AWESOME HANTSPORT!

A group of citizens are committed to starting a chapter of the Awesome Foundation in our community.  Would you like to become a charter trustee?  We are looking for ten individuals who will agree to contribute $100.00 two to three times a year and participate in choosing the recipient of a $1000.00 award to do something “Awesome”.

The details of how to set up the program are up to the Trustees but we are guaranteed of a lot of fun and the chance to increase the level of ‘Awesomeness” in Hantsport.  For more information please contact Lorraine at lorrainemcqueen@eastlink.ca or 684-3166

The Awesome Foundation Handbook - V 0.61
By: Tim Hwang, AF-SF (Trustee), AF-Boston (Ret.) Produced Under Authorization of the Office of the Dean, AF-SF Dated: April 23rd, 2011
Table of Contents
(1) Introduction
(2) What Is It
(3) Trustee Commitments and Chapter Composition (4) Getting Started: Bringing Together An Initial Group (5) Getting Connected With Awesomeness Worldwide (6) Organizational Best Practices and Options
Introduction
Greetings! You hold in your hand (or your screen) the collective culled knowledge of over two years of grant giving and supporting awesomeness at the Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences. Weʼre hoping this will be a useful document of guidance for people trying to get a chapter started or with questions about the care and feeding of an existing chapter.
What Is It
Mission: The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences exists to support the interest of awesomeness in the universe.
In Practice: We are a global of community of good folks experimenting with simple, lightweight funding structures that foster the creation of surprise and delight globally.
Organizationally: Each chapter in the Awesome Foundation community operates as a fully independent entity: there is no actual legal entity “in charge” of the Foundation. To that end, everything in this document should be treated as a guideline -- chapters are allowed to vary the basic model as is best suited to achieving the core purpose of fostering awesomeness.
Trustee Commitments and Chapter Composition
At their core, an Awesome Foundation chapter consists of ten micro-trustees which make decisions and guide the organization. When they are brought on, trustees make three key commitments:
1) To commit to donating $100 a month to form a single $1000 grant to forward the interest of awesomeness in the universe.
2) To participate fully in the monthly grant selection process of the chapter.

3) Before resigning, trustees must find a successor to fill their chair on the board, or accept a nomination from the other trustees.
There generally are no “term limits” to the duration that trustees can spend on the board. They serve life terms until they resign or are incapacitated.
Also: according to tradition, chapters generally grant the first person holding a trustee slot in the chapter the right to title that position for all future occupants of the slot on the board (e.g. The Tim Hwang Chair for Higher Awesome Studies).
An overwhelming number of chapters also include an eleventh position for a “Dean of Awesome,” who does not make the financial commitment of the other trustees. The Dean commits to serving as the logistical lead and main point of contact for the chapter to the public, helping to coordinate meetings and plan events. Chapters vary on the position of the Dean relative to the trustees -- some serve life terms similar to the trustees in the chapter, others have terms of set length, and others serve at the consensus of the trustee board.
Getting Started: Bringing Together An Initial Group
Once youʼve had a chance to talk with someone at the Awesome Foundation, the initial big task will be to bring together the core group of trustees and the Dean.
Some advice here: the powerful thing about the Awesome Foundation is that it creates a meeting point for many local communities that would otherwise not be connected. Each of the trustee also plays a role in promoting the chapter, so the type of applications a chapter receives will be at least partially dependent on the composition of the board. Choose wisely!
Generally, someone starting a chapter will gather together a few friends to form an initial base of trustees, and put out an open call online for volunteers to fill the remaining slots. This allows the board to already have a pre-existing community between members, while allowing the board to be open to communities that an insular group of friends would not have access to.
Many people starting chapters discover that there are more than ten trustees interested in serving on the board of the Awesome Foundation. A significant minority of chapters have increased the size of their trustee groups to twelve or thirteen trustees. The main purpose of keeping to ten trustees is to make it easier for the chapter to find consensus and fund a project each month. Chapters increase the number of trustees with that caveat in mind.
Before finally confirming that a chapter is ready to launch, most groups meet together in person as a group to finalize planning. Afterwards, youʼre off to the races! The Dean schedules and brings together monthly meetings to choose grantees and grant awards.

Getting Connected with Awesome Worldwide
Once youʼve gotten your initial trustee group together and are ready to go, let us know!
Weʼll get your chapter connected with the global community of Awesome Foundation chapters around the world. Hereʼs a few ways that the Awesome Foundation chapters worldwide are connected with one another. Since the chapters operate independently of one another, chapters can elect to participate in this common infrastructure as much or as little as they want, but weʼve provided some useful resources. These are:
The Grant System
The Awesome Foundation maintains a basic grant system that makes it possible for prospective fellows to submit applications to chapters (and for chapters to view proposals they have received and export them as a CSV.
Some chapters have set up their own forms to ask additional questions of applicants, but we have a basic form online and available via the main website. If youʼd like to be set up on this system and get the login and password to access the submitted applications, drop a line to Tim Hwang at: tim@awesomefoundation.org.
Awesome Foundation Website, Twitter, Blog
The Awesome Foundation also maintains a global website at awesomefoundation.org. The site contains some basic chapter descriptions, FAQs, and information about the Foundation. AF-SF is currently working on launching a more fully fleshed out version of this website as well as more customizable and feature-rich chapter pages. Get in touch with Dean Jesse Taggert if youʼd like updates about this: jesse@taggert.net.
The Awesome Foundation maintains a global Twitter account and blog. Chapters get access to these outlets, and are good places to make general announcements of interest to the community (recently awarded grantees, new trustees, and the like). When you post, weʼve set up tags for each of the chapters - definitely tag them when you make posts! Itʼll make it easier for people to find all the things your chapter has funded.
You can also get an official @awesomefoundation.org e-mail address for your chapter if youʼre interested - again, just drop a line to tim@awesomefoundation.org.
In addition to these outlets, many chapters find it useful to set up their own chapter specific online presence to coordinate events and announce news of interest locally.
The Global Awesome Foundation Discussion List
All the chapters are connected by a community discussion list. Many trustees have at least their Dean subscribed to the list so they can stay in touch with events happening globally with the Awesome Foundation. However, any trustee of the Foundation in the

world is welcome to subscribe and contribute. If youʼd like to be on this list, feel free to drop an e-mail to: tim@awesomefoundation.org.
Like the website, Twitter, and blog, chapters generally set up their own internal e-mail list (using Google Groups or similar services) to help coordinate meetings, discussions around proposals, and the like.
The Institute on Higher Awesome Studies
As of 2011, the Awesome Foundation has also spun up a separate, official non-profit called the Institute on Higher Awesome Studies. It works to increase awesomeness in the world by experimenting with new, community-driven ways to incubate, fund, and promote awesome individuals & their projects. It is planned to function as common organizational infrastructure for chapters that want to partner with more traditional non- profits or offer tax-deductions for the contributions by their trustees. If there is interest or questions, please contact Christina Xu (AF-Boston, Trustee) - christina.k.xu@gmail.com.
Organizational Best Practices and Options
As discussed above, the Awesome Foundation model is intentionally designed to be highly flexible to the specific needs of the trustees in their context. As a result, chapters have developed a number of distinctive best practices and methods that vary across the community. We list the most prominent practices and notable variations (and the chapters that pioneered them) here that might be useful to as you move ahead:
Awesome Produces Awesome
Weʼve found time and time again that the grant that an Awesome Foundation chapter gives in a previous month will shape the type and number of grants it receives in the present month. Awarding a grant to an art project gives rise to more proposals to art projects to a given chapter. A chapter that funds a project that is widely shared and discussed in the previous month will result in more proposals for the following month.
So, in choosing grants, most chapters look to the awesomeness of the project they are funding, as well as the types of project flow that grant will encourage as well. Strategically, chapters can use this to shape the type of grants they are receiving, and maintain the health of grant flow to the chapter as well.
Connecting People as the Big Value
$1,000 is enough money to produce a focused project, but weʼve found over time that the main value of the Awesome Foundation chapters lies in the group of trustees.
Through them, projects are able to access communities and be promoted to an audience they would not otherwise have. In many cases, an Awesome Foundation grant

allows the winner to build the initial prototype of a project and receive the needed attention to meet collaborators and acquire larger rounds of funding from others.
The trustees also play a big role in encouraging winners to actually complete their project. Many chapters have trustees volunteer to be mentors to winning projects, helping to keep the trustees in touch with the progress of the project and find ways of connecting them with other projects that the chapter has previously funded.
Prerogatives of the Dean
If youʼve selected the right group of trustees, theyʼll often be extremely busy. The role of the Dean of Awesome was originally formed in Boston with the purpose of dealing with this systemic problem by creating a point person responsible for taking on the logistical load of the chapter. Their powers and responsibilities vary according to the needs of the chapter in achieving that goal.
The New York Method -- To deal with the busy schedules of their trustees, AF-NYC granted their Dean of Awesome the power to pre-filter application submissions in advance of the grant selection meeting. The trustee group would then ultimately consider 4-5 finalist grants at their meeting.
Dealing With Money
The general approach of the Awesome Foundation is to create organizational processes that are extremely lightweight and easy to implement. As a result, most chapters do not generally keep a common bank account for the grant money. Instead, money is given to the winners at the time of the award by all the trustees individually in cash or check form.
The San Francisco Method -- To streamline the process, AF-SF has chosen to use the online service WePay to coordinate payments. Weʼve found it to be pretty useful.
Choosing the Grant Winner
Since all the money is voluntarily donated by trustees once a month, the Awesome Foundation has traditionally decided on grant winners by discussion and common consensus, rather than a voting system.
The San Francisco Method -- While AF-SF keeps to the general rule of choosing grants by consensus, the chapter has built a little voting booth web application that allows trustees to participate in a straw vote before the discussion begins at the monthly meetings.
Grant Frequency

Generally, chapters give out grants once a month, except in months where they receive no proposal that interests the trustees and decide to pass. This element of the Awesome Foundation grant scheduling can and has been varied.
The London Method -- To accommodate the schedules of the trustees, AF-London has elected to fund grants every other month.
Trustee Engagement
The life of chapters rise and fall on trustee engagement. Deans should play an active role in bringing trustees together, and being quick to avoid frequent absenteeism among trustees at meetings. It ends up being important that trustees should also read the grant proposals in advance and be able to discuss them at meetings.
The types of grants funded also play a big role in keeping trustees engaged. Not surprisingly, funded grants that end up being unsuccessful tend to cause problems. Chapters have generally focused on a set of characteristics in selecting grants to promote the chances of success:

1. 1)  The ability to complete the project within the timespan of a month.
   
2. 2)  The ability for the proposer to complete the grant, based on interviews with
   applicants and personal connections with the trustees.
   
3. 3)  The ability for the $1,000 grant to make a difference in being able to complete
   the project.
   

Like the other topics in this section, there are also some other novel variations for maintaining an engaged group of trustees.
The Washington Method -- In an effort to deal with a long waiting list of interested trustees and ensuring that the group of trustees remain committed to participating in the chapter, AF-DC considers trustees to have officially resigned if they fail to attend a scheduled meeting.
Too Many Interested Trustees
One of the persistent questions with the Awesome Foundations around the world are how to deal with an influx of individuals interested in serving as trustees. At the time of writing, these is no consensus in the community about the best way to approach this question. While an increased number of trustees would allow for larger grants and connections to more communities, there is a countervailing need to maintain a small enough trustee group that will be able to settle on a grant by consensus. We list the most prominent approaches that chapters have taken below:
The Washington Method -- AF-DC has held to keeping the trustee group strictly limited at ten trustees, opting to maintain a waiting list of interested trustees that succeed to chairs as they open up.

The Berlin Method -- Upon receiving enough trustees, AF-Berlin created two interlinked group of trustees. The two chapters operate under the same common name in Berlin, and alternate months on donating and choosing grants.
The Melbourne Method -- At the time of writing, AF-Melbourne is considering launching additional chapters in the same city which would fund projects simultaneously from month to month.
Doing Award Events
Upon choosing the monthʼs winner, the general practice is that chapters hold events where they award the money to the grantee to being working on the project. These events are a good way of recognizing award winners and bringing community attention to the project.
Weʼve also found that the events are an extremely effective way of promoting the chapter and application submissions. However, there are some variations that chapters have experimented with in holding these events, including holding the event after the winner completes the project.
The London Method -- AF-London and a number of other chapters have opted for a more competitive model of grant awards. Events are competitions where Foundation finalists pitch their projects in person and then the trustees decide the winner at the event itself.
Final Words
Creating and being on an Awesome Foundation board is a lot of work! And it is also awesomely rewarding. This is why so many AF chapters have arisen around the world in only two short years. We hope you will find that working and playing in your local AF foundation is incredibly fulfilling. Thank you for spreading awesomeness throughout your world.