GitHub: make fork an "own project"

GitHub: make fork an "own project"

I have found a nice GitHub project which I extended a lot. I believe my
changes are good, because they are working. But it seems the original
author hasn't got the time to review these changes and include them. In
fact, it is even possible that the features I need and implemented are not
in the vision of the original author and we simply aim at different goals.
I don't know as I never got responses from him.
That said I saw my contributions are not counted in my commit-map. This is
the case as long as the original repository doesn't accept my
contributions. Furthermore my work is only recognized as work and doesn't
attract any other people with the same vision as I have. This is the
bigger problem for me, because I see a lot of people asking for these
features.
I am still offering my contributions to the original project, but I see it
is unlikely they are ever accepted. Now I would like to make my fork a
"real project". While I plan to sync with the original project at some
points of time, I want to rename it and motivate people to contribute to
my project as well. In addition, I would love if GitHub would show that
this project is actively maintained (speaking of the commit map). And
finally, I would love to make proper releases of it.
How can I get this done and well, make my fork a full-fledged project?