A nonprofit teaching the long history of money, freely.
We make free, high-quality curriculum for the people teaching the next generation: classroom teachers, homeschooling parents, women learners, and community organizers. From Yap stones to Bitcoin, we trace money the way it actually exists, as a human invention that has been redesigned again and again.
Free curriculum, rigorous history, no agenda.
The Money Wisdom Project develops and distributes free, high-quality educational resources that help teachers, parents, and communities understand money by examining how it has been created, redesigned, and reinvented across civilizations. We are not selling Bitcoin. We are not selling an ideology. We are teaching the history of a human invention, and trusting our learners to draw their own conclusions.
"Paper is poverty… it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself."Thomas Jefferson
Most of us were taught how to manage money. Almost none of us were taught what money is.
Modern economic education, when it exists at all, rarely traces the evolution of money. Students leave school knowing how to balance a checkbook, perhaps, but not how a coin came to replace a cowrie shell, why paper notes once represented gold, or why a dollar today buys less than a dollar twenty years ago. Modern monetary systems and digital forms of money are barely taught.
Teachers and parents feel this gap. They want standards-aligned, ready-to-use materials they can drop into existing units, without waiting for district approval or textbook adoption cycles. Women in the West, in particular, are often left out of the financial conversation entirely, especially around digital money, where the dominant culture is tech-heavy and rarely meets them where they are.
We built the Money Wisdom Project to fill that gap. Free curriculum, in the hands of the people most ready to use it.
Money is a human invention.
It was made by people, redesigned by people, and is still being redesigned today. Treating it like weather or gravity hides the choices behind it.
The past is the best teacher.
Every monetary system in history reflects human choices, trade-offs, and responses to crisis. Studying that record is how learners build real judgment about the money they use.
Direct to the people teaching.
We put resources into the hands of classroom teachers, homeschoolers, and community leaders right now, rather than waiting for institutional adoption.
The principles that shape every lesson we publish.
Six commitments guide how we choose what to teach, how we write it, and how we hand it to the world.
Educational excellence first
Curriculum is designed by experienced educators, aligned to recognized standards, and tested with the teachers and parents who will use it. Rigor is not optional.
Free, with no fine print
Every packet, lesson, and family resource is free to download, free to use, and free to share. No paywall, no upsell, no trial period.
Historical honesty
We tell the truth about how monetary systems have succeeded and failed. We say how we know. When we do not know, we say that too.
Globally inclusive
Our materials reach a homeschool mom in Texas, a teacher in Nairobi, and a grandmother in Buenos Aires. Volunteer-led translation honors the languages and cultures of the communities using the work.
Critical thinking, not ideology
We give learners the tools to analyze monetary systems through historical patterns. We do not tell them what to conclude.
Community-centered learning
Money has always been social. Our programs build local chapters, online community, and shared study, because people learn best alongside other people.
A small organization, transparently run.
The Money Wisdom Project is a registered 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit incorporated in Texas. We operate lean by design, so that mission dollars stay focused on creation, distribution, and direct community engagement.
Registered educational nonprofit, IRS-approved
Founding board members guiding governance and finance
Operational launch year, with first packets coming this school year
Of curriculum is free to use, share, and translate (CC BY 4.0)
Built by a teacher.
Dr. Deanna Heikkinen, EdD
Deanna Heikkinen is an educator, curriculum designer, and author who has spent more than fifteen years teaching across ages and disciplines, from primary grades through college, and in classrooms both in person and online. She holds a doctorate in education and dual master's degrees in history and anthropology, an unusual combination that shapes how she approaches the history of money: as a story about people, the cultures they built, and the systems they invented to exchange value.
Her work on monetary education began with a simple observation. Most of the adults she taught had never been taught what money is. They had maybe been taught how to manage it, but not where it came from, why it keeps changing, or how the design choices behind it shape the lives they live now. The Money Wisdom Project grew out of a decade of trying to close that gap, first as a teacher, then as a writer, and now as the founder of a nonprofit dedicated to doing it for free, at scale.
Selected worksAuthor of Shells to Satoshi: The Story of Money and the Rise of Bitcoin, Ownschooling: Bitcoin, Sovereignty and Education, and the History of Money children's book series.