Guest post by Heather Carpenter, research associate, The Caster Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research, University of San Diego 

KaBOOM! is a successful nonprofit organization that empowers groups of people across the country to build playgrounds in a day!  It is hard believe that when Darell Hammond founded the organization he had many foundations and funders who refused to support his work. Darell then met the founders of Home Depot and forged a long-lasting corporate sponsorship with them. Since that time, the organization has established relationships with other corporate sponsors and has become a model social enterprise. 

In the last fifteen years Kaboom has raised over $200 million and built over 2000 playgrounds across the country.  They have a 91 percent corporate sponsor retention rate.  For example, for companies like Motorola they build a playground during their leadership retreat.

The model of KaBOOM! is to empower others. This is evident in the internal and external operations of the organization. Darell has hired an amazing team. He has a COO who manages day-to-day operations and Darell remains the face of the organization. He empowers his team to do their job well. For example, he was recently invited to attend a major White House conference but realized that his director of public policy should attend instead. As a result of Darell’s decision, that director became more invested in and committed to supporting the work of KaBOOM!

Externally, the corporate sponsors identify where they want to build a playground, then KaBOOM! provides 80 percent of the capital to local nonprofit organizations that work within the community (like the Boys and Girls Club).  The community nonprofit has to raise the rest (20 percent) and supply 100 volunteers for the build.  It’s win-win model for everyone.

Darell has also created a performance management culture within his organization and has published best practices for how to build a playground. The Institute for Policy Studies at Northwestern completed a biannual study of KaBOOM!’s impact and Harvard Business School has several case studies on the organization.

Darell Hammond is very deserving of the American Express NGen Leadership Award -- way to go Darell!!