Support for non-profits goal of Tillamook’s Great American Duck Race

Published 4:00 pm Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Organizers of this summer’s Great American Coastal Duck Race are coordinating the event as a vehicle to benefit local non-profit organizations from one end of Tillamook County to the other.

Scheduled for August, the race will serve as a fundraiser for charitable and community organizations from Manzanita to Lincoln City. “We have a 50-mile radius,” said Fred Rigwood, vice president of the Tillamook Chamber of Commerce, which is organizing the event.

Each year, 200 Great American Duck Races are held in the United States, noted Rigwood, who owns and operates First Capital Group, in Tillamook. The majority of these raise money for non-profits within a 20-mile radius, he noted. “Because of the way our county is laid out, we got an exception.”

Great American Merchandise and Events (GAME), which owns the Great American Duck Race fundraising concept, staged its first race in Arizona in 1988. Since then the concept has caught on in places such as Eugene and Medford and helped raise millions of dollars for causes including child abuse and hunger prevention, Special Olympics and the quest to cure cancer.

The highlight of each event is the race itself, said Rigwood, who participated in a duck race in Eastern Washington before relocating to Tillamook County. “It’s a blast.” The local duck race will involve 15,000 three-inch rubber ducks, each bar-coded to allow identification of winners.

“We’re hoping to sell 15,000 tickets, or, as we call them, ‘duck adoption papers,'” said Rigwood. With tickets priced at $5 each, there is the potential to raise $75,000 for local non-profit organizations, of which 30 have signed up. “We still have some slots available,” he added.

One reason the chamber is turning to the duck race is to relieve the year-round pressure to donate to charitable causes many local businesses experience. “They’re all good causes,” said Rigwood. “But this way it takes it off the businesses’ shoulders. The 100,000 tourists that run up and down Highway 101 – we’re going to sell tickets to them. My goal is to eventually make this the lead fundraiser for local non-profits. The duck race is such a proven event – we really don’t have to reinvent the wheel – that’s the thing I like about it.”

Another fundraising aspect of the event involves licensed duck merchandise, including T-shirts, hats, neckties and inflatable ducks. Merchants can sign up to sell the merchandise prior to the races and turn over the proceeds to their favorite local non-profit, said Rigwood. “We put the merchandise on consignment and credit the particular non-profit account with sales.”

Rigwood hopes the race will also benefit Tillamook County’s smaller chambers of commerce and merchants associations “that don’t normally have an opportunity to raise funds.”

In the days prior to the race, area chambers will take turns hosting a 25-foot inflatable duck designed to drive ticket sales.

Not that the Great American Coastal Duck Race is all about money.

“We’re kind of turning the clock back,” said Rigwood. “We’re going to have a full day of free, old-fashioned family fun, including pie-eating contests, sack races and a potato dash. It’s just going to be a lot of fun.”

The chamber continues to seek sponsors to help cover the cost of advertising as well as the purchase of prizes to be awarded to race winners.

In addition to having their names printed in an accompanying brochure, sponsors will be invited to attend a banquet the evening before the race.

The Great American Coastal Duck Race is slated to begin at 10 a.m., Aug. 25 at the Blue Heron French Cheese Co., in Tillamook. Prizes will be awarded following the 4 p.m. race.

For more information, call (503) 842-DUCK.