CLIMB USA Inc.

The CLIMB Launchpad provides education, guidance, technical assistance, and other support to assist community members in establishing Community Based Investment Enterprises (CBIEs) which is a cooperative experiential investment education and wealth creation model that builds on the proven investment club model that has successfully served mainstream professionals for decades.

The basic investment club framework entails a group of 10 to 20 individuals combining monthly investment dues into an account to build a stock portfolio over time. An important best practice for the most profitable investment clubs is to ensure that members learn and utilize credible stock analysis methodology. The Community-Based Investment Enterprise Model includes these traditional elements of an investment club, however CBIEs include additional “multiplier features” and principles that facilitate community and economic development. The CLIMB CBIE Launchpad is fueled by CLIMB’s foundational programs, and the Launchpad targets community leaders, educators, aspiring entrepreneurs, working heads of households, young adults, CLIMB youth leaders and their parents.

The Launchpad Pilot is currently focusing on Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin. Several CBIEs have already been established, and our goal is to establish 10 more CBIEs over the next two years in these target cities. CLIMB, along with its’ partners, provide education, coaching, and administrative support as the Investment Enterprise Leaders navigate the startup process.  The CLIMB team also monitors the progress of all CLIMB CBIEs, providing ongoing customized support as needed.

CLIMB USA is positioned to solve one of the most entrenched and troubling problems facing society. That is closing the wealth gap. While the wealth gap itself is problematic, the Racial Wealth Gap is the biggest concern because data shows that the wealth gap is widest when compared by race.

According to the Urban Institute’s calculations using data from the US Survey of Consumer Finances, in 2016, the median household wealth of White households ($171,000) was eight times the median wealth in Hispanic households ($20,920) and 10 times that of the median Black household wealth ($17,409).  Lack of wealth in Black and Hispanic households plays out to the detriment of families of color in multiple ways.  Carl Rist, a senior fellow with the national think tank, Prosperity Now, provided detailed insight into the disadvantages and challenges that low wealth households confront in his 2022 article entitled, Wealth and Health: Exploring Asset Poverty as a Key Measure of Financial Security.  Rist referred to Professor Michael Sherraden’s book, Assets and the Poor. Sherraden explained that financial assets, ie wealth, is the key to “improving household stability, creating an orientation toward the future, stimulating the development of additional assets, … provides a foundation for risk taking, increases personal efficacy, … enhances the welfare of offspring.”

Government programs and other policies must be complemented by teaching community members how to grow their own wealth and launch entrepreneurial endeavors. Our name describes our solution - Communities Learning to Invest and Mobilize for Business. 

Launchpad is aligned with The Challenge not only by laying the groundwork for a new frontier of entrepreneurship across the United States, our model fills an “asset and knowledge gap” because participants in the CBIE model acquire a functional understanding of the capital markets while growing their personal wealth. Launchpad innovates on the traditional mainstream investment club model by intentionally targeting community-based leaders, youth and educators.  Targeted communities will benefit from a powerful multiplier effect as these Community-Based Investment Enterprise members are strategically positioned to impart their acquired investment knowledge and skills with others in their community, and the youth will leverage the wondrous and (heretofore underutilized) power of compound growth.  While Launchpad aligns with most of the strategic dimensions that The Challenge has enumerated, Launchpad most aligns with the business dimension relating to Access to Capital and Financial Education. And Launchpad, through CBIEs, facilitate investment education, which is the financial literacy topic that is usually given short shrift.  In addition to education, members of Community Based Investment Enterprises develop the requisite nest egg of personal capital that empower individuals to effectively transition into “next level” wealth building endeavors. Launchpad checks all the boxes for being: Bold - in asserting that underserved community members can learn to successfully invest; Innovative - in tweaking and migrating a model which has proliferated for decades in middle class suburbia; and Transformative – by elevating the life trajectories of CBIE members. This makes Lauchpad the ultimate Challenge.

This project will target leaders of community-based organizations, educators, aspiring entrepreneurs, young adults, CLIMB Youth Leaders and their parents.

Demographics will be low to moderate income young to middle aged adults and teens. Launchpad is concentrating its initial focus on Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, although the Launchpad has initial engagement work underway, through its prerequisite programs, in the Truist footprint from Florida and Georgia, through the Carolinas into the DMV.  Our stage one programs, Stock Market Experience, Go4it! Institutes and the Youth Leadership Council are already operational in the south and east. The CBIE model will serve and meet the needs of our target demographic by 1) enhancing the knowledge, skills and capacity of community leaders and educators to build their economic capacity to help themselves and “turning up” their multiplier impact as they share their knowledge and lead others into the realm of self-actualized wealth building; 2) helping teens and young adults get off to a strong start in investing and building wealth organically. In fact, CLIMB USA, to the extent practicable, subsidizes the monthly investment dues of the youth participants so that they can “learn and earn” without putting their families’ household savings at risk; 3) teaching enterprise owners basic business principles that members will apply in their future economic endeavors, such as purchasing homes, opening and managing 401K and IRA accounts, entrepreneurial pursuits, community development and generational wealth transfer.  As we grow to scale, the CLIMB Launchpad will help legions of emerging adults and community members to understand how to access and leverage the capital markets system for their own benefit as well as for the benefit of the communities in which they live.

The CLIMB Launchpad program is most active in Wisconsin.  Our CLIMB stage one programs, which we use to introduce CLIMB and Launchpad into communities, are already operational in Florida, Georgia, Texas, the Carolinas and Washington, D.C.  We have key collaborating partners in each of those states as well as others.

CLIMB's acronym stands for Communities Learning to Invest and Mobilize for Business. CLIMB's mission is to create and manage a regenerative economic empowerment ecosystem in which underserved youth and families can learn, grow and thrive.  We have developed a portfolio of programs to serve our target demographic within our ecosystem and our programs are delineated as stage one and stage two.  Launchpad is our stage two single purpose business development program.  We launch, that is, help to create primarily one type of small business - Community Based Investment Enterprises or CBIEs.  Our sustainability partner is BetterInvesting, which has been supporting investment "clubs" for decades.  CLIMB takes a proactive and more entrepreneurial approach to starting CBIEs in underserved communities which traditionally had not connected with the investment enterprise model.  We (CLIMB) launch and nurture the enterprises with the goal of connecting them to our ecosystem and our sustainability partners.

Some may call it an assumption, but to us it is our conviction that wealth drives wellbeing, including important positive social determinants. Ultimately our vision is to drive the arc of civil society toward empowered citizens, inclusive institutions and equitable systems.  In order to get to this point CLIMB starts with a most critical input which is our CLIMB youth leadership development program which orients teens and young adults to the economic way of thinking and living. One of the key levers within our youth development framework is rigorous education regarding the capital markets and the process of equity investing through our Summer Stock Market Experience. We offer the program during the summer so that students, especially those who are underserved, are able to participate in this pedagogical game even as many of the participants matriculate in school systems which bypass this crucial knowledge and skill set. These CLIMB programs connect to our cornerstone initiative which is our Community Based Investment Enterprise (CBIE) Launchpad Program. It is through this model that community based staff, thought leaders and CLIMB youth organize to form an investment enterprise which becomes an unequalled educational and wealth building platform. The capital markets and compound investment returns serve as powerful and efficacious levers for CBIEs. CBIEs help individuals build a nest egg of financial assets which can be leveraged into “next level wealth creation” and quality of life pursuits Including buying a home, entrepreneurship, continuing education and securing retirement.  As these investment enterprises proliferate within defined regions, additional benefits will accrue as entire neighborhoods can be revitalized, crime assuaged and aspirational benchmarks of social determinants of health are realized.  In terms of control, CLIMB has the clarity of vision and capacity to create its regenerative economic empowerment model locally. However, it will require civic will and collective resources to take the CLIMB model to national scale. CLIMB is a proven model and intervention that has and can transform the futures of families, communities, regions, and our very nation. Without CLIMB, the pernicious cycles of poverty and disparate wealth are destined to persist and grow.

We currently serve 250 people in our stage one programs and 50 persons in our stage two Launchpad program.  In the next year, we expect to serve 400 people in our stage one pre-launch programs and 100 persons in our stage two Launchpad program.  In five years, assuming resource support, we expect to serve 2000 persons in our pre-launch programs and at least 500 persons in our Launchpad program.

This project will target leaders and staff of community-based organizations, educators, aspiring entrepreneurs, young adults, CLIMB Youth Leaders and their parents.

Demographics will be young to middle aged underserved adults and teens who participate in the CLIMB Youth Leaders program, or a youth development program hosted by a Launchpad community- based organization.  The Launchpad is concentrating its initial focus on Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin.  The CBIE model provides some special demographic and community benefits by creating pathways for sustainable wealth creation.  While the Launchpad team guides the strategy for the project, the pilot may be influenced and assisted by state and local government as well as the NASDAQ foundation. These entities, as well as the University of Wisconsin School of Business and others are currently exploring synergies with a goal of helping to propel the Launchpad forward.

CLIMB USA created and leads a Collective Impact Initiative which is an inter-agency consortium that is collective dedicated to providing robust and sustainable financial education for youth and families of color.  One of CLIMB's cornerstone programs, the Summer Stock Market Experience, rose out of the ideation of the Collective Impact Initiative in Milwaukee.  In fact, CLIMB USA itself was established to serve as the backbone of the Collective Impact Initiative's work.  Therefore, CLIMB itself sprang forth as an entity organically from the collective vision and ideation of the Milwaukee Community.  We know and fully appreciate the importance of both place based and community of interest solutions to challenges.  CLIMB Launchpad will implement its first place based model at www.walnutway.org. And we have a very ambitious vision to grow our place based work in tandem with our companion organization, www.landrich.org which has a mission to support the economic development of low wealth inter-generational landowners who incidentally, predominantly are domiciled throughout the Truist footprint.  As far as communities of interest, we don't actually create communities of interest as much as we leverage existing ones for our CBIE Launchpad purposes.  Most notably, we are launching a CBIE through a Milwaukee Public Schools (teachers) community of interest, multiple community based organizations, and we have the potential to grow CBIEs within the copious network of faith based institutions that thrive within communities of color.

On the www.climbusa.org website, please go to Resources, In the news, then scroll down to the video at the bottom of the page which highlights CLIMB's Founder, Robert Wynn's unflinching dedication and track record for serving the needs of small business.  Through Mr. Wynn's four decades of leadership and focus on proactive solutions to community economic challenges, CLIMB is uniquely suited for the work that it does because the trust level with CLIMB's Team is so high.

We will establish five Community Based Investment Enterprises in each of the next two years.  The impact will be economic empowerment of the enterprise members that will manifest in wealth creation through portfolio accretion, and eventually through additional "next level" wealth creation endeavors.  We will grow to scale by adding resources to increase our internal capacity will building and strengthening our community partnerships through our Collective Impact work, and through other means.

Robert Wynn is the Founder and President of CLIMB USA. Mr. Wynn was the Founder of Asset Builders, that originally launched CLIMB (Communities Learning to Invest and Mobilize for Business) as one of its programs. He served a three-year term on the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Advisory Council, and he served multiple terms on the national board of directors of BetterInvesting.  Mr. Wynn has four decades of substantive experience in conceptualizing and implementing sustainable and innovative economic development projects and initiatives.  His original CLIMB model has been instrumental in facilitating the startup of 30 investment clubs. The updated CLIMB Team comprises experts of color who have financial industry experience. The CLIMB model boasts a unique opportunity to engage communities, not traditionally involved in legacy wealth building activities, intergenerational collaborative partnerships compromised primarily of African American individuals that create a bond of long assisting cross learning and mentoring. CLIMB serves youth, families, and communities that have historically been underserved. While our activities are available to all, we strive to connect our programs to organizations that serve the low and moderate-income demographic and people of color.  Additionally nonprofit, business, government and financial partners, including representatives from the African American Credit Union Coalition, who have valuable experience in the financial arena, serve as the Community Engagement Ambassadors for the project.  And we are connecting with community and thought leaders in order to inform, influence and refine strategic initiatives to address wealth gaps that have widened since the pandemic.

This partnership with the Truist Foundation will broaden our access to valuable expertise through the vast Truist network of experts and resources.  It would also power our effort to broaden our footprint as we take our CBIE model to a national scale. Community-Based Investment Enterprises, are in actuality cooperatively owned small businesses.  Through our model, CBIEs will: 1) receive more support, guidance and technical assistance during the startup process than the typical model, 2) target the involvement of aspiring entrepreneurs, managers and staff of community-based organizations, educators and thought leaders; 3) include youth investors as members; and 4) orient members to a broader understanding of the “economic way of thinking and living”, including instruction regarding the role, function and benefits of entrepreneurship and the capital markets.  As we educate and elevate community members regarding economic opportunities and the wealth building process, we know that CBIE members will use their investment capital for “next level” wealth building endeavors such as buying homes and entrepreneurial pursuits.  The Truist ecosystem will be supportive and facilitative when it comes to our CBIE members pursuing their “next level” economic dreams.

CLIMB has already built some strong collaborative partnerships with organizations such as Running Rebels Journey House, Neighborhood House, Milwaukee Public Schools, the City of Milwaukee and other community stakeholders in our Pilot Footprint. The CBIE Launchpad Pilot is also in the process of expanding its collaborative reach with other partners such as Better investing, the NASDAQ Foundation, local financial institutions and policy makers.

Truist can assist us by connecting us with influential community and business leaders within the company’s operational footprint, lending insights and expertise to the CBIE Pilot Implementation Team, and being a ready partner to CBIE members as they spin out into their next level wealth building pursuits.

As for other partners, 1) Community Based Partners can work with the CLIMB Launchpad to lead the creation of one or more CBIEs to serve their own staff and constituency); 2) Corporate and Foundation partners can assist the Launchpad with funding, as well as volunteer to share their experience and expertise to CBIE members as guest presenters; 3) We look for policy makers and thought leaders to be open to being informed by our work and our vision as they craft ideas and policy initiatives aimed at economically empowering underserved communities.

Nationally, we already partner with BetterInvesting, CUNA Mutual Group and the African American Credit Union Coalition. We have also been exploring potential collaborations with other national partners including the NASDAQ Foundation, the Federal Reserve of Chicago and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  We would like to build our relationship with those organizations and also with the Intercontinental Exchange / NYSE.

Our model works best when we complement our national partnerships with solid local and regional partners.  We plan to use our Milwaukee Collective Impact framework as a partnership model as we expand into other regions.  This includes, but is not limited to: local independent community based organizations, local affiliates of national organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs, YM / YWCAs, Urban Leagues, etc. Also, the local school district, city and corporate leadership, and local financial education partners. In Milwaukee those include Secure Futures, Junior Achievement and Wisconsin Womens Business Initiative.