How Elevate partnered with Project Own to build the WEALTH Coaching platform, guiding families through the path to homeownership and helping generate $19.2M in collective mortgage purchasing power. US-based engineers, AI-assisted delivery, a mission we believe in.
The racial homeownership gap is one of the most persistent wealth divides in America. Project Own was founded to close it, one family at a time. Elevate partnered with them to build the technology that supports it at scale: the WEALTH Coaching platform, a system that walks every client from financial distress to mortgage readiness and turns individual coaching into a reproducible, data-driven process.
Black families in the United States hold a fraction of the wealth of white families, a disparity that compounds across generations and is most visible in homeownership rates. Project Own was founded to confront this reality directly through structured financial coaching that leads clients toward mortgage readiness.
But coaching at scale requires infrastructure. As Project Own's client base grew, the team needed a platform that could track client progress, manage the coaching pipeline, coordinate advisors, and make data-driven decisions about what was working. They needed technology that understood both finance and mission.
Program Impact to Date
The median net worth of a Black family in America is roughly 6% of the median net worth of a white family. Homeownership is the single most powerful lever available to most families for building generational wealth, and access to it has been systematically unequal for decades.
Project Own doesn't talk around this reality. They address it directly through financial coaching that focuses on the specific barriers that stand between underserved communities and the mortgage approval line: credit, savings, debt-to-income, and financial literacy.
Median Family Net Worth (United States)
18x gap. Every dollar of wealth for Black families corresponds to $18 held by white families. Homeownership, when attained, is one of the fastest ways to compress that ratio.
Source: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances
Project Own's coaching model doesn't work by accident, it follows a structured, six-step framework designed to take clients from financial uncertainty to mortgage-ready. Elevate built the platform to track every client through every step, making the invisible visible for both coaches and program leadership.
Hover over each letter to explore what the platform tracks, and what it changes for each client.
The WEALTH platform had to work for two audiences simultaneously: the clients navigating their financial journey, and the coaches tracking their progress. Elevate designed a system where every touchpoint, credit check, budget assessment, savings milestone, readiness score, feeds a dashboard that makes the coaching relationship more intelligent and efficient.
Twilio powers automated client communications and SMS check-ins. Stripe handles donation processing for the non-profit's operational funding. Plaid enables secure financial account connections for real-time visibility into client cash flow and progress against goals.
The client journey through the platform
These numbers aren't program metrics, they're families. Clients who went from thinking homeownership wasn't possible for them to holding keys to their own front door. The platform made this scalable.
An average 37-point credit score increase per client, the difference between a declined application and a competitive mortgage rate that saves tens of thousands over the life of a loan.
The platform's budgeting and spending analysis surfaces an average of $2,292 per month in available savings each client didn't know they had, money that becomes a down payment.
The 134% year-over-year growth proves the model works. What started as an individualized coaching approach is now a replicable, platform-powered system that grows with demand.
Every client journey enriches the platform's understanding of what works. Coaches use aggregate insights to refine interventions, and the program gets smarter with every enrollment.
"Homeownership isn't just about a house, it's about a family's ability to build wealth across generations. The platform makes that possible at scale."
Project Own shows what's possible when software is pointed at something that matters. The WEALTH Coaching platform was designed to close a gap that has persisted for generations, and it's doing exactly that, one family at a time, at growing scale.
This engagement is some of the most meaningful work in Elevate's portfolio. We partnered with Project Own's team to build not just a product, but an engine for economic mobility, with US-based engineers on the build and AI-assisted delivery keeping the roadmap moving. Every feature we ship together translates into a family's financial future.
Project at a Glance
Whether you're building for impact, for scale, or both, we'd love to hear what you're working toward. Our team is US-based, AI-assisted, and human-reviewed, and we'll treat your roadmap like it's our own. Let's talk.