Northside Awesome Fund
Story by Julie Zhou
Art By Anh Tran
The Northside Awesome Fund is fluent in possibility.
Each month for the last seven years, this group of friends and neighbors has gathered their resources and directed them back into North Minneapolis through $1,000 grants: supporting everything from ice cream carts to acupuncture, cameras to music classes. Together, they are committed to a community where every person has the resources to create, collaborate, and build; a commitment that began with founding trustee and proud Northsider, Bill Cottman.
“Bill Cottman was the founder and first holder of this space,” shares Ariah Fine. “He and I had a conversation and then opened this up to other folks. He passed a year and a half ago; we continue to hold this space.”
Modeled after mutual aid societies and giving circles that have existed across cultures for generations, the Northside Awesome Fund rejects the grantmaking sector’s legacy of burden and barrier. As a group, they have never pursued 501(c)3 status, ensuring that they remain free to provide funding to any type of applicant. Though trustees bring their own perspectives and wisdom to the application review process, they see their role as learners, collaborators, and community members: not gatekeepers.
“It’s important to us that we don’t do this in a way that other funders do it,” notes trustee Felicia Perry. “We’re not here to tell folks what’s important. The applications themselves tell us about what’s going on in the community.”
Their online application form is short, straightforward, and easily accessible. All trustees review every grant, voting is conducted by ranked choice, and funds are disbursed as quickly as possible, with no restrictions. The only requirement is that each project centers the North Minneapolis community.
“It is such an uplifting space,” says youth trustee Dallas Downey. “Everyone’s ideas and voices are heard and appreciated.”
“This space helps ground us and the community together,” observes Becki Smith. “It makes us whole.”
Since their first meeting, they have redistributed nearly $70,000 and continue to grow the circle. Amoke Kubat, a respected teacher, artist, author, elder, and community activist, was the first grantee and is now a trustee herself. But for her and the trustees, the circle expands beyond grantmaking. It has become a site of play and learning, healing and joy, grief and celebration, loss and love.
“Our work is more than giving the grants,” says Sheryl Senkiw. “It’s building community.”
“I could be having the worst day in the world and I come to this space and I'm lifted up,” adds Meghan Casey. “Talk about solidarity; this is it.”
As they head into their eighth year, the trustees hold an intentional commitment to young Northsiders, building outreach and sponsorships for youth trustees to join their work. They hope that more community members continue to join their work, whether as applicants, donors, or trustees themselves. In the future, they envision similar giving circles growing in other communities across the metro: building cycles of return, resilience, and reciprocity.
“I hear from so many people with questions and interest,” says Katie Fritz Fogel. “There's a real energy for this.”
The energy may be new, but the ideas can be traced back through the decades. “I chose to join the Northside Awesome Fund because it is grounded in the Afrocentric principle of Ujamaa,” says Fund trustee KayeAnn Lockett Mason, referring to the movement of cooperative economics that first took root in Tanzania in the 1960s. “As a Black woman marginalized in society due to my race, sitting in community with this racially and generationally diverse group of community members keeps me grounded and whole.”
The Northside Awesome Fund offers living testimony to Bill Cottman’s vision of civic life: full of possibility and wonder, generated through community. Through their grants, old memories grow new meaning.
