Armed with a paper bag full of cash and a love for design, urban planning, art and science, the newly formed
Awesome Foundation Toronto is looking to encourage people to improve the city, make it more fun and encourage serious social projects with a decidedly unserious-sounding grants program. They're offering $1,000 to the person who submits the best idea to "do something awesome."
The Toronto project is spearheaded by Mozilla Foundation consultant and "pitch designer"
Geoffrey MacDougall, and joins the growing international Awesome Foundation network. As outlined in the Boston founder's founding post, the project is a sort of "micro-
MacArthur Foundation for your flashes of micro-genius": "The idea is simple:
create a monthly $1,000 grant awarded to a person doing things to forward the interest of Awesome.
The money will be spent on a project, activity, or research, and it
will be (intentionally) broadly defined. We don't even really care if
it's for fun or for profit. We will never claim your intellectual
property or anything like that, and anyone in the world is eligible. So
long as you need the money and the idea is awesome, you will receive it
with no strings attached. Period. End of story."
The Toronto chapter's first call for submissions asks for videotaped entries explaining the awesome idea, and why it needs $1,000 to be realized. The deadline for submissions is February 15th.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Geoffrey MacDougall, Awesome Foundation Toronto