Institute on Higher Awesome Studies

The Institute on Higher Awesome Studies is incredibly proud to present the first-ever Awesome Summit, July 21-23, 2012 in Cambridge, MA!

On the 3rd anniversary of the first meeting of the Awesome Foundation, we are having a two-part summit to celebrate, discuss, and hack on our founding principles: peer-to-peer giving, democratizing grants, and making our communities more awesome.

Awesome Summit: Assemble (July 21st-22nd) will be a meetup and workathon for Awesome Foundation affiliates ONLY. Representatives from each of our chapters will gather to meet each other, share advice and experiences, and work on shared resources to help spread our model even further. If you’re a member of an Awesome Foundation chapter and would like an invite, please email us.

Awesome Summit: Connect (July 23rd) is open to the public and will extend the discussion to the wider community of people who are experimenting in the philanthropy/community development space. Join representatives from tons of organizations like Kickstarter, DonorsChoose.org, and New Urban Mechanics in discussing issues like decentralized organizations and open brands, encouraging engaged donors, and the legal and political infrastructure we need. We want this to serve as a launching point for collaborations between these various organizations, and as a place to discuss the broader questions facing all the new organizations that are emerging in this field.

We’re currently looking for sponsors and volunteers of all levels to help us put this together. Huge thanks to the Knight Foundation for being an early sponsor, and to the Center for Civic Media for hosting us! If you believe in awesomeness, consider joining us!

Awesome Announcements

• Awesome Chicago’s November grant goes to Felix Jung for his QR Code Poetry project. 
• Awesome Seattle’s first grantee has released her first story-for-a-sandwich, entitled “You Could be Happy”.
• Awesome Connecticut is now in business! Welcome aboard!
• Awesome Pittsburgh had their first event on December 5th and gave out two grants to Puppet Photobooth and Pop-up Co-op (very alliterative). Instead of giant checks, they handed out microchecks for the microgrants. AWESOME!
• Awesome Montreal’s first grant went to the Alley Kids project.
• More information about Awesome Melbourne’s October grant, the Positive Parks Project!
• Awesome Food’s November grant goes to SNAP Gardens, a program that promotes buying seeds with food stamps for food security.
• Every superhero needs a supervillain. Ours, the Awful Foundation, has just reared its ugly head! Whatever shall we do?

Awesome Events

• Awesome Calgary’s cohosting a holiday party tonight. How do you guys have so many events??

Awesome in the News

• Awesome Ottawa’s November grant to Anne Patterson gets written up.
• Awesome Tampa Bay gets a detailed writeup of their first grant to the Birdhouse Buying Club.
• Awesome Foundation receives a positive review in Free Money Ate my Brain, a site that normally warns about the dangers of getting free money.
• Awesome Seattle’s Ellen Chisa writes about how she got over her skepticism to give $100/month.

Reading

• Lower-income women give more, proportionally, than any other demographic.

(Chancellor’s note: this is a new experiment in consolidating all the great news we get on a week to week basis in the Awesome universe. If I missed something, send me a note! Likewise, would love to hear what you all are reading that’s relevant to the Awesome Foundation.)

Awesome Announcements

• An AF Boston-backed Kickstarter project to create Biochemies (magnetic DNA molecule plush dolls) is up and running!
• Awesome Chicago’s October grant is making science cheaper with an Open Source Scanning Tunneling Microscope project.
• Awesome NYC’s October grant goes to Bushwick City Farms, a network of open spaces run by neighborhood volunteers that provides free food, clothing and educational programs for the community.
• AF Sydney reveals that they gave their June grant to surfer Chris Anderson to prototype a more environmentally-friendly surfboard.
• AF-SF interviews Awesome Fellow Kristina Kearns, the creator of Ourshelves, a more intimate public space for reading.
• Christina Xu of IHAS/AF-Boston is giving a (free) (comes with lunch) talk about Awesomeness at the Center for Civic Media at MIT. 

Awesome in the News

• “Every once in a while, I come across something that leads me to believe that humankind is going to survive the current malaise and meshugas.” - The Pink Slip reacts to AF-Boston’s Boston Globe article.
• Awesome Foundation Calgary is namechecked in this Calgary Herald piece about visionary philanthropists helped make the city a “cultural capital”. 
• CreatEquity summarizes Awesome Foundation founder Tim Hwang’s talk at the Grantmakers in the Arts conference.
• “All of the members are really excited that we can help unleash the altruistic creativity of the city.” - La Fondation Formidable Montreal is covered in the Montreal Gazette.
• Awesome Foundation Grand Rapids’ first grant, a youth writing center, is written up in the Grand Rapids Press.
• Watch this great Global TV news story on Awesome Foundation Toronto  and their insidious plans to shake up municipal law, one guerilla fish taco stand at a time.
• “Any leftover cash will be spent on mini-apple grinders and juices to make cider and fruit trees to plant in public places that could be tapped for future picks.” - Creative Loafing Atlanta on urban fruit scavengers Concrete Jungle, Awesome Food’s latest fellow.
• Awesome Kingston (Ontario) gets their deadline reminder into the Whig.

and, in a super epic move,

• Awesome Foundation founder Tim Hwang is featured as one of 12 innovative philanthropists in the Globe and Mail, alongside Bill Gates, George Soros, and Bono.

What We’re Reading

• Stop Blaming the Stars - Panthea Lee of the Reboot’s great talk on the man-made nature of disasters and how to design effective recoveries.
• Money Pools Float Immigrant Dreams - on informal immigrant money pools that enable small business and creative projects.
• Without Community We Are Nothing - WDET’s excellent piece on why they started their “Crossing the Lines” series, showcasing opportunities to cross difficult boundaries in Detroit.

We’re starting an experiment in community-driven microgranting in Detroit, and we need your help!

Detroit has a long history of exceptional journalism and community organizing, and the Awesome News Taskforce wants to make the ecosystem of projects circulating important civic information around the city even more impressive. Every month, the Taskforce’s 10-15 trustees will give away $1000 to anyone in the community who can come up with a worthy idea that supports and improve the civic media and news infrastructure within the city, whether it’s a useful gov 2.0 app for citizen reporting or a timely and underexposed story. If done right, the funded projects will set off ripples of inspiration and engagement throughout the city. In the past, we’ve seen $1000 has developed prototypes for decentralized phone networks, a project to interview 100 strangers, and a comprehensive database of hip-hop lyrics for research; we can’t wait to see what it can do for local news.

We are looking for 10-15 AWESOME Detroiters to serve as trustees: these individuals will deliberate monthly on the most awesome news-related project to give $1000 to. We are looking for bloggers, journalists, artists, community organizers, technologists, academics, and businesspeople who have a fierce love of Detroit and are interested in improving the way Detroiters get the information they need to make the city even greater. Ideal trustees are innovative, enthusiastic, hard-working, and widely-connected people. In assembling this taskforce, IHAS seeks a balance of diverse professional backgrounds and sectors, genders, races, and ages that reflects the city it intends to serve. Benefits of the job include having an ear to Motown’s wildest ideas and dreams and the ability to make them come true.

To organize all of the logistics of the fledgling Awesome News Taskforce, we’re also looking for a superhero organizer. The Dean of the Awesome News Taskforce is responsible for overseeing its internal logistics, scheduling meetings and planning events, and doing outreach within the community. As this will be a significant time commitment (~20 hours a week), we are offering a competitive stipend for this position. The ideal candidate is well-connected within the community, enthusiastic, and detail-oriented. After a one-month trial period, the candidate will be asked to make a 1-year commitment to the project.

If you’re interested in applying to serve as a trustee or a Dean, please click on the links to apply or email detroit-news@awesomestudies.org with a bio (including how you’re involved in news/information/community action & your history of the city), a short blurb about why you want to be involved, and a resume, portfolio, or list of projects you’re involved in. Applicants for both MUST be based in Detroit.