Our History

2014 - 2015
The story began with class discussions at Kent State University. At the time, it was just that. An idea inspired by two professors: Dr. Via and Dr. Thornton. Ideas often come and go, but Scott Glasgow knew this one was different. He knew it could be something more. Something bigger.
January 2016
Scott launches an energy bar company with a foundation arm. The name was inspired by his Financial Management class and mangoes for brightness. FinMan + Mango! The business fails, but the foundation lives on. The first logo:
April 2016
Scott jumps on a flight to San Francisco to visit Oscar, an old college friend and Noogler (new Google employee) at the time. They talk about the idea and come to an agreement the the world NEEDED FinMango at that moment.
October 2016
Scott recruits Steffan Dwarkasignh and Jeff Jensen to start building the non-profit, alongside Oscar Walhtinez.
November 2016
Our first education program launched in Canton, Ohio at the JRC Center with Jon Li and Scott Glasgow. Soon after, our first global program launched when a Togolese NGO (led by Jeremies Pimizi) searched for financial management in the city of Mango on Google. Instead of finding financial management organizations from the city, they found FinMango from Akron, Ohio. The program later expands to 13 different countries with our Money Cycle.
December 2016
Soham Patel and Scott travel to Tijuana, Mexico to probe a potential partnership and learn more about the financial inclusion problem globally.
May 2017
In May, Scott speaks to 500 students at the University of Akron Finance Day and meets Bob Gillingham. The passion was mutually infectious and Bob (now known as Mango Bob now) joins FinMango to launch an investment education program. The class later expands to schools across the United States and reached 50,000+ students.
Summer 2017
Soham moves to Ohio and Maci Woyat becomes a leader to officially kick-off FinMango. They hosted meetings on Kayaks, worked on stuff at Starbucks at 1am, and onboarded new volunteers (Taylor Fair, Jeff Shafer, Aditya Maitra, and so on). The kick-off was special.
Fall 2017
The Bob Gillingham Investment class launches in schools. Brandyn Neal and Rich Hoag join the organization. Brandyn and Scott meet Steve Ballmer on the campus of Harvard chatted for 15 minutes.
January 2018
In 2018, FinMango was invited to a networking event by the JP Morgan Chase Foundation in San Francisco.  The organization took the opportunity to reward founding members with a trip. Soham Patel, Bob Gillingham, Maci Woyat, Jon Li, Steffan Dwarkasingh, and Scott Glasgow joined.
November 2018
FinMango India is officially formed with Harish Sharma and Gautham Kannan. Harish and Gautham later join FinMango leadership to assist the organization with operations.
January 2019
FinMango launches the Fincubator, a youth accelerator program focused on financial literacy and entrepreneurship, with Stephen Nzishura and Fern Morrison in Uganda. The program creates 12 businesses and 211 bank accounts through 2020.
Summer 2020
In May, EXTRAVAGANZA launches as the world’s most unique financial inclusion conference in history. It consisted of 24 hours (a WORLD RECORD on ZOOM) of LIVE keynotes, workshops, and panels from speakers across the world. Over 1600 people attended and over 300,000 people were reached on social media live streams thanks to Anthony Schilt, Pedro Cleto, and Enrico Buoro.
In July, the FinMango Advocacy Alliance launches as a passionate community of financial literacy & inclusion advocates. 300+ people were accepted from 70+ countries!
In July, FinMango launches a collaboration with Google on the COVID Open Data Project. The Project was the world's most comprehensive COVID-19 dataset that tracked sub-national cases and vaccine deployment data for 20,000+ distinct locations in over 190 countries. We provided insights about the pandemic’s effects on local economies, and worked directly with their teams to research and curate data sources. The work was used by the WHO, World Bank, IMF, Harvard Research, USAID, and Verily to name a few. The work was used in vaccine research, helped governments decide public policy, and guide travel safety measures amongst many other things.
In September, FinMango & Florida's COVID Action collaborated on the nation’s most comprehensive COVID-19 dataset--documenting coronavirus cases in every K-12 school district in the U.S.A. Check out the joint landing page and the data page to learn more about this past project. Scott and Oscar Wahltinez co-authored a top trending Op-Ed for U.S. News and World Report and the project got featured on CNN, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Fortune, and NBC just to name a few.
Fall 2020
FinMango grows to a record number of active contributors. Passion resulted in amazing results.
August 2021
In March, Mango X is born! The semi-secret moonshot factory of FinMango was set on creating radical new technologies to address some of the biggest obstacles to financial inclusion. The team built a series of powerful tools and calculators that are currently used by thousands of teachers nationwide.
learn more about Mango X →
Check out the Products they created →
In August, FinMango was awarded a $50,000 grant from Google Health for our collaboration on the COVID-19 Open Data Project since July 2020.
learn more about the project →
Appreciation Letter →
Summer 2022
FinMango spearheaded a strategic planning team that consisted of eight thoughtfully picked Mangoes – Katherine Lordi, Ojasvinee Singh, Bruna Chixaro, Tobias Abramenko, Gautham Kannam, Avneesh Sawhney, Dominic Julian, Scott Glasgow – and one facilitator – Chris Shannon. Each member was carefully selected based on their availability and skill sets related to project management, communication, stakeholder voice, and membership voice.

The goal of the team was to consider where the organization was; what we wanted to see happen over the next five years; and formulate a plan for how to achieve the goals. A BIG component of the process was assessing our past mission and adjusting as needed to ensure it’s aligned with the impact we are seeking to achieve.

PREVIOUS MISSION: to make financial literacy and inclusion universally accessible and useful.

During the strategic planning process, our time was spent surveying, mapping the financial education ecosystem, creating empathy maps, and conducting supplemental research. We did this to identify a potential target population, define the problem we are trying to solve for that population through our collective efforts, and to use this information to revise our mission statement and draft a vision statement to guide our work in the coming years.
During this process, we realized FinMango’s work aligned with the “complex,” or systems, context. This implied that our approach should be about experimentation with an emphasis on probing, sensing, and then responding.

Though a complex system may appear predictable, hindsight does not lead to foresight because at the end of the day, external systems constantly change. This means that we cannot predict what will happen and that the system is dynamic. Solutions can’t be imposed; rather, they emerge from the circumstances and are often put into action through influence.

Moving forward, it was evident – thanks to the community survey – that our work should focus on the complex context of young adults around the world and their financial stability. More specifically, we should focus on supporting that stability to young adults in times of transition.

Financial health is influenced by so much more than just knowledge and that a tool that benefits one person might not help another. Accordingly, we decided FinMango will no longer be a player in the crowded financial education world. There are so many other great organizations in the financial education space and rather than compete, FinMango will work to elevate them to partners and coalitions looking for financial education content.

At the conclusion of the process–on National Mango Day – we announced the new journey FinMango was embarking on, with its new focus to solve complex problems that endanger the financial health of young adults in transition.
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Looking back, we are so thankful to Chris Shannon for facilitating the strategic planning process and for all the thoughtfully picked mangoes that served on the team – Katherine, Tobias, Dominic, Ojasvinee, Bruna, Avneesh and Gautham! In just 15 weeks, they drastically altered the direction of FinMango for the better and I am deeply grateful for their contribution.
July 2022
🚀 The New FinMango launches
FinMango launches with a new mission to solve complex problems that endanger the financial health of young adults in transition. We believe in a world with economic equality. Katherine Lordi, Bruna Chixaro, Soham Patel, and Scott Glasgow meet up in NYC for the relaunch! Special thanks to Chris Shannon for facilitating the process.
2023
FinMango officially starts working again to kick-off a new era in the organization's history. Stay tuned for new updates!
Today
Today, FinMango is a team run by a collective of passionate professionals all with the same mission in life: to create a future where all people have financial health.

501(c)(3) non-profit.
EIN: 81-2543425

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