Future of awesome

Let's just talk about AWESOME stuff for the future. Dream big and keep it positive.

Growing the AF

• Let's just see an Awesome Foundation chapter in every city.
  • What if everyone in America was a trustee
• Make the AF open source, more transparency and available documentation of what we have done right and wrong
  • More publishing of process, should help with grant proposals because will people will see how do-able it is
• Chapters within existing orgs - companies, universities, etc.
• Christina wants to make a Reddit AF
• We should make barriers to entry lower and easier
• How will we handle geography and boundaries as we get more and more chapters
• More chapters in small, rural areas where it's a huge deal
  • less competition with stuff that's happening already
  • huge impact
• Let's make an unofficial goal of 100 chapters next year

Granting

• Trustees should lead be example and apply for Awesome grants!
  • We should consider ourselves and grantees all part of the same community
• What if we made an AF-internal meta-grant?
  • re: concerns of favoritism, higher barrier because trustees hold themselves to higher standards
• Or a chapter where only the trustees can apply, so the money gets shuffled around month to month
• Help grow things by occasionally funding projects from random places that aren't in cities with chapters

Collaboration

• Awesome as a portal between small projects
  • Like Kiva for Awesome
  • Traveling projects that go between chapters
  • Inter-grantee collaborations
• Develop an international grantee community
• global AF community couchsurfing
• source of video and pitches and promos and articles and other media

Spreading the word

• Awesome museum exhibits
• Let's become The Example of how to do micro-funding and citizen philanthropy
• Foundations and institutions think we're cool already, we can leverage that
  • But we should not worry about seeking those out, just make ourselves available
• Let's have an international holiday (suggestions: 4/4, 4/29, founding date of Boston chapter, something involving 8?)

Collaborations

• A team-up of something like the Awesome Foundation and the Gates Foundation
  • Ellen and Nikki know people at the Gates Foundation
  • What if the GF paid us to go places and do things?
  • What if we just did that without the GF?
• certified Awesome stamps for venues and businesses that supports us

Programs

• What if we had full-time Awesome Fellows whose job was to help people?
• Annual international Awesome Summit, and then regional summits
  • next year's summit should have Awesome Awards
  • and sharing craziest grants/applications
• Bigger events, like the Awesome Camping Trip
• Workshops and techniques and office hours to help people come up with better awesome ideas
  • less self-serving project proposals
  • maybe guest trustee programs will help, since people will have a better idea of how to do things

Long-term thinking

• Willow: let's not grow out of our niche, because we're filling a space that needs to be filled
• We have a responsibility and a opportunity to build this way of thinking in our culture
  • it's success if it replicated and spread and copied
• What's the role of artificially growing things and cultivating chapters instead of letting it grow organically?
  • AF Rio was cultivated by Christina and Lee Sean being there simultaneously, inviting a bunch of people to dinner, and talking about Awesome
  • It would be nice to do that under IHAS