When I was in college, I faced a pile of unappealing job opportunities, things that required polishing my résumé to a pyrite gleam and praying for the thrill of being rewarded with a title like “Junior Analyst”.

In addition to the job slog, I’d made two Hail Mary bets. One was for a Fulbright research scholarship, to study microfinance institutions in Indonesia (my mother’s home). The other was for a Compton Foundation fellowship, designing a project around climate change investing.

I didn’t get the Fulbright. But I did get an interview with the Compton Foundation.

The Compton Foundation is a modest family foundation, based in San Francisco. They flew me out on the morning of my 21st birthday. I’d never been to the West Coast before.

Standing in front of the Ferry Building on a sunny day, my first thought was “holy shit, this a real place”, followed by “I need to move here”.

I was awarded a $36,000 grant to design a project of my choosing. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was all mine.

My grant came in two payments of $18,000 apiece. The process was simple: they mailed me checks, and I cashed them.

I’ll never forget standing in the bank deposit line, staring at the check in my hand for $18,000. I was a college student with less than $1,000 in my bank account. I had never held a check like this before. And somebody had mailed it to me because they thought I had a good idea.

It’s been nearly a decade, and that feeling hasn’t left me. So today, I’d like to pay it forward. I’d like to offer three $5,000 grants* to someone else out there, no strings attached.

It’s not a ton of money, but I’m hoping it might give someone out there the push they need to make an interesting contribution to the world.

*Thanks to a donor for matching my $5K gift and making it possible to offer two grants initially. After publishing this post, Eric Ries generously offered to sponsor another grant, so now we have three grants!