Our Dream Playground News
Updated April 26, 2013
Today's the final day to vote in the 2013 Video Contest!
Get those final votes in today!
The Let's Play Video contest ends tonight, March 8th at 11:59pm ET!
It's your last chance to upload your video and complete your application for a chance to win a $15,000 grant.
A panel of internal play experts will select the top 10 finalists based on video content, quality, creativity, and demonstrated need. The finalist videos will then be put to a public vote to decide the five winners.
You can check out the video entries by visitng http://ourdreamplayground.org/video_2013.
Let's Play wants to help you get $15,000 for your playground!
Want $15,000 to build your dream playground? Just create a short video showing us why your community needs a playground and you could win one of five $15,000 equipment grants from Let's Play, a community partnership led by Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
A panel of internal play experts will determine the top 10 finalists based on video content, quality, creativity, and demonstrated need. The finalist videos will then be put to a public vote to determine the five winners.
Exciting new funding opportunity-- Groupon's Big Give!
It's hard to believe that it has already been 6 months since we launched Our Dream Playground. Thanks to your on-going feedback we have been able to make continued improvements to the site and are now helping thousands of projects like yours achieve their playground dreams.
One of the most shared pieces of feedback we received, is that most of you could use a little extra help in raising funds for your playground. To that end we would like to thank you for your on-going support of children's play across the U.S., by inviting you to participate in a special fundraising campaign.
Throughout the entire 2012 Holiday season, Groupon is showcasing a variety of community projects for its members to support, including projects registered on Our Dream Playground! Every project can use Groupon to purchase donation "coupons" that can be redeemed by visiting any project page. You can learn more about how to purchase and apply Groupons by visiting our FAQ page.
Best of all, each Groupon donation will be doubled, thanks to the support of our fantastic Preferred Vendors: Miracle Recreation Equipment Company, Playworld Systems, Landscape Structures, and BCI Burke.
To ensure your project looks its best there is no time like the present to do a little house keeping. Take a moment to update your tasks, add new pictures, and make sure your page is in top shape! Once you've done your holiday sprucing, make sure to direct donors to your Our Dream Playground page so they can help you reach your playground dreams. Simply click on the green “Donate Via Groupon” button on your project page and start fundraising today. The campaign runs through December 26th, 2012.
Visit Groupon's Big Give to sign up and start purchasing your Groupons now.
Changing the way your funding progress is displayed
Last Friday, we released an update to the way a project's fundraising progress is displayed on a project page. Previously, the public could only see a project's progress towards its online fundraising goal.
Now when someone visits project, they'll see its progress towards the total budget. Green represents Offline Fundraising and blue represents Online Fundraising.
The new display is available on both the public view as well as the Project Dashboard. In the coming weeks, the new display will appear in search results and the area where we feature projects.
When you set up your online fundraising, you'll have the option to only show your online fundraising progress. This is available on the Start Online Fundraising area of your Financials page.
Team members will also notice a new "Project Tips" area on the Project Dashboard. This new area will be updated more frequently with the latest tips on how to use Our Dream Playground as well as tips for planning your playground build.
We always welcome your feedback about the Our Dream Playground website, so if you have a suggestion or need help with a feautre, don't hesitate to visit our Help page to let us know!
New Badges!
In the latest update to Our Dream Playground, we've added over a dozen new badges and all of them can be earned within the first two Mile Markers for your project.
See all the badges your project can earn on the Project tab of our badges page!
Welcome to the first edition of Our Dream Playground news!
This page is now the best place to learn all about the updates and new features for the Our Dream Playground website, upcoming trainings, grant opportunities, and much more.
Since our launch on May 1st, we've continuously updated and improved Our Dream Playground to help you and your playground team better fundraise for, plan, and build playgrounds. Much of our work happens behind the scenes to make the site faster, but we've also added some new features to make the site easier to use.
Edit or Delete Offline Fundraising
Did you make a typo while spelling out the name of that generous donor in the Offline Fundraising area of Financial? Or did you enter in $10.00 instead of $100.00? Well, worry no more! You can now Edit or Delete your own Offline Fundraising information without requesting help from KaBOOM!.
Faster Task Management and Task Comments
Completing, Skipping, and marking a task as In Progress has become much, much faster. The entire Manage Task area has had an incredible speed boost to the page loading time and changing a task's status is faster too. No longer do you have to wait for a task list to reload after changing a task's status. It all happens on the fly, making it easy to update numerous tasks within seconds.
Also, we've update the look and feel of the comments within tasks. They load quickly and have a new look to make reading and responding to comments easier to understand.
New slideshow!
You may have already noticed this change from a few weeks back, but we completely revamped the slideshow that appears on project pages. Press the 'play' button to let the slideshow cycle through all of your images, or use the left and right arrows to move through them all. Click on an image to see it larger, as well as who uploaded the image and when. Plus, as you requested, you can now move through the images at the larger size too!
That's all the updates we have for right now, but check back here often for more updates and information about Our Dream Playground!