In early 2013, The Harnisch Foundation — which has been practicing creative, progressive, downright unusual grantmaking since 1998 – fell in love with its ideological counterpart, The Awesome Foundation. (Basically, our peas found their carrots.) “The Awesome Foundation distributes a series of monthly $1,000 grants to projects and their creators. The money is pooled together from the coffers of ten or so self-organizing “micro-trustees” and given upfront in cash, check, or gold doubloons. The chapters are autonomous and organized by the trustees around geographic areas or topics of interest. The Foundation provides these grants with no strings attached and claims no ownership over the projects it supports. It is, in the words of one of our trustees, a micro-genius grant for flashes of micro-brilliance.”To date, 106 chapters have been established in over 25 countries, with 1000+ projects funded. We wanted a chapter! So, Awesome Without Borders was born. Then we took it one step further and decided to fund one grantee each week. We are now a year in and, must say, we’ve funded some pretty spectacular things!