The annual North Carolina Holiday Flotilla is in its 31st year. It will attract upwards of 50,000 people to the town for the lighted boat parade, not to mention those who attend the Friday night dance party and Day in the Park.
The question is, why continue to hold this free public event for 50,000?
Or, put another way, of the thousands of annual man hours donated by volunteers who stage this event, what is the return on investment that for 2013 totaled between $80,000 – $100,000?
Who benefits? Is it the residents of Wrightsville Beach? Certainly the homes and rental units that line the parade route on South Lumina Avenue plus Harbor Island benefit. The flotilla becomes the backdrop for splendid annual Thanksgiving weekend parties with families and friends.
This is a wonderful feel-good tradition, and if you can’t have fun at the flotilla, you can’t have fun.
But is the logic behind the event the same as that behind the Azalea Festival pre-I40? To spike an influx of business at a normally dead time of year? Except for the hotels and rentals, most beach businesses say the jammed-up traffic actually hurts their receipts for the night, but no numbers are available to confirm these purely anecdotal claims. Certainly businesses on the traffic arteries off the beach stand to benefit on boat parade night as tens of thousands who have been sitting and standing out in the cold, sometimes for hours on end, trickle back to the mainland.
A portion of the revenue raised goes for the parade boat prizes. Last year the top prize was a $5,000 boat, then cash prizes for the individual categories, with prizes totaling $14,500 as noted on the nonprofit’s 990 federal filing.
So the seller of the boat, if it was purchased and not donated, benefited with a sale. In years before, the same deal: top prize was plane fare, walking around money and a limited stay in someone’s condo located in an exotic location, or very expensive his and hers watches.
This year’s flotilla organizers promise all cash prizes, to the tune of $10,500 with the grand prize $5,000 in cold, hard cash.
But the skinny on this year’s parade is: The all-volunteer team ran late securing its sponsors, which put them behind schedule for announcing the prize amounts to prospective boat captains, which means in this trickle down economy, very few boats, about seven, were signed up last week when the committee met for the last time prior to the event.
Now the chair says there are 12 to 14 boats registered. And the event leaders expect to reach a contingent of 15-20 boats this year.
Compare that with 30 applications last flotilla, with a waiting list of 30 additional boats, and the words “falling short” come to mind.
The flotilla leadership is disinclined to talk about its lack of sponsors; its big corporate sponsor from last year dropped out and has not been replaced. But the solution is not altogether hopeless; one more corporate sponsor may be waiting in the wings.
One reason sponsors may not be ponying up this year to the extent they did in years past is the vast outpouring of donations to political candidates for midterm elections 2014. Candidates constantly beat the drum locally to replenish war chests in the quest for control. And by the numbers reported, donations poured in.
Big corporate donors are also increasingly less inclined to spend shareholders’ money to pay for a blow out party, no matter how feel-good it is, as witnessed by a push from one or more sponsors to see a give back component to the event.
As a result of this push back, for the first time an agreement was reached to make a donation in an unspecified amount from flotilla proceeds to the STEM program (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) at the DC Virgo Preparatory Academy in the Wilmington inner city. DC Virgo was one of the least performing schools in New Hanover County last year, despite a renovated infrastructure and iPads for students.
It is not enough anymore just to give money to something that’s fun; following a six-year economic recession and paradigm shift, corporations want their funds to go to something that benefits the community on a deeper level, something more tangible. It is a great deal easier to explain to shareholders the benefit of $10,000 donated to education versus just a good time. Or maybe it is finally resonating with people how bad our education system really is. In asking, “who benefits,” the answer needs to be schools, kids, the community.
Through the town, the TDA contributes heads in beds tax revenue for the approximately $15,000 in fireworks and another four grand toward police/fire presence. Day in the Park covers its expenses. The real lack is in the prize giveaways for best boats, and without boats, the parade fizzles.
One thing is for certain, with just two weeks to go, the flotilla needs more sponsors for this year; the prize money needs immediate boosting to attract more boat captains to undertake the laborious and fairly expensive task of decorating a boat, then getting out there on parade night to navigate the often treacherous route so that 50,000 eager people can come line the banks of the channel to watch the collective splendor.
Here’s a thought: there has never been a cost of admission. Of those 50,000 people, if just 25 percent of them sent in $2, the flotilla committee would have the funding it needs to put on an excellent boat parade. If half of the houses on the parade route that hold lavish parties would kick in just $50 or $100 each, that would go a long way to sealing the glittering night’s entertainment. Again this year, viewers can text in their vote for their favorite boats, and so if there was a pay-to-text phone app attached to voting, the goal could also easily be reached.
However, if one large employer in the county stepped up to the plate, the flotilla could rapidly pull out of this slump and give spectators an outstanding boat parade.
Corporate Wilmington, it is time to open your wallets again.
