ART Update #2: We're gonna build it and they will come.

We've been head down and cranking away on our grassroots and underserved community outreach efforts over the past few weeks. We are slowly building a collation of various arts focused platforms and services that are committing to amplify messaging about our grant-giving when the time is right. Thus driving traffic and attention to our Web Monetization education resources. This will be a coordinated effort with our PR/Publicity strategy that we have been refining with our agency partner Giant Noise out of Austin, Texas. Our goal is a tidal wave of attention that will drive awareness and interest in the application of Web Monetization. As well as shine a strong light on all the projects being worked on as part of Grant for the Web. Exciting times to say the least.

We are beginning to see some good traction via our underserved community outreach efforts. Conversations are beginning with various groups nationwide and we continue to unlock new communities to potentially approach. A big win happened today when we secured help from the Chamiza Foundation to raise awareness throughout the Navajo Nation about our upcoming grant-giving.

Work continues on scoping out and refining the focus of our Web Monetization training and education resource build-out. We have been working closely with our agency partner Ocupop on the user and content journeys. Our efforts are being aided by Howard Gray who inhabits the workshop and training space, bringing a deep bench of knowledge to our work. We're grateful to have him advise and tell us when our ideas are good, bad, and ugly. Our hope is to have these resources ready and available for the general public and our grantees by the middle to end of March. If it is possible to deploy sooner, we will but only if everything is as it should be.

Last week we were stoked to be able to notify five more artists that they will be awarded grants. This is a result of our "Fund Five Drive" in December where new and past donors gave over $9,000 in under twenty-four hours. Huge thanks to them for their generosity!

Lastly, we will be launching our Artist Rescue Trust store in the coming weeks. It will be filled with all kinds of great gear (shirts, hats, hoodies, and more). 100% of profits from sales will go directly to funding artists and musicians who've lost income as a result of the pandemic.

We'll see you again in a few weeks with another update as momentum continues to build!