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The Awesome Foundation is a way to celebrate and support the brilliant ideas that every-day people have, and thus create more awesomness awesomeness in the universe and at large. They do this by awarding a $1000 grant each month to a really swell idea. No strings attached. And AWESOME THINGS COME OF IT!!!

An Awesome Foundation "Chapter" is born when a group of 10 seeminlg seemingly normal people (or unruly misfits) come together as 'micro-trustees', and agree to pool $100each of their own money, every month. The self-organized group then collectively decides upon a project to recieve receive their collective $1000. While the Awesome Foundation's first cirlce circle of ten originated in Boston, MA in 2009, it has since exploded into a worldwide phenomon phenomenon with 89 chapters and 899 projects funded (that's $899,000!). Each chapter is completey completely autonomous, and organized around geographic location or topic of interest, includeing including technology, arts, food, social good, and beyond.

Ultimately, it is a way for regular people to philanthropically support other regular people's dreams, because we all know that it is regular people have the most ingenious flashes of brilliance, wildest fantasies, and diversity of interest and expriernce experience in making something unique happen! 

Tim Hwang founded The Awesome Foundation in 2009, to address his frustration with the unavailibility unavailability of small amounts of funding for small projects. So, he rallied 10 friends to begin this experiment in what they called 'guerilla funding'. In their home-made Foundation, anyone could be elgible eligible for the $1000 grant by submitting a simple 7 question application on their website.

What they found was that $1000 was a very sweet amount of money- it was small enough that the trustees did not worry about risk in what they were investing in, knowing another month would role around fast, but it was plenty of funding to legitimize the awesomness awesomeness of a person's idea and motivate them to GO BIG with it (like an activation energy!). The grants began to create great ripple effects in the community; festivals funded once would reoccur annunallyannually, people's inventions would receive media coverage and lead to more inventions, and they would find highly commendible commendable applications at home and abroad. Via cell phone shoes, big red camera ballons in the Gulf oil spill, water-purifying boat gardens, and more, casual Casual tinkerers were becaming becoming bonafide citizen problem solvers! Communities And it didn't take billionares billionaires to get them started.&nbsp;<blockquote>''"We tap the really underestimated power of JOY- without joy the Awesome Fondation Foundation would be the Cheap and Efficient foundation, which is a lot less catchy."'' - Chritina Christina Xu, Trustee</blockquote>In ___2011, they founded in the institute wake of awesome studies to create chapters in a place as an alternative the Haiti Earthquake foriegn aid scramble, the Foundation established '''The Institute on Higher Awesome Studies'''&nbsp;with the resounding cry for alternatives to traditional forms of aid,&nbsp;''"Yo, I know this sounds cray-cray. But like, check this argument out..." .&nbsp;''Mainstream aid (and its is plagued with many inefficiencies, in short sighted goals, rigidity and use of outsiders over indigenous resources) iand knowledge.e. Haiti Earthquake New Orleans, AF&nbsp;unite across diciplines recognized that their flexibility in boundaries/ network>> decentralized, but being a sum of our many decentralized small parts- take more risks than a traditional foundationallowed them to adapt to tough aid crisises, chapter by chapter, month by month, and empowering taskforces native to the areas they are trying to help. These chapters are already cropping up in adaptionNew Orleans and Detriot.

Furthermore, the Awesome = Current Chapters became valuable community nodes, for very interesting, imaginative people to congregate and brew. Trustees and participants could discover cross-disipline resources which they never would encounter in their own communities otherwise.&nbsp;Some of Their Awesomeness =

= Current Awesome Chapters are becoming valuable nodes in their communities; creating a reason for very interesting, imaginative, cross-disipline people to encounter eachother and Some of Their Awesomness =public attractions which alllow them to bond. Many Awesome Projects are very communiy-centric, here are a few:&nbsp;

= Steps Required = To Submit an Idea: ==

= Contact Info & Resources: = Check out the TEDxBoston: