MCCF Groundhog Day Celebration and Auction Held Virtually

MUSKINGUM COUNTY, Ohio- The Muskingum County Community Foundation (MCCF) has announced that their Groundhog Day Celebration and auction will now be held virtually this year.

Brian Wagner, CEO of MCCF, was at Genesis Healthcare today, which is one of the sponsors for the Groundhog Day Celebration.

DUE TO COVID, they talked about why they made the decision to go virtual and how this way will keep the community safe. 

“We really wanted to put this on as a live event, but just didn’t think we’d be able to do that. Part of our mission is to have as strong of a community as possible, some of that strength has to come from health,” Wagner stated. “So we have to have a healthy community and we just didn’t think that we could bring all those people together under the current COVID situation, and be able to have an event where we wouldn’t cause maybe some sort of spike or outbreak or something along those lines.”

Even though the celebration is not held in person, Wagner said that they will have their auction items available for preview starting today and then the bidding will begin this Friday at 6:00 p.m. up until Groundhog Day on February 2nd at noon.

He also mentioned other items through their raffle that they will have available.

“You also can purchase raffle tickets. We’ve got 10 fabulous items , all of them valued over $1,000 dollars. $50 for one ticket, three tickets for $100 and we’ll be doing those drawings live on Facebook coming up at 5:00 p.m. on Groundhog Day as well,” Wagner said.

Participants can still place a donation on their favorite name for groundhog by going online at mccf.org. The four names that are listed for the groundhog are Gabby, Georgie, Gomez and Gus. Whichever name raises the most money, becomes the official name of the MCCF groundhog.

Please be sure to tune into the live event on their Facebook page this Friday starting at 6:00 p.m.