Fathoms O’ Fun Festival seeks community funding to continue events
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, April 21, 2026
What does the Fathoms O’ Fun Festival mean to you? Do you enjoy the fireworks in Sinclair Inlet or the Grand Parade at the end of June? Maybe you enjoy the outdoor summer concerts on Thursdays from June until September. Or, you appreciate our royalty court out and about in the public with appearances at special events, helping inspire our next generation of youth learning to be an integral part of our community and becoming better people.
Fathoms started transitioning to modernize and become more current at the end of 2023, and we had a great influx of new, energetic volunteers who stepped up to become part of our board of directors. Together, with a great existing team, we renewed our focus to work hand in hand with all of the local community groups, as well as local government. We wanted to help create family-friendly events in Port Orchard and Kitsap County to make our home a better place to live and grow our community.
What’s next? It is important to let everyone know our team is all volunteers. No one is paid or compensated for their efforts to coordinate and run our events, helping improve our community. Fathoms O’ Fun is now a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, with all of our funding and donations going back into our events and operating costs. Up to this point, we have relied almost exclusively on Lodging Tax Advisory Committee funds from both the City of Port Orchard and Kitsap County, as well as support from the Port of Bremerton and Astound Broadband (formerly Wave). We also have some valued smaller donations from local businesses sponsoring bands, royalty programs, and our parade.
Currently, our yearly expenses (no paid or compensated employees) are approximately $105,000. Our fireworks show is our biggest expense at 45% of our budget, followed by our royalty scholarship program, including float travel to other parades and maintenance, at 22%. Both the summer concert series and our parade come in about 10% each. Our other smaller events are roughly 2% combined. Leaving our last 10% of our budget for operating expenses (insurance, storage, materials, etc.), of which 6% is insurance alone.
Based on our current funding and increasing costs, we are about $20,000 short this year. This means our fireworks show will be shorter and we won’t be able to afford some of our favorite bands for our concert series without additional funding. This is going to become an ongoing issue, year after year.
To be able to continue offering our community events, the fireworks show and parade, our summer concert series, our royalty scholarship program and traveling parade schedule, we need local community members and businesses to help close that gap. We will stay an all-volunteer, unpaid organization putting on these great events, so this will go directly into the quality of our events.
If you are interested in helping fund Fathoms O’ Fun Festival or want additional information, please contact our chair, Jon Hohol, at chair@fathomofun.org or by calling (360) 990-5889.
