I'm in awe.

The projects, the energy, the votes, the outcome, and the people paying attention to flaws and suggesting improvements... all of it feels to me like something that will be looked back on with a "Wow.  I was there when it happened... when it got started".

This happened with pretty tiny percentages of everything: dollars, people, ideas:

• a microscopic percentage of dollars given away every year by foundations and other people and institutions who have a lot of them.
• an equally tiny percentage of the people out there who would vote if given the chance.
• a small sample of the great ideas out there for bringing a little equilibrium into a seriously out-of-balance world.

The process not only raised awareness for ALL the projects in the course of the balloting, it educated us about the realities, the inequalities, and the potential that inspired the ideas.

So what if this turns out to be a scale model of something bigger that turns philanthropy inside out?  What if we could do this with a just ONE TENTH OF ONE PERCENT of foundation grants next year?  That's at least $20 million.  What if we involved folks outside our motivated/activist/subversive tribe, say only a million of the people who would love to weigh in on these proposals?  Best of all, what if this new way of doing things convinced a lot of new  people with good ideas to go for it...?

I'm serious.  It really could happen.  And you were here when it started.