Atlanta · Founded 2016 · 501(c)(3)
They're using behavioral science against you. We fund the science that fights back.
The Institute of FAME funds peer-reviewed research on financial decision-making in populations the financial-services industry rarely studies in depth — under-resourced consumers, small and mid-sized enterprises, and the citizens whose financial lives consumer-protection regulation is supposed to shape. The evidence we fund is anchored in validated psychometric instruments the institute owns and translates into briefs, op-eds, and regulatory comments that reach the regulators, educators, and advocates whose decisions move policy.
Flagship instrument
MTI is the institute's flagship validated psychometric instrument — a six-archetype framework anchored in bond-instrument behavioral patterns, designed to measure how individuals make everyday financial decisions. Phase 1 validation under FAME's research program. Available for licensing to qualifying academic, educational, and commercial users on equivalent terms.
See the MTI program →FAME-funded research
FAME-funded studies on UK regulatory-sandbox effects (Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 2022) and FinTech adoption in manufacturing SMEs (Economies, 2023) have accumulated 75 peer-reviewed citations at Oxford, Imperial College London, King's College London, Sciences Po, KU Leuven, and other tier-1 European and U.S. institutions. The evidence anchors the institute's briefs, op-eds, and regulatory comments across the four issue areas.
Browse funded papers →Donor partners
FAME holds the IRS's preferred 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) public-charity classification. Contributions of any size are tax-deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law.
Ways to give →Issue areas
FAME concentrates funded research and policy translation in four issue areas where the institute has demonstrated empirical standing.
Issue area · Financial Education Measurement
Personal-finance curricula reach 30 million U.S. K-12 students annually on largely-untested behavioral assumptions. What measurement-grade evidence shows which interventions actually predict adult financial outcomes?
Issue area · FinTech Regulation
Regulatory sandboxes have been adopted in more than fifty jurisdictions, but the empirical evidence on whether they accelerate productive entry — or just produce regulatory press releases — has lagged. What does the UK record actually show, and what should U.S. and other developed-economy regulators learn from it?
Issue area · FinTech Consumer Protection
Buy-now-pay-later, alternative credit data, and FinTech-driven small-business credit have produced uneven outcomes for under-resourced households and SMEs. Which products genuinely expand access — and which extract from the populations they serve?
Issue area · CBDC and Digital Money
134 jurisdictions are exploring central bank digital currencies, yet retail adoption in the early-launch markets has been thin. Under what behavioral conditions will citizens of developed-economy CBDC issuers actually migrate to the new instruments?
Why we can be trusted with your gift
The institute's founder and Chair, Dr. Patrick Bernard Washington, holds a Finance PhD from the University of Alabama (2016), where he also taught finance courses as a graduate instructor from 2009 to 2012. He joined the Morehouse College faculty in 2012 and was promoted to Associate Professor of Finance in 2017, directing the Center for the Advancement of Financial Education from 2018 to 2024; his courses regularly enrolled cross-registered students from Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University through the Atlanta University Center consortium. He has authored or co-authored 14 peer-reviewed publications that have accumulated 1,111 citations, with an h-index of 11 and an i10-index of 12. Earlier in his career he was an investment-banking analyst at Salomon Smith Barney (Citi) and a credit research analyst at Prudential Financial. The combined research, teaching-leadership, and Wall Street career produces the methodological credentials behind FAME's funding decisions — listed transparently on the Papers page and the Press page.
Citation metrics: Google Scholar, May 2026. OpenAlex confirms 817 citations / h-index 10 / i10-index 10 from the formal-database subset of indexed venues.
Year founded
2016
IRS classification
170(b)(1)(A)(vi)
Founder citations
1,111
FAME-funded studies
2