Legacy
What is done in his name
A great deal, by people who are not us. This page tells you who they are and how to reach them. It does not ask you for anything.
This site collects no money. There is no donate button on it and there will not be one. We are a for-profit company, not a charity, and a payment to us would not be a tax-deductible donation no matter what we spent it on.
Everything below sends you directly to the organisation doing the work. We take no cut, no data and no credit for handling it.
The Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation
This is the real one, and it has nothing to do with us. It was formed in 1986 and it does one plain thing: it gives money to young people in Hawaiʻi who play in the water.
It funds college scholarships for Hawaiʻi students in swimming, surfing, canoe paddling, kayaking, diving, water polo, sailing and volleyball, and it makes community grants including for drowning prevention. It runs the Waterman Hall of Fame and Duke's OceanFest.
As of 2025 it reported 1,192 scholarships and 893 grants, totalling more than $3.9 million. Spread across nearly forty years that is a modest sum, and the Foundation says so itself by publishing the count rather than an adjective. It files a Form 990 and publishes annual reports, which is more than we can offer you.
Give to the Foundation directly. We receive nothing from your gift.
Why water safety is the thing
Of everything attached to Duke's name, drowning prevention is the one with the most direct line back to him. He pulled eight men out of the surf off Newport Beach in 1925 and changed how lifeguards on that coast work. Hawaiʻi has a serious, documented drowning problem, particularly among children, and it is the sort of problem that swimming lessons actually solve.
If you want the specific figures, take them from the state and from the Foundation rather than from us. We are not going to put a statistic on a page about dead children and get it slightly wrong.
What this company gives
This is the part that is not written yet, and we would rather show you the gap than fill it with a sentence about giving back.
When it is written it will name the recipients, give the amounts and the dates, define exactly what the percentage is a percentage of, and say what we get out of it, which is goodwill and customers. A number can be checked. A commitment to supporting the community cannot, and everybody writes one.
Recipients, amounts and dates to follow. Nothing invented in the meantime.