Groundhog Day 2026

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Rooted in the depths of the Appalachian winters, comes Groundhog Day. 

Each year, the Muskingum County Community Foundation honors the day with a celebration that warms hearts and raises funds, which are used to award area nonprofits through the Spring Grant Competition to be used for projects and programs that benefit the community. 

“The community is invited to come on out. The reason we have the event during this time of year, the story is the Community Foundation received its 501(c)(3) designation from the IRS around Groundhog Day. So we kind of use it as our unofficial anniversary, unofficial celebration of the foundation’s birth. And I think it’s a great time because it’s far enough away from Christmas, everybody’s still a little over the Christmas parties, if you will. But it’s still far enough away that they’ve been cooped up for a while,” MCCF CEO Brian Wagner said.

Tickets are $40 bucks and include food and beverages. They can be purchased at the door but purchasing in advance at mccf.org allows them to better guestimate how many will be needed to be seated and served.   

“Well of course we’ve got our live and silent auctions but we also have some fantastic sponsors that step up and help support, to help defray our costs,” Wagner said. “So the more dollars we raise, the more money we have to give back out to the community. So that’s the important part about it. The live auction, we’re going to see great items that are going to be in there. We’ve got a trip to Disney, we’ve got gift certificates to Gervasi Vineyards up in the Canton-Akron area, we’ve got some local artists. So a lot of great opportunities for people to come out, bid on some really cool items and have a great evening together.”

The doors will open at 5 p.m. for this year’s Groundhog Day event that will be held at the Zane State College Campus Center on Friday, January 30th.