Fond Du Lac Festivals

In 2021/2022, Fond Du Lac Festivals helped raise over 240,000 for 37 nonprofit organizations in our area. Through partnerships at events like sturgeon spectacular and walleye weekend, we can fulfill our mission of creating and hosting family-friendly Festivals and special events that showcase our community. In february 2022, Fond Du Lac Festivals hosted our premier winter cornhole tournament known as bags fest. It was one of the largest winter tournament in our region. 45 teams participated and feedback was extremely positive. Due to its popularity in year 1, we look to expand divisions and add family-friendly elements where possible in year 2. Event included food, beverages, and door prizes. Sturgeon spectacular- in 2022, we utilized lakeside park pavilion and the surrounding areas to provide winter-themed, family-friendly activities. The pavilion served as a warming shelter, lakefront brewery bar, food service, location for the ace academy shanty raffle, and information area for the event. We hosted the 3rd annual outdoor curling funspiel. The event was moved from the downtown curling rink to a frozen lake winnebago to allow for a 2nd sheet for tournament play. We had 14 teams compete from all over the region. We also added free horse-drawn carriage rides for families to enjoy the splendor of lakeside park in addition to the ssm health fun run & 5k and michels snow land activities. In the evening, we lit a "spectacular" bonfire, set up small campfires, and sold s'mores kits for kids to enjoy. We also hosted royal south, a nashville-based country act inside the pavilion to round out the lakeside events. In downtown Fond Du Lac, we partnered with downtown Fond Du Lac partnership and thelma sadoff center for the arts. We added a downtown hot cocoa and chocolate crawl to our family-friendly activities, and turned the downtown curling rink into a "learn to curl" area with support from the appleton curling club. The Wisconsin state snow sculpting championship celebrated its 5th year in Fond Du Lac, and 4th year on sheboygan street adjacent to thelma. Other events included a running of the sturgeon event, at two locations in downtown Fond Du Lac, kick-off celebration at thelma, downtown ice sculpting competition and displays, amateur snow sculpting contest, chili crawl, specials and other events hosted by downtown partners. New in 2022, we set up "sturgeon central", where we partnered with wendt's on the lake and fleet farm to host the sturgeon show-off station and biggest sturgeon contest. We added "live" reports from wendt's and right off the ice with real sturgeon spearers and added those reports to our facebook page. Walleye weekend has become the largest annual fundraiser for many area nonprofit organizations and has raised over two million dollars since 2012. Close to 45,000 people joined us for three days of family-fun; tournaments, live music on three stages, great food, and all the traditions that accompany Fond Du Lac's biggest festival. Highlights of the weekend included the mercury national walleye tournament, the family fishing tourney, the walleye run/walk, walley-ball softball tournament, wild world of animals, pier pups and glam band bringing in a huge crowd on saturday night. Rain resulted in lower attendance on saturday with smaller than expected crowds at the national headlining acts - eve6 and blessid union of souls, but we saw a record crowd on sunday's family day. Great weather on sunday and new family-friendly events like the build & block zone, imagination island, the sports corner, and the fondy football challenge sparked interest during the weekend.