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= Origins =
Tim Hwang founded The Awesome Foundation in 2009, to address his frustration with the 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 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 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 annually, people's inventions would receive media coverage and lead to more inventions, and they would find highly commendable applications at home and abroad. Casual tinkerers were becoming bonafide citizen problem solvers! Communities And it didn't take billionaires to get them started.