Want to Get Paid To Start Awesome Projects?

Got a crazy idea for a new project? Forget trying to get a bank loan: There's an easier — and much more fun! — way to get funding. The Awesome Foundation, recently featured in a BBC piece, strives for the "advancement of Awesomeness in the universe" by providing funding for broke creative types who want to bring something clever and innovative to their community.

The Awesome Foundation is described as "a micro-genius grant for flashes of micro-brilliance" on their website. Together, the group of trustees that forms the Foundation provides monthly $1,000 grants to creators and their projects. "Your idea is yours alone. We don't want a stake in it. We just want to help you make it happen," explains the foundation's website. You don't even have to see your project to completion to get the grant.

The Foundation was created by MIT students in 2009 in Boston, and has since set up chapters across the world. The projects they fund tend to be community-oriented, but overall have a pretty wide range. They can be serious, like an HIV/AIDS Awareness Circus in Ethiopia. But they can also be silly, like a woman who wanted to recreate scenes from the Indiana Jones movies. Whatever they are, they're always guaranteed to be some kind of awesome.

Image: Wikimedia Commons