Tough, absolutely. But also doable.
My rough idea would be to find a few sponsors, ideally a few members of the Steem community, to try and offer up a cumulative $1,000 or so. Then ask the question: "What will you do with this $1,000, and why should we trust you?" - accept submissions from the community, then have a small council of ~5 people vote to decide who gets it.
Seems reasonable to me.