Student-led financial-literacy nonprofit

Teaching the language of opportunity.

Free, practical money skills for the people the system overlooks — veterans, families in shelters, and students, from Northern Virginia to rural India.

Our mission

We believe every kid deserves to understand money — no matter their zip code or background. The Financial Freedom Foundation exists to give young people the tools, knowledge, and confidence to build a life on their own terms.

Statement of Impact 2020 – 2026
Students & community members reached 0+
Veterans in the financial-toxicity study 0
Workshops led in local shelters 0
Girls educated in an underserved village 0
Raised toward a local nonprofit empowering girls in rural India $0
0%+
of high schoolers we surveyed couldn't correctly answer basic questions about credit, interest, or how to read a paycheck
The problem F³ exists for

Across 80 students surveyed, most couldn't tell a debit card from a credit card.

The gap isn't motivation — it's exposure. No one taught them. Every F³ program starts with one question: who is the system forgetting, and what would change that? People are far less vulnerable when they hold skills they can use themselves — and what they build is theirs.

Veterans

The benefits they earned, finally made navigable.

We help veterans cut through the debt and benefits systems they were never taught to use — turning original research on financial toxicity into workshops that meet them where they are.

Title I Schools & Shelters

Practical tools, brought right to the shelter door.

Families in shelters are among the most resourceful people in the room. F³ brings budgeting, credit rebuilding, and benefits navigation right to them — and into Title I classrooms across Fairfax and Prince William County.

International Reach

Independence, taught from the ground up.

In an underserved village in India, we teach savings, compound interest, scam awareness, and the confidence to build a life on their own terms.

What we do

Six programs, organized around who the system forgets.

Each program is built for a specific community, shaped by original research, and delivered in person where it's needed most.

Veterans

Veterans Financial Literacy

After years of service, veterans shouldn't have to fight through their own benefits system. F³ demystifies benefits, eases the toxicity of unnavigated debt, and builds literacy around tools that are already theirs. Workshops run in partnership with Veterans Heroes Bridge.

It began as research. Harman's first-authored study of financial capability among 88 U.S. veterans grew into an umbrella review on extended-stay housing and financial toxicity with Dr. James Witte at George Mason University. Research became workshops.

APHA · Presented Mid-Atlantic Bioinformatics Conference OJPHI–JMIR · Under review Journal of General Internal Medicine · Under review
Harman teaching veterans financial literacy Presenting at APHA conference
Social Innovators

Social Entrepreneurship

Through UPenn's Social Innovators Program, Harman built F³'s first program for student athletes — NIL basics, budgeting on stipends, contract literacy, and credit, drawn from his own seasons on the Adidas 3SSB circuit. The instinct behind it — spot a real need, then design something practical for it — now drives everything F³ creates.

Product concept · BudgetBand A conceptual wearable that senses when you enter a shopping area and delivers a haptic buzz — a spending-awareness cue. Impulse spending thrives on the missing pause between walking in and reaching for your wallet; BudgetBand creates that pause. A model, not a product, but it points to where F³ believes financial tools should go.
BudgetBand concept wearable
Digital & Broadcast

Fox 5 Show & Instagram Outreach

Financial literacy doesn't have to live in a classroom. F³'s short-form content on compound interest, credit, and scams has reached over 10,000 students by making the material feel relevant. The same approach powers Teen Talks with Harman, a monthly Fox 5 Plus segment where Harman interviews entrepreneurs, finance professionals, and community leaders — clear enough for students, substantive enough to matter.

📸 Follow @financefreedomacademy
10,000+ reached Fox 5 Plus · Monthly since 2022
Shelters & Schools

Title I Schools & Shelters

F³ brings practical financial education to the communities where the opportunity gap opens earliest — and this summer is training student volunteers to scale it across Northern Virginia.

Shelter-Based

Families in shelters are often the most resourceful people in the room — they just haven't had the tools yet. Partnering with Shelter House, Fair Ridge, the Loudoun Homeless Services Center, and Artemis, F³ brings live workshops on budgeting, credit rebuilding, and benefits navigation right to them — 16 shelter workshops so far.

County Schools

F³ is joining Fairfax County Public Schools and Prince William County Public Schools as an official community partner, bringing financial-literacy programming into Title I schools — reaching students in the classrooms where the gap starts, before it widens.

FCPS & PWCPS · Community partner Title I schools Shelter House · Fair Ridge · Loudoun · Artemis
F3 team presenting financial literacy workshop at shelter F3 volunteers teaching shelter residents
Rural India

International Reach: Rural India

In an underserved village in India, a local nonprofit houses and educates roughly 100 girls from economically challenged backgrounds. F³ built and launched a financial-empowerment summer course just for them — savings, compound interest, scam awareness, and building toward independence. An email campaign Harman helped launch raised $20,000 to support the nonprofit.

The reasoning is the same as everywhere F³ works: we can't change where these girls started — but we can hand them practical tools, and what they build is theirs.

A school in an underserved village in India Girls in the village financial-literacy program
College Access

The F³ Fellowship

20
full-tuition college scholarships
awarded every year to girls from underprivileged backgrounds

For an orphaned girl in rural India, finishing school is rarely the hard part — paying for college is. Each year, the F³ Fellowship funds 20 full-tuition college scholarships for the girls F³ already teaches, turning a diploma into a degree and a degree into independence.

It's the longest arc of everything F³ does — not a one-day workshop, but a future a young woman gets to build and keep as her own.

20 awarded every year Full college tuition
Sponsor a scholarship
Coming this year

The Financial Freedom Summit

INAUGURAL EDITION · SUMMER 2026 · NORTHERN VIRGINIA

One day connecting students with finance professionals, entrepreneurs, and community leaders — the model that turns a single workshop into a movement. F³ is in partnership conversations with leading financial institutions to sponsor it.

  • Hands-on, student-first sessions on credit, investing, and benefits navigation
  • Panels with practitioners from finance, research, and the nonprofit world
  • Designed to extend F³'s curriculum to students who've never had a seat at the table
Sponsor or partner
Coming soon
2026
Inaugural year

1
Day · students + industry, one room

In conversations with leading financial institutions for lead sponsorship.

In their words

The people who work alongside F³.

Partners and research collaborators on what the work looks like up close.

As Community Coordinator with Shelter House at the Loudoun Homeless Services Center for the past 26 years, I've worked with many volunteer groups. We have been trying to bring financial literacy workshops to our residents for some time, and it has been a challenge to find the right fit. This group stood out — the students were respectful, hardworking, and genuinely invested in helping others. Their work lightened our load and reminded our residents that the community has not forgotten them. What impressed me most was the connection they built with our residents and their ability to share financial knowledge in simple, understandable terms; the engagement and positive response was something we do not often see so quickly.
Linda Kimble
Community Coordinator, Shelter House at Loudoun Homeless Services Center · 26 years of service
Harman built a financial course for our girls that met them exactly where they are — savings, scams, planning for a future they get to own. The funds he helped raise are still working on our campus.
Sarva Rajendra
Executive Director, Sahasra Deepika Foundation for Education
Harman approaches research the way a serious scholar does — carefully, and with the people behind the data always in view. Our umbrella review was stronger for it.
Dr. James Witte
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University · Co-author, extended-stay housing umbrella review
What sets Harman apart is that he never treats veterans as a statistic. He started with a real question about financial toxicity and followed it all the way into the community.
John Coleman
Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University · Mentor, Veteran Financial Toxicity Study
Grounded in original research

The work is reviewed, presented, and on the record.

F³'s programs aren't built on good intentions alone — they come out of original research, conference presentations, and a standing public platform.

OJPHI – JMIR
Financial literacy & financial toxicity among U.S. veterans, analyzing survey data from 88 veterans. First author.
Peer-reviewed · Under review
APHA
Intersectional financial toxicity among veterans, presented at the American Public Health Association.
Conference · Presented
Journal of General Internal Medicine
Extended-Stay Hotels as a Non-Traditional Housing Intervention to Reduce Financial Toxicity Among U.S. Veterans: An Umbrella Review. With Dr. James Witte, George Mason University.
Peer-reviewed · Under review
University of Pennsylvania
Social Innovators Program — where the athlete financial-literacy curriculum was developed.
Program · Curriculum
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Findings presented at the Mid-Atlantic Bioinformatics Conference.
Conference · Presented
Fox 5 Plus
Teen Talks with Harman — a monthly broadcast segment on financial literacy and entrepreneurship for teens.
Broadcast · Monthly
Our story

A question that kept getting bigger.

F³ didn't start as a nonprofit. It started with a question Harman Sabharwal couldn't stop asking: why do people face real consequences — financial, personal, medical — not because help doesn't exist, but because the system around it is impossible to navigate?

It took shape when he volunteered with veterans between 9th and 10th grade. The veterans he met weren't failing for lack of eligibility — they were failing because no one had made the process navigable. The gap wasn't in the policy. It was in the distance between policy and people.

That observation became a research paper. The paper became a conference presentation. The presentation became a workshop, and then another. Then a TV segment. Then a shelter partnership. Then a summer course for orphaned girls in an underserved village in India.

The through-line never changed: people are far less vulnerable when they hold skills they can use themselves. For the communities F³ serves, financial literacy isn't a nice-to-have — it's the difference between stability and crisis. F³ is student-led and built on one belief: a system can be made to work for the people it was meant to serve.

Our team

The students behind F³.

A student-led team turning research and lived insight into programs that reach real communities.

Harman Sabharwal
Harman Sabharwal
Founder & Executive Director
Veer Raya
Veer Raya
President of Innovation & Growth
EB
Evan Bhatia
Director of Community Engagement
Karina Matalia
Karina Matalia
Director of Media & Communications
Get involved

Help us build literacy where systems have stopped looking.

Whether you run a school, a shelter, or a firm that wants to back the work, there's a way in.

Schools & shelters

Bring F³ workshops to your students or residents across Northern Virginia.

Request a workshop →
Sponsors & partners

Back the 2026 Financial Freedom Summit or underwrite a program.

Become a partner →
Donate

Fund curriculum, volunteer training, and the next opportunity hall.

Support the work →