Charity of the week: KaBoom

last updated 8 January 2015

KaBoom (kaboom.org) is dedicated to creating quality playgrounds in communities across America. With many existing community play spaces disappearing or falling into disrepair and recess being eliminated from school schedules, children today often get little daily playtime, which exacerbates the growing childhood obesity problem. Since 1996, KaBoom has helped build more than 2,100 playgrounds nationwide. It also offers community groups online tools to help design and raise money for innovative and fun new play sites. Its crowd-sourced Map of Play tool, which features 90,000 sites, allows parents and community members to find play spaces, rate them, and identify where new playgrounds might be most useful.

Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which ranks not-for-profit organizations on the strength of their finances, their control of administrative and fund-raising expenses, and the transparency of their operations. Four stars is the group’s highest ranking.