Click here for the official Shark Tank Showdown 2025 Photo album!
People’s Arc of Suffolk and Rise Life Services co-hosted their Shark Tank Showdown fundraiser on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, with six fundraisers taking a dive into the shark tank at the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead, to raise funds for both non-profit agencies. The event raised more than $60,000 between the two organizations with the two main event sponsors being Jovia Financial Credit Union (People’s Arc Main Event Sponsor) and Community Care Rx (Rise Life Services Main Event Sponsor). We are thankful for each and every fundraiser who participated in a campaign for this event because we truly couldn’t have done an event like this without you. We never could have imagined the amount each fundraiser would collect and it really shows the power of networking and importance sharing your story.
(Pictured left to right: Frank Giordano and Jim Skinner, A & C Pest Management)
CONGRATULATIONS to the two divers that went into the shark tank that night representing People’s Arc of Suffolk! Frank Giordano and Jim Skinner each raised over $7,000 for People’s Arc of Suffolk’s programs and services. Each of our 10 fundraisers used a peer to peer style of fundraising by calling on their own personal contacts for donations towards their campaign in support of People’s Arc. THANK YOU to over 215 individual donors for your support. Our final leaderboard was as follows:
| 1 | Frank Giordano | $7,450 | |
| 2 | Jim Skinner | $7,169 | |
| 3 | John McGuigan | $3,046 | |
| 4 | Michael La Paz | $2,785 | |
| 5 | Mary Fu | $1,286 | |
| 6 | Deborah Pflieger | $1,135 | |
| 7 | Nicole Weingartner | $1,025 | |
| 8 | Christopher Veros | $794 | |
| 9 | Lindsay Ekizian | $775 | |
| 10 | Nick Singh | $535 |
The event was emceed by News 12 Long Island anchor Jenn Seelig and meteorologist Alex Calamia and they both dove into the tank as well. “People may have thought this was an April Fool’s Prank, but it’s no joke. People are going in,” said John McGuigan, CEO of People’s Arc of Suffolk, before the event. “We have 250 people that have come together to raise critical funds to support people with disabilities on Long Island and we’re so grateful.”
Divers suited up and entered a shark cage in pairs and were lowered into in the giant shark tank at the aquarium, accompanied by a dive master. Each duo spent about five minutes underwater, coming up close and personal with the sharks and other fish in the massive tank. The dives were broadcast onto large screens throughout the aquarium for dinner-goers to watch, which was brought to us flawlessly by our two trusted event vendors, Creative Focus Designs Inc. and Long Island Sound DJ Entertainment.
There were so many neat and unique elements to this event, but one awesome preparation tool we used was creating a Media Day prior to this event. Media Day invited each diver to our Northport Performing Arts Center to create social media videos that were shot entirely by people enrolled in the Northport PWW program through their Arc TV channel. They operated the cameras, asked the questions and the videos were posted online to spark donations! We are very happy with how this event turned out, with a packed room of over 250 people and even the 501st Legion Storm Troopers showed up! Click here for our event photo gallery! Thank you to all involved for the collective success!
