This maybe a strange question but I'm hoping someone can help.
Our playground on all our grants, donation forms, events and how we promoted it and networked to fundraiser was the Carroll School Playground. We ask the kids name the Park and they came up with Tiger Park- our school mascot is a Tiger so our welcome sign would say "Welcome to the Carroll School Playground At Tiger Park". We had to submitt this for a school committee/council vote. Now we have a small group that is looking to get this named after a political person in our city that has passed many years ago and change the name completely.
The people close to the project want to keep this what we fundraised it as- The Carroll School Playground and wonder if we changed the name is their any conflict or misrepresentation of the Playground Committee that we raised our entire funds under the presumption that this was called the Carroll School Playground- for all grants, city grants, and all fundraising efforts and now are changing the name so soon ( we built Aug 18th and still haven't cut our offical ribbon yet due to the politics of getting the plaques for the benches approved for our major donors.)
I think many of our donors would be shocked and possible upset if this small group is successful in trying to change the name for this person. Could that come back to haunt the Playground Committee that we weren’t forthright of a name change? If you fundraise under one name aren't obligated to keep that name? Someone may have not donated $10K or what ever amount given it would have name for a person they didn't know upfront?
I'm upset since this whole project is about the kids, they designed, they draw our logo and tehy inspried it and to make this a political thing now is unfair.
Any advice in how to keep my original playground name?
Wow, that is surprising that the small group would want to override what the kids have done, and what your group as a whole had agreed upon. My suggestion would be that you and the others put your foot down and say that this is a playground for kids and that it would be great to have a sitting area/parklike area that is dedicated to the name of this deceased individual... i.e. I'm envisioning perhaps an area where there are two benches that face each other, so that parents can sit and chat, perhaps with some cement planters where plants could go... I just think that there is a way to make a happy compromise, but I really would not agree with changing the name of the project at this point... I'd try to get the small group to focus their efforts on creating an area-of-improvement to feature a plaque for the deceased individual.
And I don't know if you are a public school or private school, but this is a good example as to why our school district does not allow buildings to be named after 'people'...because you end up getting people with strong ties to that individual advocating and it gets really political... you might want to bring this up to your board in the future. I see your school is already named after someone but just saying that as you can see, it does present problems when people start championing their person-of-choice.
We are a public school. I was shocked as well as this turn of events. I was hoping from a legal stand point that I would be able to justify keeping the name as is and not changing because I know this has already and will continue to upset donors/volunteers who loved the idea that this was ALL about the kids from every angle and it was a community grass roots effort. The kids will be heartbroken but hopefully it will all work out.
Thank you to everyone for their advice. It was very helpful. We are using all your great tips to help get our playground named after the name our kids came up with which is Tiger Park vs. naming it after a political figure that a small group is trying to persuade our City to name it after.
We found this great link http://www.gopetition.com/online/14893.html which does on line petitions which we have sent to everyone we know to help show support and to keep this all about the kids. Feel free to click on and sign our petition:)
Thanks again for the help
Just to follow and say how this turned out.
Who knew such a huge city wide debate would happen because of this. School Committee felt regardless of our petition of over 400 signatures and our strong community support that they were to name the playground after the school name and not the name the kids choose (Tiger Park- after our school mascot) or the one the small group wanted to name it after a person. The council didn't want there to be a divide and for any party to feel they lost.