KaBOOM! Forums

In addition to announcing your project here, hop on over to the Ask It Happens forum and start a thread about your project. If you check in and update us on your progress periodically, not only will you be helping and inspiring others, but you'll have a whole community of support.

 

-Nan

For the past year the Mississippi Orthopaedic Society has been planning to build a playground in Greenwood, Mississippi, an impoverished Delta town.  Our efforts were quickly redirected to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi on August 29, 2006, when Hurricane Katrina wiped out many neighborhoods.  We have now got our project back on tract, we are raising money, and hope to build this summer with volunteers from the Orthopaedic Society and others in the healthcare field.  Our parent organization, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, has built many such playgrounds and this is what prompted us to consider the same.  If we can raise enough money we would like to make it handicap accessible.  This is our first time and any advice would be appreciated.  Our project is listed on the old online planner at http://planner.kaboom.org/Project.asp?ProjectID=5421  Thanks, Alex Blevens

I have been working on our new web site at www.kaboom.org/mos. Check it out!

The Community Playground at Wood End

Reading, Massachusetts

 

On October 21, 2006, we will be building Reading's first universally accessible playground!  To date we have raised $67,000.  We need to raise another $15,000 by build day with a total of $130,000 by the spring 2007 when we will be installing our brick walkway and the rubberized surfacing.

I am working on my Kaboom portal, too!

If you are in New England, please join us for our build day!

Tina

While at the UPlay! conference I attended the PR class.  We have had great luck getting the town newspapers to cover it, but great difficulty with the Boston Globe.  Any suggestions?

The primary strategy we used was peer pressure.  We identified a core group of 20 donors who were willing to donate a large sum of money (between $500 & $1000), we then took their names (with their permission) and created a flier that we sent home in the backpack at school.  These donors were called "Flagship Donors" and we are doing a "buy a brick" campaign.  The flyer was headlined with "Will you be on the path to our new playground?" and listed the 20 flagship donors along the pathway.  We have raised over $46,000 from individuals in a short period of time - to date we have 42 people who have donated $500 or more.  It also increased the size of our average donation. 53 people donated between $100 & $300.  With only 18 people donating $75 or less. The average donation is well over $100.  It is interesting because our strategy was to set the donation level high and it has been quite successful to date - this is quite different from what other groups at UPlay had indicated was the norm - the $10 - $20 donation.

In addition, I have found networking to be very useful in raising money.  Once you identify a large donor, be sure to speak with them to see what suggestions they have - especially who else to contact to request money from. Once they feel as though they are involved in the process, beyond financial, they are more willing to help and want you to succeed.