Awesome Beyond Awesome

Presentation by Kevin F. Adler

How to extend the awesomeness beyond the Awesome Foundation

Or, the short talk that will lead to a breakout session that I rewrote at 2:30 yesterday

Talking a bit about the San Francisco chapter, and their first project: History of the Sky to take time-lapse photography of the sky

Thesis 1: More people want to be trustees than is possible

Thesis 2: There are more worthy projects that apply for grants than are possible

Thesis 3 What do we know? Over the past few years, we have as of right now: $1,951,000 granted, 1951 projects funded, 82 chapters, 18 countries

What can we take from all of these experiments that we can do?

All of these theses are maybe not true, so what are we left with?

What projects do we fund? (orphans and flamethrowers, but maybe we need to rethink what a flamethrower really means, maybe we have to start w/ kindling)
- (Guest mini-lecture from Caprice from Detroit about Caprice Connects, her short film about connections, which led to being a trustee, which led to presenting at Sundance)
- One project by itself can grow beyond what it originally started as
What communities do we engage?
- Detroit allows the community to hear the pitches, build collaboration among the public where necessary
- His research has been on how disasters and how it engages people--people are MORE likely to connect during times of stress than less
- The applications that come in are a gold mine of information
Who are our trustees?
- Old-school philanthropy is stodgy old dudes, this is not who we are
- We need to tell our own stories as well as that of our grantees
- New trustees team as well as a new chapters team
How do we celebrate others?
- Even just a word of support will help without a grant. We're the Awesome Foundation. And we believe in you.