If you want to participate in a village-wide spectacle next month and help support a local cause, now is the time to sign up for Brookfield’s 2024 rubber duck race.
From now through the end of September, residents can donate $5 in exchange for their very own rubber duck representative in a river race held at noon on Sept. 28. When the day comes, volunteers will unleash thousands of rubber ducks into Salt Creek at the Washington Avenue Bridge; the current will carry them downstream to Brookfield Village Hall, where they’ll pass the finish line near the canoe launching area behind the parking lot.
The first three rubber ducks to pass the finish line will earn cash prizes for the Brookfielder who purchased them. In previous years, the fastest duck won $500, with $250 and $100 going to the next two placers, but this year, the stakes are even higher. Whoever buys the quickest quacker will win $1000, while second place will earn $750 and third place $500.
The higher prizes are just one way the duck race is changing to encourage increased participation this year, said Mary Vyskocil, one of the event’s chairs. As members of Brookfield’s parks and recreation commission, she and co-chair Patti Chmura have been spearheading the race since last year, when the village group brought it back after years of hiatus.
“COVID, really, is what happened, and then the [Brookfield Avenue] bridge being out” due to construction from May 2021 through December 2022, which hampered residents’ access to the traditional finish line, she said in an interview Thursday.
In the past, Beautify Brookfield, the nonprofit fundraising arm of Brookfield’s beautification commission, organized the duck race each year to support public art initiatives around town. Now, the race benefits the Brookfield Parks and Recreation Foundation, which provides financial assistance to families in the village who cannot afford to enroll their children in parks and recreation programming, covering up to half the cost for daycare, summer camps and other initiatives.
“With the Brookfield Parks and Rec Foundation being fairly new, just two or three years, we wanted to get the word out” by organizing the duck race, Vyskocil said. “Every dollar that comes in, whether by individual or corporate business, all goes back to the community.”
Alongside the beefed-up cash prizes, there’s a chance to win even more money if you buy in bulk, Vyskocil said. Anyone who purchases 10 rubber ducks at once — a $50 expense — gets a free golden duck, increasing your odds for free. A golden duck will earn you $100 extra if it’s one of the first three ducks to finish at the race.
Last year, Vyskocil said the commission aimed to sell 1,000 ducks and nearly sold 900, raising more than $3,000 to donate to the Parks and Recreation Foundation. But this year, there are more incentives than ever for residents to participate due to a much loftier target: selling 3,000 rubber ducks.
She said the higher goal came about suddenly and unexpectedly at a Foundation meeting at the beginning of the year.
“We started talking about the duck race again, and one of the members had said, ‘What’s your goal this year?’” she said. “Honestly, I was going to say, ‘I’m hoping for double. Let’s shoot for 2,000,’ but before I could get that out, [Brookfield’s] Parks and Rec Director Luke Gundersen — he knows me well, being on the commission — he said, ‘3,000!’”
Once the number was thrown out, Vyskocil said she accepted the challenge, and she and other members of the foundation got to work brainstorming the new initiatives for this year’s duck race. Alongside the golden ducks and increased prizes, the duck race has also partnered with local businesses in Brookfield to sponsor weekly raffles that coincide with the farmers market; the owner of a different business each weekend draws from the people who bought a duck that day, and the winner gets a gift card or another prize from the business.
So far, the duck race’s innovations have been successful. The co-chair said the foundation has sold upwards of 2,200 rubber ducks so far, including a whopping 72 golden ducks included in bulk donations. That means the golden ducks have already raised more than $3,500 on their own.
Vyskocil said the foundation has even financed other advertising measures for the race through the sale of ducks this year, but she attributed the successful duck drive to the entire Brookfield community.
“Patti and I, it’s not us. We’re just tools in doing this. It’s those that buy. It’s those that volunteer,” she said. “The sponsors. We could not do it [without them]. We have not taken one penny out of the foundation to get these banners.”
The foundation will continue selling rubber ducks at the farmers market up until race day on Sept. 28. They will be available at the final Friday night concert of the summer this Friday, Aug. 23. You can also purchase rubber ducks online or by scanning a QR code available on Brookfield’s website.
Correction, Aug. 26, 2024, 1:45 p.m.: An earlier version of this story misnamed the president of the Brookfield Parks and Recreation Foundation based on outdated information from its website. Kyle Whitehead is now the president while Village Trustee Julie Narimatsu is a board member. We apologize for the error.
