This month Awesome Newcastle is celebrating its first anniversary at a special public event.
A local organisation, Awesome Newcastle donates $1,000 cash each month to awesome business ideas and community projects in Newcastle. The money comes from nine permanent board members and one monthly guest board member.
To mark the anniversary, the general public will also get the opportunity to donate their own cash to the ‘sack-of-cash’ grant on the night as well as featuring Bondi Vet Dr Chris Brown as the guest board member.
For the event, the Awesome Newcastle board has selected three past winners to pitch for the extra big sack of cash. The All-Stars are Kim Oakhill from Helpful Love, Joel Pilgrim from OneWave and Kate O’Donoghue from Frontline Yoga.
There also will be a premiere of a short film on Awesome Newcastle, produced by chapter custodians, The Village of Useful and Academy Award-nominated director, Steve Pasvolsky.
Local food truck Bao Brothers will be on-hand and both Murray’s Brewery and Wine Selectors have donated drinks for the evening.
Dean of Awesome Newcastle, Andy Howard, says the anniversary event will allow the finalists to secure additional ‘no-strings-attached’ funding. Each finalist has been picked from the past 11 winners, as voted by the Awesome Newcastle board.
“This is an opportunity for all-stars to pitch and share what another, bigger, cash grant would mean to them,” Andy said.
“Our pitch parties are fun – it’s like Shark Tank with more back slaps and good vibes. We’ve opened up this special event to dozens of guests to share in the awesome and see what it’s about.”
Awesome Newcastle was founded to help the artists, creators, ideas people and change-makers of Newcastle by funding small business ideas and community projects.
In its first year, Awesome Newcastle awarded 11 no-strings-attached grants of $1,000 cash to monthly winners.
Board members include Shivani Gupta, entrepreneur and businessowner, Joel Goodsir of Inspiration Paint, Lois Donaldson of Wine Selectors and Adam Lance and Andy Howard of The Village of Useful.
Awesome Newcastle is a local chapter of the global Awesome Foundation, which was started by MIT and Harvard students frustrated by the red tape of traditional funding. The global foundation has given a total of $2,240,000 to 2,240 projects across 26 countries.
The event will be held on Thursday, 27 October 2016.
