---------------------------------------SURPRISE PERK---------------------------------------> Donate from now to the end of the campaign and get a special surprise from Awaken Cafe!

UPDATE:  We did it!  Every additional dollar we raise will get us that much closer to the total amount we need to open the cafe.  Our new goal is to reach $3500 by Sunday at midnight!  If you're inspired, we invite you to keep chipping in!

"Bring People Together"

-Awaken Cafe's Mission Statement

Awaken Cafe is an award-winning world-class espresso bar, tea house, beer and wine bar & art gallery in the heart of the new downtown Oakland. We pride ourselves in providing excellent customer service in a welcoming community environment. We sell premium, organic coffee beans in refillable cans and the best home brewing equipment.

Awaken Cafe is ready to roll.  We've negotiated the lease, completed the preliminary architectural drawings, assembled the team, worked out our financial projections, brought green contractors into bid out the project, enrolled the CIty of Oakland and local green vendors in our project, lined up some financing and redevelopment grants, and laid the groundwork to make the new Awaken Cafe downtown Oakland's premiere community hub, a beautifully designed space and showcase green project.  

We're set to sign the new lease in early December.  We plan to operate an espresso-cart out of the space as soon as we get the keys and the special mobile cart health permit.  We'll build out the cafe in the background, with the full cafe scheduled to open 3 to 4 months later.  

And so now we turn to the very important job of fundraising.  Raising money for an independent, small-business like ours requires creativity.  The system is not designed to make it easy.  We'll be raising larger amounts through SBA loans, friends and family investors, and grants from the City of Oakland's Redevelopment Agency.  We'll be making up the rest through our innovative Pre-Paid Value Accounts (big thanks to the many of you who have already purchased Pre-Paid Accounts) and on an even smaller scale through an innovative technique called crowd-funding. And that's where you come in.

The Impact

Through small donations by a large group of our fans, friends, and customers like you, we will collectively launch Awaken Cafe in it's new home.  Through this web-site you can chip in and vote with a token donation for an Oakland resident owned and staffed, totally independent, extraordinarily green, world-class cafe & bar with the simple mission to bring people together.

We thought a cool project would use the power of crowd-funding to raise a small, but crucial and symbolically important piece of the puzzle:  our security deposit.

What We Need & What You Get

All of the money we raise will go directly to the security deposit.  If we don't raise the whole amount, we'll make up the rest through other sources.  This is an expensive project and every dollar will make a big difference -- raising more than $3000 would be amazing!

Not only will you be voting for businesses like ours, but you can get some cool VIP perks (see right column).

Other Ways You Can Help

We need your help to get the word out.  We'd love for you to share this project with your crowd:  your office-mates, friends, families, and rich aunts :)  You can use the share tools on this page to post this to all your favorite Social Networking sites.