San Francisco, CA
Queer Cat Productions 2021 Commission
By Carson Beker, on behalf of Queer Cat Productions January 2021
Reinvigorating several Community Gardens in BVHP
By Isaiah Powell December 2020
The True Tale of Princess Kaguya
By Ai Aida November 2020
Cirque Du Vote-leil
By Jenny Gottstein October 2020
Practice fundraising/Equipment
By Jason Taylor September 2020
Helping the disabled look and feel good
By Still look good foundation September 2020
SF African American Senior Narrative Quilt Project
By William Rhodes August 2020
Climate Resilient Schools
By Lil Milagro Henriquez July 2020
Un Respiro de Vida / A Breath Of Life
By Belinda Hernandez Arriaga June 2020
Within the First 50 paces
By Frederick Green May 2020
Bike Match: Free Bikes for COV19 Essential Workers
By Stephen Braitsch (written by Alicia Escott) May 2020
Something Labs
By Sam Haynor April 2020
Engineering for Covid-19 PAPR Project!
By Zach Reed April 2020
Acknowledgment Committee
By Acknowledgment Committee March 2020
ICONIC HARVEY MILK
By Khoi Nguyen March 2020
The Little Theater at the WSPS
By William Lewis & Lea Redmond February 2020
Val-U-Mart
By Ad January 2020
Fancy Phone Numbers - 16mm film
By Sequinette January 2020
"Waiting for San Francisco to Vanish"
By Paul Wiley December 2019
Solar-powered Internet for People's Park!
By Marc Juul November 2019
Dirty Kid Prom
By Melissa Matheney November 2019
Write vs. Wrong
By Hannah Rothstein October 2019
Re-Introduction of Pacific Tree Frogs to FFACC
By Danielle L Fernandez September 2019
Wildfire Progression Sculptures
By Adrien Segal September 2019
The Jellyfish Camera
By Jeremiah Barber July 2019
Russell City, CA: Documenting a Town Now Gone
By Megan Wilkinson July 2019
Buried Ships Project
By Justin Oliphant June 2019
Stoop Stories
By Ellie MacBride May 2019
Project Kolateral in San Francisco!
By Mixkaela VIllalon April 2019
We’re not going Anywhere
By Richie Rhombus March 2019
The Sideshow
By Michelle Ibarra February 2019Star Stories Live, a Podcast
By Kay Matschullat January 2019
Song of Songs Seder Celebrating Queer Sexuality
By Susala Kay January 2019
Sonoma Poetry Festival
By Meg Hamill December 2018
nègre
By Simone Bailey November 2018
Tricyclolo
By Michael Arcega November 2018Robot 44
By Sean Cheong November 2018Every Record Ever Recorded
By Hannah Blair October 2018
mySight (Homelessness Blinders street theater)
By Jennifer M Johnson October 2018
“Our Future Is Renewable”
By Alessandra Mondolfi October 2018
100 Jars of Jelly
By Robyn Waxman August 2018
Whose World Is This
By Salvin Chahal July 2018
Ice on Ice: an Ice Capade!
By Andrew Miguel Fuller July 2018
Trace Evidence
By Rachelle Reichert and Annie Malcolm June 2018
Aaron Swartz Day VR Museum, Art Gallery, Fun House
By Lisa Rein May 2018
The Art of Survival
By Madi Pignetti May 2018
NGALAC
By Mark Willson May 2018
Liquid Loom
By Cere Davis March 2018
Fresco Exchange
By Felipe Ortiz March 2018
This land was made for you and me
By Katie Williams February 2018
Food For Thought: A 5-Star Ohlone Banquet
By Malcolm Margolin December 2017
Community Street Painting
By Melissa Dickenson November 2017
34 Trinity Arts & News
By Jackie Hasa November 2017Force of Nature: Women's Work Visualized
By Sawyer Rose October 2017
Gilded
By Xandra Ibarra September 2017
Insect Trading Cards
By David Garnick September 2017
"you've got my eyes" - a dork-punk show-n-tell
By Mark Krawczuk August 2017
The Artship at Playland at 43rd Avenue
By Susan Ryan July 2017Another brief History of the Sunset
By Alicia Escott June 2017
Q-Finder: A view into the possible
By Edith Borrebach June 2017
Drag Queen Story Hour
By Juliana Delgado May 2017
Cyclecide Moving Fund
By Cyclecide Civetgrass April 2017
Nomadic Keyboard Trike
By Jennifer Murphy March 2017
First Female President
By Margaret McCarthy March 2017
The Banana Peel
By Cody Frost February 2017
Why Fish Don't Exist
By Lulu Miller February 2017
Resurrecting Lou Harrison's Lost Electronic Music
By Ryan Page January 2017
Replacing Missing Piers of SF’s Embarcadero
By Julie Crossman November 2016
GollOrbs—Flying Wind-Powered Kinetic Sculptures
By Jeffrey Gollober November 2016
Badass Boarders
By Kasley Killam October 2016
World's Largest Nachos!
By Laura D'Asaro October 2016
Mobility Scooter Cruise Control Circuit!
By Zach Reed September 2016
The Period Party
By Meghan Freebeck August 2016
Screen Queens Face Fail
By Harris David Harris July 2016
Deej - community engagement campaign
By Robert Rooy and DJ Savarese July 2016Stellar Displacement
By Albert Kong June 2016
Neighborhood Seeds
By Maren Salomon May 2016
Gotta Give Us Hope
By Jamie Beckenstein April 2016
LYFT for Seniors
By Jacqueline Zimmer Jones April 2016
NOTAFLOF Collective
By Liam Kelly March 2016
People's Open Network
By Marc Juul February 2016
1-855-LADYFUN
By Joe Veix February 2016
The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival
By James Kennedy January 2016
LuminoKinetic Artist / Engineer
By Carl Pisaturo December 2015
Smuggling Nature: Walking Poems Across Golden Gate
By Leath Tonino November 2015Project I AM
By Meghan Peter October 2015
San Francisco Moby-Dick Marathon
By Daniel Herman October 2015
Re:Sound
By Jen Boyd September 2015
Oakland FIGMENT
By Oakland FIGMENT Team September 2015
homobiles app hackathon space
By Lynn Breedlove August 2015
Litter Critters
By Debbie McCann and Althea Marie McCann Tabor July 2015
Teaching Electronics to Visually Impaired Students
By Allen Pan July 2015
Tangible Possibility: playful speed dating
By Lea Redmond June 2015
Grow'n & Chef'n Proper in Lower W. Oakland!
By Justin Vandenbroeck May 2015
Villainette: Bangs
By Dax Tran-Caffee May 2015
War Gastronomy - Recipes of Relocation
By Justin Charles Hoover (胡智騰) and Chris Treggiari April 2015Limbus Lab
By Andrew Maxwell-Parish April 2015
Swing Low Sweet Bicycles
By Anonymous April 2015
Land Action Squatter House Prototype
By Marcus Owens February 2015
Oakland students make the future!
By James Kealey & Nicholas Gilpinwright January 2015
The Bayview Bus Project: Art Not Ads!
By Jericha Senyak (The Museum of Joy) December 2014
Jam Buckets. Hosted by Mission Science Workshop.
By Kim Westberry November 2014O BEST BELOVED - 2014 Parks Tour Aboard FluxWagon
By Idiot String (Rebecca Longworth & Joan Howard) September 2014
Capturing Pinball Physics
By Melissa Harmon August 2014
Changing the world one love note at a time
By shannon Weber July 2014
Wildcat Hauling
By Timothy Furstnau (with FICTILIS) June 2014
Superheroes at Angel Island
By Neil Rivas June 2014
Musical Peddles
By Alvin Shiu May 2014
Automata Subterranea
By Nick Jones (aka Nick Knave) April 2014
NMU, The Wire People
By Isabel Halpern and Lucia Sanchez March 2014
Traveling Heart Hospital Bags
By Caroline Lovell February 2014A Portrait Project at the Zen Hospice
By Claudia Biçen February 2014
A Stop to Bullying
By Vinnie Kang December 2013
Awesöme Orchestra Collective
By David Möschler November 2013
The Library of Joy (A Museum of Joy Project)
By Jericha Senyak October 2013
Poetry with Elders
By Silvi Alcivar September 2013
The Mobile Wishing Well
By Kari Marboe and Erin Johnson August 2013
StreetStage and Kids POP!
By Jeremy Shaw July 2013EOYDC summer Science class
By Ashaki Scott July 2013
Sleep for Moms
By Suzanne L'Heureux July 2013
SF Postcard Project
By Hunter Franks May 2013
Your Store
By Kathryn Kenworth and Sarah Klein April 2013
Real Spider-Man Web
By Abel Melecio April 2013
Youth Community Center and Garden
By Youth Revolution March 2013Growing Together: Neighborhood Orchard Project
By Mallika Nair February 2013
Valentine's Day Love Letter Scavenger Hunt!
By Olga Nunes January 2013
Today's Future Sound Presents: Beats4Lunch
By Elliot Gann December 2012
"Walking on the Wall"
By Calen Barca-Hall November 2012
24/7 Bike Repair Vending Machine
By Marria Grace October 2012
The Golden Hour
By Julie Crossman August 2012
Sonic Kung Fu Battle
By Mike Lai August 2012
OuterBody Games
By Jason Wilson July 2012
Cardboard Castle Building Workshop
By Charlie Hufnagel July 2012
Bathtub Street Gondola!
By Ray Oppenheimer May 2012
Lunar Topographies
By Craig Dorety May 2012
Come Out and Play San Francisco
By Jackie Hasa April 2012
The Balloon-Powered Dance Party!
By George Zisiadis, Will Skinner, Isaac Shivvers April 2012
Scents of San Francisco
By Zee Boudreaux February 2012
Little Opera
By Erin Bregman November 2011
Ourshelves Lending Library
By Kristina Kearns October 2011Inner Sunset Street Fair 2011
By Adam Greenfield September 2011
Inquiring Minds: Science Camp for Adults
By Julie Ron June 2011
Sidewalk Natural History
By Joel Pomerantz June 2011
Panoranima / Spitting Image
By Finley Coyl May 2011
Meanwhile, San Francisco Microcommunities
By wendy macnaughton April 2011
100 Dinosaur Painting Scavenger Hunt
By Adam Davis February 2011
Scarf-a-day
By Meredith Scheff January 2011
Hoods To The Woods
By Anthony J. Carranza October 2010
Papergirl San Francisco
By Heather Tompkins & Colleen Stockman September 2010
Sounding the Waters (Sea Change)
By Claire Schoen July 2010
Robotic Desk Lamps
By Jonathan Foote June 2010
A History of the Sky
By Ken Murphy May 2010
About Us
Hi World! We're the San Francisco chapter. We love sparking discussion, action, participation (particularly in our local region).
Those ⤴ are the projects we've funded. Click (or side-scroll) through the image strip! This is the best way to understand what we fund. Prod an image to read about that project.
COVID-19-RELATED PROPOSALS As our community faces this pandemic, our chapter will prioritize crisis-related proposals. If you have a novel idea to create more awesome for this novel time, we encourage you to submit it! Please brainstorm with your pals.
BLACK LIVES MATTER We encourage applications from BIPOC individuals, and projects that highlight BIPOC voices and audiences.
Who should apply for our no-strings-attached grants? Anyone passionate who has read through this text carefully. Yes, carefully.
We give one grant per month. Beginners, small projects and experimenters get preferential treatment. Will $1,000 make all the difference for your project to get started? If you represent an established organization, we probably are not your best backing source. But it depends.
Hint for organizations, nonprofits & ensembles: Describe a highly specific idea that's an experimental side trip and is not whatever you are normally focused on.*
Hint for individuals: Short, raw and personal. Rave about possibility rather than nailing down every detail. Credentials are unimportant. Your inspired self will be great at making your point.
Hint for artists: We love public interactive elements. Be you trying something new. No skill in proposal writing needed. Let loose. Be awkward. Be daring. Be odd.
Hint for events: Apply more than seven weeks ahead to give us time to discuss before your event. If time has got away from you, apply anyway. We may decide to support it, depending on what else we review that month.
Hint for proposals from (or about) outside our region: Please state clearly if you aren't in the Bay Area. Tell us how your project is connected to our region, if it in fact is.
Be playfully ambitious. We like projects that attempt something strange or something important using methods others haven't tried lately. You've got a scheme. Brainstorm, then narrow it down. Think about the wider public. When you explain it to people outside your usual bubble, do they respond with a delighted little dance?
Be informal. We'll fund based on our personal reactions to your creative ambition. That's what we most love knowing.
Be unexpectedly political or wtf whimsical. The world is serious and polarized. Grassroots political creativity is in short supply. We view whimsy as an essential hacking tool and clear messaging as a wake-up call. Tap the genius of the unsuspecting public. Jostle patterns. Stimulate awesome solutions.
As long as anyone is in danger from injustice, violence or ecological crash, as long as anyone faces literal slavery (even here in the Bay Area many farmworkers, sex workers & domestics do), as long as for-profit corporate priorities push sanity aside, as long as parents and children are trained to fear, fit in and stifle their creative urges, more awesome is desperately needed around here.
. . . ✂ . . . ⚗ . . . ♬. . . ♨ . . . ⚡ . . . ☂ . . . ∰ . . . ⦿ . . . ⦕ . . . ⥹ . . . ⎌ . . . ↉ . . . ⨳ . . . ⏢ . . . ⊱ . . . ⇅ . . . ⟁ . . . ➰ . . . ❓ . . . ⫸⫸
Suggestion: Read this page again, from the top, right before you apply.
Who are we? The Awesome Foundation is a DIY operation—clusters of people all around the world, each group pooling and giving a monthly gift. We're not some stuffy organization. Ask us questions or advice. Now. Whenever. Use sf@awesomefoundation.org to reach Joel, SF's 5th Dean of Awesome.
When to apply: Proposals are welcome any time during any month. The grant is decided at our monthly meeting where we look through ideas that came during the previous calendar month. For example, apply in May and it'll be considered and announced in June.
If you like, you may follow us on social media (icons above) but more intimately, the SF chapter also has a friends-of email discussion list. Want to be on it?
Thank you for creating a more awesome world!
*More hints for organizations, ensembles and nonprofits: Match the scale to our cherished $1000 gift. Ignore your past competence and success and focus on this one tiny future unusual project that is unlikely to occur without our $1000. If your project can't fit that description easily, you might not be in our category of interest. But as you see from our past winners, we sometimes break our own patterns and have no rules, so it doesn't hurt to apply.