TruStage Ventures Discovery Fund Shares First-Place Honors for the 2026 Tekkie Award for People Helping People

By W.B. King

True to the credit union mission, the Finopotamus Tekkie Award for People Helping People recognizes an initiative, program, or team effort that significantly improved the lives of members or the community in 2025.

In the spirit of this category, which supports the ethos of the credit union movement, the judges determined that the first-place designation should be shared by the six nominees: Addition Financial Credit Union, Advia Credit Union, Holy Rosary Credit Union, NET Credit Union, St. Louis Community Credit Union, TruStage Ventures Discovery Fund, and United Consumers Credit Union.

Presented in no particular order, TruStage Ventures Discovery Fund is spotlighted next. The Madison, Wis.-based community-focused TruStage Financial Group, Inc. provides insurance and financial services for middle-market consumers and the businesses that serve them.

Servant Leadership

Conceived as a long-term, mission-driven initiative to address inequities in the financial sector by backing underrepresented entrepreneurs building solutions for financial inclusion, the TruStage Ventures Discovery Fund helps low- and moderate-income consumers who are underserved by traditional financial systems.

“The Discovery Fund operationalizes the credit union movement’s ‘people helping people’ philosophy at scale: it connects capital, expertise, and cooperative networks to founders solving real problems,” Elizabeth McCluskey, Managing Director of the Discovery Fund, told Finopotamus.

Without such options, McCluskey added that members’ financial health is directly impacted—from cash-flow volatility, credit access barriers, wealth-building gaps, and protection needs.

“Beyond providing funding, the program actively helps portfolio companies reach and serve credit union members by facilitating introductions to credit unions and other customers, elevating and mentoring founders, and supporting early-stage validation so solutions can be adopted by cooperatives and delivered to the communities credit unions exist to serve,” she shared.

Elizabeth McCluskey

In 2025, veteran-founded startups were also included in the TruStage platform. This initiative recognizes service-oriented community that are often underfunded and aligned them with credit unions’ longstanding support of military members, veterans, and their families, McCluskey explained. “This expansion strengthens the program’s impact by intentionally welcoming another population of entrepreneurs who bring lived experience, servant leadership, and community-first perspectives to financial innovation.”

Directly Benefiting Members

As an investment-and-ecosystem initiative, the technology deployed for the Discovery Fund is essentially the portfolio’s fintech products plus the structured approach that moves those products into credit union channels where they can directly benefit members, McCluskey said.

Tech partnership examples include:

• The Alameda, Calif.-based Hello Divorce, which improves legal access for people who can’t afford traditional attorney-led divorce by combining guided workflows, expert support, and an AI assistant (“Hallie”) that helps users navigate complex, state-specific requirements. In 2025, Hello Divorce expanded from operating in 13 states to completing divorces in 47 states—making affordable, standardized help available to far more families nationwide.

  
  

• The New York City-based Debbie Rewards helps consumers—especially those carrying high-interest, unsecured debt—build financial resilience by turning “small wins” into momentum, McCluskey noted. The app combines goal-setting, psychology-based learning modules, and account connectivity to track progress, while offering rewards sponsored by partner financial institutions (often community-based credit unions).

  
  

• The Boston-based Stackwell is celebrating the third year of its “Student Investment Program,” a partnership with Student Freedom Initiative and Institute of Consumer Money Management ICMM. McCluskey explained that this collaboration helps students build strong financial foundations. “The goal is simple, but powerful: give students a head start. Not just with money, but with confidence, goal-setting, and a sense of belonging in a system that hasn’t always made space for them.” Through the program, students receive $1,000 to invest, along with education designed to make investing feel practical, relevant, and doable.

  
  

Backing Scaleable Solutions

In total, the Discovery Fund has invested more than $18 million in 28 early-stage startups, achieving a 100% survival rate. This includes three acquisitions, indicating that the model is helping mission-aligned innovators sustain and scale, McCluskey posited.

“Up to $5 million [has been] invested annually in early-stage fintech companies led by BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color], LGBTQ+, women and veteran founders (fund strategy and stated commitment),” she added.

In 2025 and 2026, four new investments and 11 follow-on investments were made, demonstrating both new founder support and continued backing of scaling solutions were realized. “The team facilitated 100-plus introductions to credit unions and other customers on behalf of portfolio companies, accelerating real-world pilots and adoption pathways,” McCluskey told Finopotamus.