For the full "About Us" story, please visit our website: http://www.awesomenola.org/about/. Below is a synopsis:
Launched in January 2013, Awesome New Orleans awards monthly $1,000, no-strings-attached grants to applicants in the Orleans Parish area. The focus of Awesome New Orleans will be to provide funding for civic media (community information and engagement in media) related grants eight mon
ths of the year and four months out of the year, funding will be open for other types of socially minded projects. If you are interested in applying for a grant, you can do so by clicking here. You do not need to be a nonprofit to apply! We accept applications from everyone that has a great idea– individuals, community organizations and nonprofits alike. Awesome New Orleans also hosts events such as monthly Awesome Community Hours. You can view the profiles of current Awesome New Orleans Trustees on the Awesome New Orleans website, but here is a current list:
Trustees: Sistah Safi, David T. Baker, Scott Eustis, Ray Nichols, Michael Schachtman, Tung Ly, Lauren Teverbaugh and Melanie Lawerence (co-chairs), Jadi Mwendo, Shannon Dosemagen, Jonel Daphnis and Emily Nichols (co-chairs), Julia Stewart and Sam Bowler (co-chairs), Gerard Cox, Westley Bayas III, Elizabeth Lew and Ada McMahon (co-chairs), Emily Posner, Brice White. Dean: Jenga Mwendo
How we are funded
Awesome New Orleans is experimenting with a new funding model where trustees are asked to contribute at a sliding scale so that we can involve New Orleans residents from many walks of life. If you love New Orleans, consider contributing through the AwesomeTax. Awesome New Orleans is also funded in part by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through the Institute on Higher Awesome Studies. Funding from the Knight Foundation will be used specially to support the “community information and engagement” giving activities of the New Orleans chapter. About the Awesome Foundation:
The Awesome Foundation is an ever-growing, worldwide network of people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe. Created in the summer of 2009 in Boston, the Foundation distributes a series of monthly $1,000 grants to projects and their creators. The money is usually 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.
