If you are interested in who in Pittsburgh is helping others to turn ideas into reality then one of the organizations that you need to know about is Awesome Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh needs more people coming up and trying out crazy ideas. And I love Awesome Pittsburgh and the Awesome Foundation because they help people try out these ideas. One of the major theories in the world of startups in the idea of Lean Entrepreneurship and MVP (minimum viable product). How soon can you get your business to market to try the idea and get feedback. I think that Awesome Pittsburgh grants bring a much needed support to help Pittsburghers get turn ideas in to actual projects.
For example, one of the amazing people I met last month on the Millennial Trains Project trip is Jennie Gottstein who has created an interesting project in San Francisco called Score. I would love to see if we could bring Jennie and Score to Pittsburgh and I am certainly going to see if Awesome Pittsburgh can help make that idea a reality. [By the way – Jennie is also the brains behind a zombie themed disaster preparedness game that would be great to bring to Pittsburgh too – be sure to follow her on Twitter @jettstein]
Learn More at the Awesome Pittsburgh Office Hours
So if you have an idea, or just the beginnings of an idea for something you would like to see in Pittsburgh – head over to Social at Bakery Square on Sunday to meet the Awesome Pittsburgh team and get some feedback on your idea and how to apply for an Awesome grant.
Some of the amazing projects that Awesome Pittsburgh has Already Supported
You can check out the whole list here – all are truely awesome. But here are a few that you can check out to see what $1000 can do for the community
- Smiles for Hilltop – helping local doctors test a program to provide dental care and prevention in the Hilltop neighborhoods.
- ZipPitt – exploring a zipline for Pittsburgh
- GLAD Bags for Foster Children – creating comfort bags for kids who are removed from a home to replace the trash bag which is what is currently used.
What is Awesome Pittsburgh?
The short answer – a group that gives out $1000 grants to great ideas
The long answer…
Awesome Pittsburgh is a chapter of the Awesome Foundation, a global network of people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe.
The Awesome Foundation grants money – cold hard cash – to people or groups with brilliant ideas, with a new project getting funded each month by chapters around the world. Pittsburgh, already a hotbed of awesomeness, is brimming with smart, passionate, creative, crazy people. Awesome Pittsburgh is giving some of you $1000 to do something amazing. We want to hear the best ideas for making Pittsburgh stand out in the global economy, for connecting our communities, for celebrating art or technology, for making the city a better place to live, work, and play, or for simply surprising and delighting us and our fellow Pittsburghers.
Read more about the Awesome Foundations in other cities…
- Awesome Foundation: $1K/month microgrant program coming to Philly this fall (technical.ly)
- Awesome Foundation: $1,000 a month for the most awesome idea, every month (boingboing.net)
- Awesome Foundation to expand with grant from Knight (miamiherald.typepad.com)
- An awesome way to give back (cindyvolunteers.wordpress.com)
- A quirky, tiny grass-roots effort backs only ‘Awesome’ projects (csmonitor.com)
- Have a tech idea to help the community? Awesome Foundation, Refresh Miami team up on grant (miamiherald.typepad.com)