Institute on Higher Awesome Studies

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.

Sorry for missing last week, everyone! Thanksgiving made me all confused. Please accept this picture of kids with money, courtesy AF Calgary, as an apology.

Awesome Announcements

• A2Awesome (Ann Arbor) has launched!
• AF LA announces their newest grant and fundraiser.
• AF SF has been putting up photos of their recently funded projects on Facebook. A past fellow, Ken Murphy, has posted a year’s worth of his Awesome-funded “History of the Sky” project up as a gorgeous video.
• Awesome Tampa Bay is having an event on December 5th.
• Awesome Pittsburgh is also having its first event on December 5th, at which it will announce not one but TWO grants!
• Awesome Montreal/La Fondation Formidable is having its first event on December 6th. Good luck, guys!
• Awesome Calgary gave their last grant of the year to the Haysboro School Edible Garden. They also put up photos of the party they sponsored celebrating a beloved local institution.
• Awesome Melbourne gave a giant cheque to the Positive Parks project last month, which will debut in February 2012 (follow along on Facebook here). This month, their grant went to their youngest grantees yet (ages 12 & 16) for making the “Cut In Half” charity cookbook benefitting Little Dreamers.
• Awesome Ottawa awards its November grant to Anne Patterson of the Hello Ottawa! blog.

Awesome in the News

• Christina Xu’s talk about the Institute on Higher Awesome Studies and Awesome Foundation at MIT is up in video highlight form and thorough liveblogging form.
• Tim Hwang, founder of Awesome Foundation, wrote a blogpost on Too big to be Awesome at the PBS Idea Lab:
• A2Awesome (Ann Arbor) gets tons of great press about their launch from AnnArbor.com, Heritage Newspapers, and even the AV Club Ann Arbor.
• Glowing writeups of Awesome Foundation appeared in Auckland’s Creative Philanthropy blog as well as the blog Awesome Your Life, which called our application “the shortest and friendliest grant application I’ve ever seen!”

Reading

• The subtle condescension of ICT4D by White African.
• Mexico City residents stop waiting for the city and draws their own bike lanes.
• Thinking about Occupy Wall Street as an “API”.

(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.