What the hell is Awesome?

I’ve been a part of the Awesome Foundation Sydney for a few months now… and I always get asked two questions.

1) “What happens if you’re funding terrorism?”

2) “What exactly makes something awesome?”

The answer to question 1 is that we have an application process where we use common logic, and sometimes checking out the project in question, to ensure we don’t fund terrorism. But at the end of the day, it’s a no strings attached grant to do something awesome, and terrorism isn’t really that awesome.

However, I thought I would give 6 quick tips around what makes something an ‘Awesome Foundation’ worthy idea.

1. It’s your love - you live and breathe your project, and are extremely passionate about it. You could talk about it for days. Looking at you entrepreneurs, artists, designers and students!
2. It’s creative - you know that not many other people are doing it.
3. It’s not a charity - charities are always a worthwhile cause (and I personally donate to charities every year) but we’re not going to fund something that can already get funding from more official sources. We want to fund things that can’t get funding from anywhere else.
4.  $1000 would make a difference to your project - it means you can buy that extra thing that will make your project complete, or pay for the entire thing. We don’t want our donation to be a drop in a pool of money.
5. Random and fun - We all love smiling, make the rest of Sydney smile too. [Include quote about why smiles are awesome]
6. It makes Sydney better than Melbourne - as much as I love our fantastic Melbourne AF team… we all know that Sydney is so much better – your project really puts Sydney on the map. And who doesn’t love a little bit of interstate rivalry?

So you’re applying – here’s a quick FAQ to the process:

• Apply here and select ‘Sydney’ as the chapter
• Our applications close at the end of each month, and we announce our winners a couple of weeks later.
• You can apply for multiple months if you don’t win the grant in a month.
• You are more than welcome to ask for feedback!

Hopefully that clears up a few of the questions you may have. If you’ve got any more, feel free to tweet @awesomefoundsyd or leave a comment.  Can’t wait to read all your applications!!