Awesome Foundation at #sibsyd 2011
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Jess Nichols' presentation about the Awesome Foundation at Social Innovation Business Sydney - 13th August 2011
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Awesome Foundation at #sibsyd 2011
- 1. ?
- 7. micro-genius grant for flashes of micro-brilliance
- 10. est. 2009 Boston, MA
- 12. everybody cares about something, no matter how small
- 14. 20 Chapters: Berlin, Boston, Calgary, Chicago, Edmonton, Hamburg, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Montreal, New York City, Ottawa, Providence, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, Toronto, Washington DC, Zurich & Food
- 15. no head office
- 16. $250,000 grants in the last year
- 17. AF-SYDNEY est. march 2011
- 23. What is Awesome?
- 24. awe·some [aw-suhm] 1. inspiring awe: an awesome sight. 2. showing or characterized by awe.
- 29. what are you doing that’s awesome?
Editor's Notes
- I have a question for you. What do these things have in common?
- Random Swings of Joy in LA
- Honey on the rooftops of Melbourne’s CBD
- A Cardboard fort night in Toronto
- A fairy floss cannon in New York
- They all happen to be past recipients of Awesome Foundation grants. The Awesome Foundation is an ever-growing, worldwide network of people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness.
- We provide small grants to projects that wouldn’t necessarily get funding from more traditional channels. In the words of one of our trustees, The Awesome Foundation provides micro-genius grant for flashes of micro-brilliance. There is a catch however.
- There’s no strings attached. We claim no ownership of IP, ideas or expect anything in return.
- Honestly, the only reason we are part of the Awesome Foundation is because we want to grow local awesomeness. We just want to make the world – and for me personally Sydney – a more awesome place to live.
- The Awesome Foundation started in Boston in 2009, by Tim Hwang. Tim discovered that it was ridiculously hard to get small amounts of funding for small projects.
- Getting funding for big projects or ideas can be relatively easy – especially if you could go through regular channels like charities, angel investors or loans. But although big ideas can be amazing and world changing, long tail ideas – hence my dinosaur - may not have as much groundswell and support to be able to receive money through these channels. No one really wants to fund an idea that can’t have a massive return on investment.
- The Awesome Foundation fills this niche by providing people with awesome ideas, the chance to receive funding to help make their ideas a reality. Because everyone cares about something - no matter how big or small – and it’s the small ideas that keep the world moving. It’s about being agile with ideas. Having small, frequent grants allows us to take more risks – as we’re not investing as much as someone like an angel investor would be.
- Each grant we give away every month is $1000. Every month each of the 10 chapter trustees donate $100 to a pool to fund the $1000 grant. There’s no tax deductions or ways to get the money reimbursed, we just give the money away to someone doing something awesome.
- Since starting in Boston, there are now over 20 chapters around the globe in heaps of different countries. There are two in Australia – the first one was launched in Melbourne and now Sydney. Chapters don’t always need to be based on location – we have recently launched Awesome Food which includes trustees from USA, UK and Canada.
- There’s also no head office or central location. The different chapters are connected online and we all help each other out when we need support.
- And In those 20 chapters, we’ve been able to give 250 thousand dollars worth of grants. That’s a lot of awesome.
- So a bit about Awesome Foundation Sydney. We started in March this year by two awesome guys – Steve and Bruno.
- Steve and Bruno then scoured the universe for eight other awesome trustees, including myself. We have a really diverse group of people as trustees.
- Every month, we meet up for a dinner somewhere in Sydney and discuss the month’s applicants – who apply on the Awesome Foundation website. After we’ve made a decision on who will receive the month’s grant, we call them straight away to tell them the good news.
- We then collect the cash – here is $1000 in cash if you have ever wondered what it looks like.
- And then meet our recipient to give them a traditional brown paper bag with their grant.
- Since we started – we’ve tried to be really diverse with our grants – donating to causes and hobbies such as art, media and research projects.
- So how do we define awesome? Surely we must know what is awesome enough to give them $1000 cash.
- According to the dictionary, Awesome means that it inspires awe. Which is really descriptive I know.
- But we really don’t know how to define awesome. It’s just an entity or a feeling – you know something is awesome just by reading their application.
- But our point of view is that if the Awesome Foundation can help awesome ideas, it will spread awesomeness – by the people who directly receive the grant and those who indirectly benefit by being part of networks or are impacted by the result of the idea being realised.
- And we know people who have awesome smaller ideas will also have awesome world-changing ideas. We’ve recently been awarded our own Kickstarter page – so we can help promote and support previous recipients of Awesome Foundation grants in changing the world.
- So those ‘Random Swings of Joy’ that were funded in LA? They’ve recently run a successful Kickstarter campaign to set up the swings in Bolivia – they are flying over next month. This is just an example of how a small idea, with support from the Awesome Foundation can be world changing.
- So as Sydney’s social innovators - so what are you doing that’s awesome?
- Thanks very much.