Awesome Foundation: Washington, DC is sponsored by Awesome Foundation. Awesome Foundation: Washington, DC is a grant from the Awesome Foundation that funds small, community-driven projects and ideas that make Washington, DC a more interesting, creative, and connected city.

Washington, DC - The Awesome Foundation Local Indie Author Book Shop Multilingual Peace Circles By Rafael Guillermo Pizarro Black QTs Camp: Anacostia River Stewardship Paddle Tracey Turnblatt and the Multiverse of Musicals By Highball Productions DC Living Library Seed & Plant Exchange Trinidad History & Future Festival By Trinidad Neighbor Volunteers Local Authors Book Vending Machine Cultivate DC Youth Changemakers Small & Strange - A Lil House Art Show Melanie the Violinist’s Black Musician Academy DC Black Liberation School Baldwin House Cooperative Association DAPSN Volunteers are Awesome!

Capitol Archaeology Sticker Activity Book SW (Bellevue) Halloween Haunted House Introducing: the mobile law library! Blind DC Residents and Friends Paddle the Potomac ASL Interpretation at Constellation Theatre Co.

1st Annual CFA Youth Improv Slam By Canady Foundation for the Arts / Marjuan Canady Lady Bugs Literacy Love and Language Lounge Festivals & Regalia Project (TPE) Jazz4Justice Juneteenth Festival The Newtons VEX Worlds Fund STEM for Girls: Math Speaks Weekend Academy Get Off The Ground Project Catching the Chain: Voices of the Incarcerated "Focus On Me" - Foster Youth Digital Stories Dancing On The Air: The Teenarama Story By Beverly Lindsay-Johnson DC Summer Youth 1988 Mural Restoration Black Women & Mental Health PrimeAbility Biking Program By Katie Loos, Sam Carpenter and Katie Sigety Metro Secret Santa: Twenty magical gifts for 2020 Young Men of Promise: The Power of Purple Week Constellations Gift of Music Initiative The Future Foundation's Community Care Collectives Victory Hanging Garden Urbanized By "Quest" Chelsea Skinner Mask Making for Ward 8 Citizens Artist support in the age of COVID-19 "Country Road" Urban Pollinator Project District Impact Skating Club The Good Listening Project “What’s in a Wag?

: Decoding Dog Talk in DC” Bridge Spot Graffiti and Paint Jam The Ruby Bridges Literacy Program The Wash & Learn Initiative Eat Your Hart Out: A Fat Burlesque Revue Sex Worker-Led Harm Reduction Pilot in DC Limestone of Lost Legends TINY CAT - Dark Music Festival/Benefit for Charity The Shape Up: The Barbershop Talk Series Gourmet Symphony’s Taste Your Music Project Good In Our Neighborhood Film Festival The Genesis Intergenerational Program Plants and Blooms ReImagined Mindful Mama Support Circle Scholarship PrintShop at New Community ArtSpace Elementary School Vertical Gardening Tightshift Laboring Cooperative Women in Horror Month- D.

C. Theatre Prometheus presents CYMBELINE By Natalie Thielen Helper (Managing & Development Director, Theatre Prometheus) NHDA Youth and Young Adult Hand Dance Symposium By Beverly Lindsay-Johnson SOULAR SUNDAY in Marvin Gaye Park Black Broadway on U: A Transmedia Project By Shellée M. Haynesworth Design.

District: Identity Lounge Rebuilding Re-entry Hackathon - DC The DC Wheels -Summer Santa- By Jimmy Pelletier - The DC Wheels Day of Archaeology Festival STEAMfwd ™Creating socially responsible innovators By Christine Johnson (DiversiTech) Kingman Park-Rosedale Community Garden By Kingman Park-Rosedale Community Garden Peace Camp Scholarships for Refugee Kids Radio CPR Transmitter Repair By JOHN-JOSEPH SMITH, PRESIDENT The DC Neighborhood Portal myDeanwood Polaroid Project Connecting Communities Through Wireless Networks Make a low income farmers market awesome Outfit Our Kitchen Classroom Awesome Students Reinvent the World Bluebrain's 'The Living House' Indiana Jones and the Alley of Doom Arts Mentoring: Spring 2012 DC Diaper Bank - Nonprofit Fees & Website Launch Next grant deadline: Sunday, June 21, 2026 Have an idea to make DC more awesome?

Watch this grant applicant guide , read our example grant guide , and apply for a $1,000 grant ! (Fysa, upcoming future monthly grant deadline: August 23, 2026.) What is Awesome Foundation DC?

We are a giving circle collective of DC residents who help fund a wide spectrum of amazing arts, culture, and community experiences, ranging from the founding Funk Parade to the Indiana Jones and The Alley of Doom to seed-bombing Capitol Hill to DC Bike Party's Sound Bike to Hand-Dancing, a DC-originated style of Swing dancing to skateboarding Santa Clauses to recycled flower arrangements for senior centers, community groups and low-income housing to community hackathons to youth literacy programs at local laundromats to community gardens to human-dog communication training workshops to Floor Charts tracking Congressional charts (so DC!)

. Our group and grant winners have been featured in The New York Times , The BBC , NPR , WAMU , 730DC , The Hill Rag , Fox 5 , Brightest Young Things , PBS Newshour , Huffington Post , The Washington Post , DCist , Washington City Paper , ABC 7 , Brightest Young Things (again!) , DCist (again!)

, Capitol Hill Rag , CBS WUSA 9 , Washingtonian , Washington City Paper (again!) , Advancing Philanthropy Magazine , DC Inno , Brightest Young Things , Petworth News , East of the River News , Washington Post (again!) , Congress Heights on the Rise , and at Creative Mornings DC .

We are entirely volunteer-run and self-funded from Trustees and use the following four evaluation criteria for funding projects that help the city of Washington DC be more awesome. Any grant applicant should answer and address these four areas: #1 - Is it awesome? (Is it unique?

Interesting? Impactful? There's all sorts of types of awesome.)

#2 - Does it directly benefit the city of Washington DC? (We put heavy weight on supporting our tiny city/state and the awesomeness within. Fyi, there are Awesome North Virginia and Baltimore chapters, so if your project is focused on those regions you might consider applying there.)

#3 - Will $1,000 make an actual impact? (Some organizations are super-well funded so we focus on helping individuals and small groups to fund new, small but mighty projects that $1,000 will actually make a difference.) #4 - Is it immediately actionable?

(Similar to the actual impact, we heavily prefer projects that are a month or two away, so that the money can create immediate awesome impact in the community. If your project is a year away, wait to apply for a better chance at getting the grant.) We also created quick video guide to help you apply for a grant: Have a project that meets those 4 criteria?

Apply now! We award grants every month! Background Information, Grant & Trustee Guides and Frequently Asked Questions: Awesome DC Grant Applicant Guide, Pro Tips & FAQ Awesome DC Trustee Guide & FAQ Tax Deductible Donation Guide & FAQ Awesome Foundation DC Press Information Have a question or is something missing in these guides?

Email DC [at] awesomefoundation. org Love what we are doing and want to support the group? We are an entirely volunteer-driven organization and completely self-funded by trustees' own money .

In previous years, we've run audit of all of our finances and grants and found that our operating expenses are a mere 3. 3% overhead (mainly spent on bank fees, our domain name and a batch of stickers we ordered to promote the group). That means 96.

7% of all money that comes into the Awesome Foundation DC goes directly to funding grants in the community. This is pretty much unheard of in the nonprofit world. Want to help us fund more grants?

There are many ways you can participate: Buy some Awesome DC gear: From t-shirts to hot leggings to cornhole sets! Donations: We can take anonymous donations to help fund our projects if you'd prefer that: Check or tax-deductible donations : Contact DC [at] awesomefoundation. org for details Venmo: Send funds to AwesomeFoundationDC Paypal: Send funds to paypal.

me/awesomefoundationdc Facebook. com/AwesomeFoundationDC Instagram. com/AwesomeFoundationDC Linkedin.

com/company/awesome-foundation-dc Or via our monthly email newsletter... Background info on The Awesome Foundation & the DC chapter: The Awesome Foundation is an international organization with nearly one hundred chapters around the world helping fund community, culture and arts projects that make the world more awesome and unique. Awesome Foundation chapters are entirely volunteer-run and self-funded through trustee donations .

The 90+ independent chapters around the world that have have funded more than $5 million in grants globally. The Awesome Foundation holds the semi-annual Awesome Summit , in which all our autonomous chapters share best practices and bond with others Awesome folks from around the world. We hosted the Summit in 2017 .

The DC Chapter of the Awesome Foundation was founded in 2010 and has given more than $100,000 to the local community for awesome projects. We pick our monthly grant winners usually at the end of each month and notify all applicants after the selection has been made.

Here's a map of where our grants have been awarded in DC: Learn more about the Awesome Foundation DC, from the Founding Dean, Bonnie Shaw (who is now spreading Awesomeness in Australia): Founded first in Boston in 2009, each Awesome Foundation local chapter distributes monthly $1,000 microgrants, no strings attached, to projects and creators.

At each fully autonomous and local chapter, the money is pooled together from the coffers of ten or so self-organizing, volunteer “Trustees” and given in cash to the grant winner each month.

Learn more about the Awesome Foundation vision from the New York trustees on CCTV: Sascha Meinrath , former Full Trustee, Trustee of the Awesome Foundation State College chapter, Founder of the Open Tech Institute, and whose Acorn Active Media Foundation is our fiscal sponsor allowing for tax-deductible donations.

Shana Glickfield is a former Awesome Foundation DC Dean and founding Full Trustee, who sponsors one of our Full Trustee positions to help us better represent the diversity of the DC community. Steve Ressler is a DC-based entrepreneur and investor who fervently believes in supporting all things "awesome." Are you interested in helping support Awesome DC as a Behind the Scenes Trustee?

Learn more in the Trustee guide or contact us at DC [at] awesomefoundation. org. We'd like to send out a special thank you to Bonnie Shaw, our chapter founder and founding Dean, and Shana Glickfield, Alex Dickinson, and Will Sullivan our longest-lived Deans, each serving more than half a decade, who helped shape AFDC to be the successful, model chapter it is in the Awesome Foundation network and DC philanthropy scene.

Also, thanks go to recent past trustees and contributors for their awesome service! We continue to fund and celebrate awesomeness following their example: