By Christine Schaefer Daily Reporter
HANCOCK COUNTY — Looking for something to do in Hancock County? Hop on over to Hello, Hancock at hellohancock.com and check out the new community calendar.
Visitors to the website will find a full slate of events and happenings from Dancin’ with the Local Stars on May 11 to the month-long display of Bikes in Bloom to the weekly Thursday night Fortville Farmers Market.
At the top of the page, visitors will see large colorful buttons to guide them to view the calendar, submit an event or to direct them to specific event categories: fundraisers, arts and cultural, music, fairs and festivals, health and wellness, and social and community.
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Clicking on the categories reveals a streamlined calendar of events in only the category selected.
Once in calendar view, mousing over events on any given date reveals details, a description of the event and even a poster or the hosting organization’s logo.
The new Hello, Hancock is streamlined and focused on its mission: to serve Hancock County’s nonprofits, service clubs, schools, and government entities with a powerful scheduling tool that will reduce scheduling conflicts and provide a “Go To” event calendar for Hancock County.
What visitors find at hellohancock.com is actually the second incarnation of the website. Ten years ago, Nancy King, an active member of the Greenfield community involved in many organizations, approached Greg Cross of Cross Creative Marketing with the idea of a comprehensive community calendar.
King was frustrated. Too often, non-profits and others were putting time, money and resources into fundraising events only to find out another group had planned its gala for the same night.
Cross donated his time to develop Hello, Hancock, a community calendar with a social media feel to it. At first, it was successful, but as the limited activity on the original Hello, Hancock dwindled, it became clear something more was needed.
In 2017, under the leadership of Mary Gibble, Hancock County Community Foundation gathered together organizations with event calendars including Greenfield Sertoma, Hancock Health and Hancock County Tourism to examine and compare existing calendars.
In 2018, the discussion expanded to include Hancock County town leadership, the City of Greenfield, Main Street organizations, Chamber organizations, Greater Greenfield Ministerial Association and Hancock County Public Library. Representation from these organizations became the steering committee for the effort.
Getting the community foundation behind the project was key, Cross said.
“It was almost a nine-month process,” Cross said. “We gave it new life, a new brand, a color palette. The biggest difference (between the old and the new calendars) is it’s streamlined, simple, just a calendar.”
The result of months of brainstorming, discussion and planning was the newly designed Hello, Hancock community calendar.
Gibble and the foundation are more than pleased with the results.
“We wanted to create a resource for what’s going on in the community,” Gibble said, “a viable tool for event planners and an opportunity to make sure our community can respond and get to as many events as they want.”
And since schools are such a large part of the community, Gibble said, the home page of the calendar includes logos from each of the four school systems. Clicking on them will take visitors to school system web pages with access to school calendars for athletics and other events.
Following development of the calendar, the next step was training. Hancock County Community Foundation brought in its stakeholders — organizations who would use the calendar, among them Hope House, FUSE, Greenfield Main Street, CrazyLake Acting Company, Greenfield Sertoma, Hancock County Arts, James Whitcomb Riley Boyhood Home and Museum, Kenneth Butler Memorial Soup Kitchen, PAWS and Zoey’s Place.
Hope House executive director Andrea Mallory attended the training and quickly caught on. Before the session was over, Mallory had entered four upcoming Hope House events into the calendar.
“It was really simple,” Mallory said, “very user-friendly. I like how it’s organized and how you can click on the day and see all that’s going on. It looks very professional.”
The outcome of the training was a vibrant and busy calendar of events to present to the public, as the stakeholder organizations submitted their activities.
Gibble realizes a community calendar may not completely eliminate event overlap, but Hello, Hancock will give organizations a view of what’s going on in the community.
“It is my hope that this tool will give those who want to support all the great things that happen in this community the opportunity to support as many organizations as they can,” Gibble said.
