USAA backs Wounded Warrior Project financial program with $5M investment (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — With the help from one of the largest insurance providers for the current and former military, the Wounded Warrior Project is aiming to mitigate something many veterans are vulnerable to when they leave enlistment: financial turmoil.
Financial services company USAA and Jacksonville-based nonprofit for veterans Wounded Warrior Project are launching Warrior Secure Start, a program built around helping veterans reach financial stability after doing their service.
The program is designed to educate veterans on managing their finances, understanding good debt versus bad debt and how to make a budget, and to provide $1,000 in direct cash to them after fulfilling the course. A form of the classes and grant awards has existed for the past two years, but at a limited capacity.
A new supply of funding is set to change that.
On Thursday, Wounded Warrior announced that USAA is backing the program with a $5 million investment over the course of five years.
From Wounded Warrior’s most recent survey of veterans across the country during Fiscal Year 2025, 67% of warriors struggled to make ends meet and 93% reported unmanageable debt other than their mortgage, said Deborah Holmes, Wounded Warrior’s Financial Readiness Program manager.
The financial strain often hits veterans within the first couple of years out of the military.
“Transitioning to civilian life introduces just a new set of challenges that can really significantly impact financial stability and security, and of course that increases financial stress, and it contributes to things like debt accumulation,”Holmes said. “And so what we have seen here with the Warrior Project is that warriors are struggling to make ends meet.”
For USAA, the Jacksonville-based organization was the right type of group to grow the program.
“… Candidly, the Wounded Warrior Project is the best partner that we could think of to do this, because they have such a reach across the entire veteran community, and they have a proven model of helping military veterans and their families not just get financially secure, but also (reach) overall well-being and overall wellness post-service,” said David Evetts, the president of the USAA foundation.
The program offers direct cash to veterans experiencing financial strain or hardship with the requirement of completing a set of financial education courses.
Evetts said to receive the grant, recipients first with a Wounded Warrior case manager, who will conduct a broad review on the veteran and how they are doing.
If a veteran is facing money problems, that’s where the USAA partnership comes in to offer a set of course modules with three classes. Once completed, the veteran turns a certificate in and receives a $1,000 “empowerment grant” straight into their bank account, Evetts said.
“…that allows you to either start a path to being financially empowered or if you have financial instability, hopefully that $1,000 can help you become a lot more stable.”
Wounded Warrior announced that USAA is backing its financial readiness program with a $5 million investment over the course of five years on July 9, 2026.
Wounded Warrior Project
But the longer-term goal is to sustain that financial stability.
In the past fiscal year, the program would give 500 empowerment grants to veterans, now its set to award 750 to 1,000, Holmes said.
“We do have a high completion rate with our warriors right now with the empowerment grant, so most of the warriors enter into the program and they’re very motivated,” she said. “I think some of the most amazing feedback we get from warriors is that they realize that this is something that they can do, that it wasn’t as hard as they thought it was going to be learning about this.”
Photo courtesy of USAA