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. Scroll through the image strip! This is the best way to understand what we fund. Alert: Until we get it set up for mobile, please use a desktop or laptop browser for this side-scrolling to see our 100+ funded projects. Click on an image to read about that project.

Who should apply for our no-strings-attached grants? Anyone passionate who has looked at this page 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 nonprofit staff: Match the scale to our cherished $1000 gift. Describe a highly specific idea that's different than 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: No training in proposal writing needed. Let loose. Be daring. Be you trying something new. We love public interactive elements.

Hint for events: Apply more than six weeks ahead to give us time to discuss before your event. If there's not six weeks left, apply anyway. We may decide to support it, depending on what else we review that month.

Hint for proposals outside the San Francisco Bay Area: Please state clearly if you aren't in our region. 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 decide about funding based on your own personal, 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 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.

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Suggestion: Read this page again, from the top, just 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) for news, events, and projects happening here in the Bay Area. We also have a friends-of email discussion list. Want to be on it?

Thank you for creating a more awesome world!