And the circle is now complete

It all started about 10 months ago thanks to a fateful trip down Bow Trail.

Since then, with the help of ordinary Calgarians donating money each month out of their own pockets, AF-Calgary's given away seven no strings attached $1,000 micro-grants (that's $7,000 to date!) to enable fellow Calgarians to pursue their awesome ideas, and helped bring exposure to many more ideas, with connections or even additional sponsorship being made or found through our monthly Pitch Nights and other avenues.

We've accomplished a lot in 10 months. We've helped show ordinary Calgarians a new way to get into philanthropy and to help make the community better, we've helped mentor new Awesome Foundation chapters around the world, most recently in Edmonton, Alberta and Kingston, Ontario, and we've helped pioneer an awards process that some other AF chapters are starting to experiment with.

We're about to award our eighth $1,000 micro-grant next Thursday, which also has the honour of being the final micro-grant awarded by AF-Calgary for 2011.

You see, typically we hold our Thousand Dollar Thursdays on the fourth Thursday of the month, just to keep things consistent. However, since the fourth Thursday of December falls awfully close to the holidays (December 22), we figured it'd be difficult to get people out. So we're going to do something a little different for December (stay tuned for details!) and instead, we've decided to close out 2011 this month where we began.

That's right, our venue for November's Thousand Dollar Thursday and AF-Calgary's final Pitch Night for 2011 was also our very first: The Endeavor Arts Gallery. We figured that a great way to close out our first calendar year of operation would be to do so where it all began.

Located on 1st Street and 12th Ave SW and directly across the street from Hotel Arts, the Endeavor Arts Gallery is a contemporary mixed media and new media gallery that provides "a space that first of all caters to the new ways that art is generated today, as well as the new ways in which we consume it."

In the short time it's been around, the Endeavor Arts Gallery has quickly become a community hub in the area, hosting many events open to the public for free or low-cost such as potlucks, Geek Movie Nights, First Thursday Artwalks, We Should Know Each Other parties, build-your-own robot nights, and so much more.

So please join us next Thursday, November 24 at the Endeavor Arts Gallery for AF-Calgary's final Thousand Dollar Thursday of 2011. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show will start around 6:15ish. We hope to see you there! And if you're coming, RSVP on Facebook and Yelp!

And finally, if you're looking to submit an Awesome Idea for consideration for AF-Calgary's January $1,000 prize, our next submission deadline is Tuesday, January 10, 2012. That's a lot of time to get your thinking caps working, so get started!