Grassroots group devoted to awesome ideas
Posted Sep 14, 2011 05:08:27 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Someone in Waterloo Region will receive a paper bag full of money tonight for nothing more than their promise to carry through on an awesome idea.
In a sometimes-difficult-to-explain movement that began in the Boston area several years ago, a group of 12 trustees come together to support people in their community who have an idea but lack the funding to carry it out. And the movement has been quietly at work in Waterloo Region for six months now.
Trustees put up their own money — $100 per month, in cash — and get no charitable tax receipt for their contribution.
It’s something that K-W Awesome co-founder Ramy Nassar considers an investment in the community, not to mention a leap of faith.
“We don’t require the applicants to provide us with any sort of report or follow-up,” Nassar admits. “(All) we do ask them (is) to share their story of how their project or idea or whatever it is they wanted to do turns out.”
Besides Boston, Awesome Foundations have sprung up in Toronto, Ottawa, San Francisco, Zurich and 15 other communities around the world, including the recently formed Waterloo Region chapter.
You might think it would be hard to find 12 people willing to give away $100 every month while asking nothing in return.
Not so, says Nassar.
“One of the things that surprised me was just how easy it was to find the trustees,” he offers. “In fact, we have a waiting list of people who want to be on the Board of Trustees (for K-W Awesome) and put down some of their own hard-earned money towards this project on a regular basis.”
Among the limited rules facing applicants is that they must commit to executing their “project/event/exhibit/awesome thing” within 60 days of receiving their grant and it must be free to the public. Beyond that, anything goes.
Applicants make a submission through the K-W Awesome Foundation website and trustees create a short list of their favourite ideas from there. The short-listed applicants are then invited to a pitch night, where they gather at a local venue to explain what makes their idea “awesome.” At the end of the night, the successful applicant walks away with $1000 in cash. A $200 grant is given to a runner-up, as decided by those in attendance that night, sort of like a viewer’s choice award.
Among the awesome ideas funded by the local foundation to date was support for the so-called “Secret Gardener,” whose hope is to bring a little joy to commuters in Waterloo Region.
“He’s planted a smiley face and heart-shaped flower patterns along the expressway,” Nassar remembers. “And I think one of the reasons he was chosen as the first recipient was because of his passion and his drive and the fact that he’s been doing this on his own time and out of his own pocket for years now. The grant has helped him take it to another level.”
Even unsuccessful applicants have found a benefit to attending a pitch night.
Nassar relates a story of an applicant who wanted to create a stroller-friendly map network for the region, so parents could easily learn the smoothest, least-obstructed trails and paths to take children for walks in a stroller. While she wasn’t chosen to receive the funding on her pitch night, an employee with Google in Kitchener happened to be in attendance and offered to add a stroller-friendly feature to Google maps as a pilot project.
For Nassar, it’s symbolic of what an Awesome Foundation is all about.
“It’s sort of a reminder, I guess, of what an incredible community we live in,” he says.
The K-W Art Gallery is hosting the next pitch event tonight, starting at 6:30. The event is free and open to the public.
For more information on the K-W Awesome Foundation, follow this link.
