After more than a year of stewing, and then more than a year pretending we were close to launching, AF Winnipeg is proud to finally announce its first call for submissions.

The deadline is Thursday the 22nd, and the grant will be awarded on Thursday the 29th.

Winnipeg, Manitoba is a city where many people can find ways to live cheaply, and so it’s become a cultural centre for Canada. That cheapness brings other difficulties with it, though; it was very difficult to find people, outside of rich (and too-busy) businessmen, who could spare $100 every month.

At AF Winnipeg, there are two main things we did to keep costs down:

1. We created a pool of ‘nano-trustees’, who give $100 every two or three months. We need a larger number of them, but we can rotate through the pool to fill any extra seats each month. They don’t get those sort-of-perks the micro-trustees get, like having a seat named after them, but this opens us up to allow people to become part of this process a single time if they wanted.
2. We allow a groups of individuals from an organization to create a micro-trustee seat. The face might change from month to month, but several people from that organization will ensure they always come with $100 every month. SkullSpace, a local hackerspace (a kind of computery makerspace), has joined on in this capacity.

This makes the 11th active Canadian chapter! We look forward to making all sorts of amazing ideas become reality.

To submit a proposal, please visit our submission page. If you’d like to join as a trustee, please contact Michael Kozakewich. Feel free to send any questions or comments, as well.

Edit: A local news channel, Global, picked it up, as seen here.