Think of us like a fast-paced micro-MacArthur Foundation for your flashes of fast-paced micro-genius.
- Tim Hwang, Founder of the Awesome Foundation for Arts and Sciences in Boston
We’re kicking off Awesome Foundation in Berlin! You’ll find the details in Michelle‘s announcement that I cross-posted below:
The Awesome Foundation, a new way to fund small projects, has launched in Berlin.
How does it work? Well, ten trustees get together in a bar, and everyone throws in €100 of their own hard-earned cash into a brown bag. Together they sift through idea applications, and at the end of the evening, they hand out the €1,000 to the project “forwarding the interest of Awesome”; they liked the most.
The submission criteria are purposefully open and broadly defined. Doing research, an artwork, a social project? There’s no restriction on creativity, and we don’t care if your project is for fun or for profit. The important thing is that you’re doing something awesome and need some money to make it happen.
Project so far have included giant hammocks in a Boston park, a biobus in New York, and a materials petting zoo in Providence.
As Hwang says, of course there are plenty of larger grants you can apply for. But those are bogged down with lots of paperwork and reporting, and it can take forever to ever see any cash. You’ll have to dilute your idea in an application form and fit it within a funding framework. Blah to all of that. Let’s do something awesome today!
Being the “poor but sexy” Berlin chapter, we’re hosting the app process every quarter, rather than monthly like other chapters. But we know all of you have got some awesome ideas – something sitting on your mind’s shelf waiting to be unleashed on the world. Apply by December 8, and you might get a brown bag stuffed with €1,000 cash to make your project a reality.
Follow the progress on Twitter: awesomebln.
