Hello Friends!
Over the summer, we’ve made a lot of headway in the transformation of our community park into Germantown Park. We’ve put a lot of work into tax-deductible donation options, playground designs, timelines, fundraising, and grant applications, plus seeking out state and county support. Now we’re well positioned and ready to roll with your support!
Attached are photos of the slideshow from the meeting as well, for you to reference.
1. We have partnered with a 501(C)3! A local non-profit, Peake Social Foundation, has very kindly offered to partner with us! It allows us to accept tax-deductible donations as well as apply for grants that only gift to non-profit organizations. This greatly opens our options for fundraising.
2. We have a website! FriendsOfGP.com. From there, you can learn about our park, see the playground and whole park designs and most importantly, get access to donate online. Please direct any family, friends and neighbors to this site to help aid in changing our park.
3. Mark your calendars for OCTOBER 22 for the Friends of Germantown Park’s fundraiser at Metropolitan. Thanks to Gavin Buckley for hosting us!
4. AACPS has finalized and ordered their (smaller) replacement portion of the playground aimed at ages 2-5. We expect the current playground to be removed and the new one installed in October. Official dates are TBD. We have asked that it be installed off to one side giving us maximum space for our Phase 2, ages 5+ design.
5. The new playground design is mostly complete and will be revealed as soon as we have a visual in hand! (Cunningham Rec, our playground manufacturer, didn’t do the renderings in time). In order to create this design, we polled 12 neighborhood moms about challenging, inspiring and ‘favorite’ playground pieces from all over– in the slides attached you can see a rudimentary drawing of the plan as well as elements in the design.
6. Fundraising: We are now accepting donations! Tax-deductible via Peake Foundation, or direct donation to GHCA (not tax deductible). We have received an anonymous challenge grant donation- for every dollar received, it will be matched up to $10,000. Your $100 becomes $200. The challenge ends 9/30! We also have plans to include corporate sponsors and ask neighbors for contributions. If every neighbor between Germantown-Homewood and Admiral Heights gives about $200, we’ll have the funding we need for state assistance! We intend to include Murray Hill and West Annapolis in our fundraising efforts.
— If you have ideas of corporate sponsors, would like to know more about donating, or if you’re willing to help, our fundraising team needs more volunteers! Email Kelly McCrady sullivank88@gmail.com
7. State Delegate Dana Jones wants to champion our cause– she’s committed that if we can have most or all of our funding by December, she will help us gather $100,000-$150,000 in state funds to be the final piece of the puzzle. State funding by way of a Legislative Bond Initiatives are awarded in the Spring and money is available to spend July 1- meaning a new playground installed Fall 2027.
8. Grants: Our grants team is hard at work and has narrowed in on some grants that we can apply to for funding. If you have ideas of grants or can nominate our group to your company’s grant process, please reach out to Teri Bond (tvab20@gmail.com)
9. Park Vision Committee: We have a draft tree plan (attached) and intend on adding benches, picnic tables and other amenities to our park. We have a pledge for trees from the city and are asking for volunteers to pledge to nurture the trees through their first 2 summers. We have 10 commitments already with lots of trees planned (aka more shade). Contact Bob Waldman (rhwaldman@rhwaldman.com) to get involved
I’m so sorry for the length here but our meeting was so thorough and we are well on our way to doing something really amazing here with our soon-to-be-amazing park. We are set up and ready to get rolling. Will you join us by way of donating or volunteering?
Friends of Germantown Park 
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