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Sanders County Community Development (SCCD) has assembled a platform that will give community members a way to connect with community events around the area. Sanders County Events is an online calendar that allows local organizations and businesses the ability to post their events online for free.

The need to create an online presence for community events began last summer, according to SCCD Executive Director, Ray Brown. “We were noticing and hearing a lot of complaints from a lot of nonprofits that they were hosting their events on the same day,” Brown said. “There was no way to coordinate these efforts. A calendar isn’t in SCCD’s mission statement, but if not us, then who else will do this?”

While SCCD stepped up to the plate to find an approach that could serve as common ground for everyone, so far, the executive director says Sanders County Events has been extremely beneficial. “We saw the value of this right away,” he said.

Brown says Sanders County Events uses a platform called GatherBoard, developed by a software company out of Missoula, to power the community calendar. “It’s a great tool for folks who are traveling through or who are living here and are looking for something to do,” he said. “It’s also been a great resource for organizations to see what everyone else is doing.”

Community members navigating the community calendar can easily find events by searching through specific categories such as sports and recreation, education or music. A link has also been provided for each town in Sanders County to showcase upcoming events.

The roll out of Sanders County Events began about two weeks ago, Brown says, as he wanted to get the calendar up and running for the holidays. “We felt that it was important for everybody to have their Christmas events on there,” he said.

While submitted events are moderated by SCCD, Brown says the ultimate goal is to give the community the ability to set up and provide their own information on events happening around the county. “We want to see any organization in any community use Sanders County Events,” Brown stated. While Brown says Sanders County Events won’t become the sole source of information for online events, he hopes the community calendar can become one of the main sources of information people will refer to.

Criteria for submitted events is listed under the “About” section on the Sanders County Event’s website. For those organizations who need to submit multiple events, Brown says to reach out and contact SCCD for a form that will let organizations submit events all at once.

The community calendar will also give businesses and organizations the chance to advertise on Sanders County Events. “This is not a money-making venture, but we are working on advertising packages and those are scheduled to roll out the first of January,” Brown said.

For more information on advertising, email Brown at [email protected]. To submit an event or find out what’s happening around the county, visit sanderscountyevents.com.