OCTOBER 31, 2025

Goodman Philanthropies Awards $50,000 Grant to the Urban Institute’s Tax Policy Center to advance the equitable design of Trump Accounts.

Washington, DC — Goodman Philanthropies is pleased to award a $50,000 one-year grant to the Urban Institute Center for Taxpayer Rights to support the U.S. Treasury Office of Tax Policy with expert guidance on the inclusive design and implementation of the newly created Trump Accounts. The grant will help ensure Trump Accounts — $1,000 investment accounts established at birth—are structured to build wealth inclusively and reach families with low incomes and low wealth.

Why Goodman Philanthropies Invested

If designed and implemented well, Trump Accounts could represent one of the most significant federal investments in child asset-building in decades. The idea is powerful: provide every child with an early financial stake, harness the power of compounding, and normalize long-term saving and investing from birth.

But policy design matters. Without careful attention to enrollment processes, contribution structures, tax treatment, and administration, Trump Accounts risk widening wealth gaps rather than narrowing them. Goodman Philanthropies is investing in this work to help ensure the policy delivers on its promise for families with the fewest resources.

Scope of Grant

This grant supports expert guidance to the U.S. Treasury to help ensure Trump Accounts are designed and implemented in a way that truly benefits families with low incomes and low wealth. Drawing on research and real-world experience, the work focuses on how these accounts can be set up so that children who are least able to save on their own still receive meaningful benefits. This includes thinking carefully about how accounts are opened, how families are enrolled, how additional contributions can reach those who need them most, and how the program fits alongside other public benefits and savings programs.

The work will translate lessons from successful child savings efforts into clear, practical advice for federal policymakers. The emphasis is on reducing barriers, protecting families, and making the program easy to use and understand, while guarding against unintended consequences that could widen gaps in wealth. Overall, the grant aims to help Treasury implement Trump Accounts in a way that is fair, accessible, and effective at building long-term financial security for children across income levels.

About the Urban Institute’s Tax Policy Center

Urban’s Tax Policy Center (TPC) was formed more than twenty years ago to inform critical policy agendas. Drawing on a microsimulation model on par with those used by federal scorekeepers, the Urban Institute regularly show how policies affect different groups of taxpayers (by age, race, family composition, and, now, race and ethnicity), federal revenues, and the economy. Their results are widely cited in the press and by stakeholders across the ideological spectrum. The Urban Institute’s Tax Policy Center is also home to nationally recognized experts on tax policy development and implementation. Their experts conduct research on emerging issues and regularly provide technical assistance to policymakers at federal, state, and local levels. They further educates policymakers, advocates, journalists, and the broader public about the tax code and how best to use the tax code to advance economic and social policy. Learn more.

About Goodman Philanthropies

Goodman Philanthropies supports innovative, evidence-based solutions that expand economic mobility across the United States. We prioritize approaches that combine rigor, innovation, and scale to move the needle on poverty and opportunity. Our work is generously funded by Bennett & Meg Goodman, who are committed to dismantling barriers to upward mobility through strategic, impact-driven philanthropy. This grant is part of our broader wealth-building strategy, which aims to fund new and innovative tools, policies, and ideas that enable more low to moderate-income Americans to participate in asset-building as a mechanism for sustained, intergenerational economic mobility. Early wealth-building policies and programs, such as Trump Accounts, represent one such innovation that we believe, if designed well, have high potential to drive U.S. economic mobility at scale.

To learn more about our work and our portfolio of grants, visit www.goodmanphilanthropies.org.