Wednesday afternoon, members of South Bend's Chapter of the ‘Awesome Foundation’ met to launch a new fund dedicated to support people who will help make the city a better place to live.

The chapter will award three $1,000 dollar grants on a quarterly basis to the best submissions.

Finalists just need to give a five-minute presentation to board members; the top three, winning $1,000 to make their ideas come to life.

“This is anything that benefits the community to community art, to a business to a cause, really anything. We want to challenge the community to think of really awesome, creative ideas and we're just looking forward to supporting them,” said Gavin Ferlic, Co-Dean, South Bend Chapter of the 'Awesome Fund.'

Submissions should highlight how grant funds will be used to make the South Bend area even more 'awesome.' Any submission not awarded a grant at a quarterly meeting is welcome to apply for funding at a future meeting.

The first quarterly meeting is coming up on April 26. Finalists will be chosen one week prior to the meeting.

To submit your proposal to the "Awesome Foundation" for a chance to win, click

. There are no age restrictions to apply.

The South Bend Awesome Fund is the first in Indiana, but joins 42 other national chapters and 39 chapters around the globe.

About South Bend Awesome Fund

Inspired by Peter Kageyama’s (author of “For the Love of Cities”) presentation in DTSB earlier this year, several attendees of the presentation decided to band together and pursue one of the highlighted topics of the presentation, the Awesome Fund.

Working with the parent organization, The Awesome Foundation, members set up a South Bend Chapter and finalized details to accept proposals and award its first round of grants on April 26, 2016.

Members of the South Bend Awesome Fund are:

John Jessen

Paul Phair

Sara Miller

Mark Neal

Paul Worland

Dr. Mark Thompson

Maggie Kernan

Aaron Perri

Mark Criniti

Gavin Ferlic