Personally I feel like #2 and #3 would clutter up the site, slow it down, and cause a whole lot of problems with mobile devices.
If it were ever worth it, the funding progress could perhaps be depicted, simply, in the top nav as a simple progress bar. We could always just follow that proposed link to the main site anyhow.
As for shoutbox - we could always just use the “Off Topic” category in the forums