­ter for Work­ing Fam­i­lies, which pro­vides career resources and job train­ing. The Cen­ter, along with Iowa’s child wel­fare agency, co-lead the state’s Jim Casey Ini­tia­tive part­ner site pro­grams. These ini­tia­tives help youth who have fos­ter care expe­ri­ence obtain access to the resources, rela­tion­ships and oppor­tu­ni­ties they need to secure their well-being and achieve suc­cess as they tran­si­tion to adulthood.

“Oppor­tu­ni­ty Pass­port has helped me achieve things I alone could not,” said Clay. ​“It offers help and com­mit­ment to peo­ple who could use it and main­tain it. You should nev­er be scared or hes­i­tant to turn an obsta­cle into an oppor­tu­ni­ty. To have a team ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing out the lit­tle guys is amaz­ing and rare to find.”