Taking Awesome Beyond North America

Potential Problems

• Culture of philanthropy varies in different countries
• It’s hard to find good leadership to start new chapters
• Hard to support new chapters nearby without healthy local chapters
• The bottleneck is going from one person being really excited → whole group

Ideas / Stories

• Minas Gerais started because Renato was living in Boston and encountered the idea, and wanted to bring it back to Minas Gerais. He was put in touch with Ana from the Rio chapter, who offered a lot of local support. It took him another year to actually finish putting together a group of trustees and get the chapter started.
• Yerevan started because Albert saw the Berlin chapter while hanging out at Betahaus. He brought the idea back to Yerevan and got a few other people who worked on a coworking space excited. They thought that $1000 for 10 people was too much, so they ended up trying for 20, then 30, then 40, then eventually 50 trustees. They have 3 to 4 “deans” to manage the process and do a pitch event with the top contenders.
• Be careful of how to frame the value proposition of Awesome Foundation—philanthropy less translatable than “get cool people together and support cool projects”.
• Natural vectors for spreading: hackerspaces and coworking spaces, other people who are naturally interested in gatherings of interesting people + supporting local projects.
• “If it’s big $$, people apply for $$. If it’s small $$, people apply for fun.”

Potential Solutions

• YouTube testimonials
• Case studies of how chapters get started

* How did you initially hear about the chapter?
* Start a YouTube page.

• Awesome Ambassador program

* Fledgling chapters page on the website
* Kit of resources (?) for putting together.

• Web updates

* Change the chapters list to sort by country first

• Revising the New Chapter Manual - have more concrete suggestions

* Find Partners → coworking spaces, cafes
* Throw a party and just get interested people together!
* Contact nearby local chapters → find regional ambassadors for each place.
* How do you translate Awesome?
 * What are all the current translations and what do they really mean?