Our Mission
To strengthen economic education at the secondary level so that all students are able to apply economic principles in their personal, professional, and civic lives. We strive to achieve our mission by offering economic educators free professional development and innovative high-school lesson plans.
Our Story
Econiful is a nonprofit that traces its roots back to 1972 when Thomas R. Brown, CEO of Burr-Brown Corporation, met University of Arizona economist Gerald Swanson. Their friendship and shared appreciation for the power of economic principles led to the creation of the Thomas R. Brown Foundation (TRBF) “to advance the use of economic principles in public and private decision making through strategic partnerships and educational programs.” From 2005 to 2022, TRBF funded over 700 professional development workshops for K-12 educators, mostly in Southern Arizona.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, TRBF began offering virtual and on-demand workshops to an increasingly geographically diverse audience of educators. In the latter half of 2022, TRBF adopted the trade name Econiful for its efforts to support middle and high school teachers around the country with professional development programs and, eventually, a full economics curriculum.
