A charge pump system uses a helper pump to use in generating a boosted clock signal to use for a capacitor of a stage of a charge pump and also for the gate clock of the stage. This can be particularly useful in applications with lower supply levels, where the helper pump can be used to provide an amplitude higher than the supply level, that can then be added to the supply level for the boosted clock signal and then added again to the supply level for the gate clock. Further advantages can be obtained by using the helper or auxiliary pump as an input to an optimized inverter circuit that receives an input clock and has an output that initially rises to the supply level then subsequently to the auxiliary pump's level.