At first, the only person Brian Kushner had the chance to pitch was the person at the front desk. He had walked into a JPMorgan Chase branch in SoHo without an appointment, not to open an account or apply for a job, but to explain a nonprofit run by Brooklyn teenagers. He had a proposal: bring practical lessons about money to children who were still young enough to be learning the basics of fractions and percentages.

The front-desk pitch led to a meeting with a branch manager. That meeting opened the door to another: a conversation with Asshur Cunningham, a JPMorgan Chase vice president and community manager. Each introduction took the idea a little further. But the real test came afterward, when a promising conversation had to become an actual program. Following planning, outreach and back-and-forth coordination, students served by Intellectual Gain gained opportunities to attend Chase-hosted Money Skills workshops.

The unexpected bank visit is only one piece of a larger story. Across Brooklyn, a group of high school students has been recruiting volunteer tutors, working with families, scheduling virtual lessons, and bringing financial education to students in grades four through eight. Their organization, Intellectual Gain, Inc., is a registered New York 501(c)(3) nonprofit built around an uncomplicated idea: useful educational help should not depend on whether a family can pay for it.

A Nonprofit With Homework Of Its Own

Intellectual Gain began in 2025 as a project shared by five Brooklyn teenagers who saw how easily the cost of private tutoring could put individualized help out of reach. Plenty of students need another explanation of a math concept or a patient reader to work through an assignment. Not every family can…