The National Hellenic Museum (NHM) in Chicago announced its 2017 achievements, including a 29 percent year-over-year increase in patrons served.

More than 21,000 people of all ages experienced the Museum through classes, field trips, tours and programs, and the NHM Collections of artifacts and recorded oral histories continued to expand.

“Our growth has come from a combination of education-based field trips and tours, a vast range of public programming and highly engaging community events,” noted NHM President Laura Calamos, PhD.Operationally, the NHM has been highly efficient, reporting that 81 cents of every dollar spent went to programming, an outstanding ratio among non-profit organizations.

In addition, most of the Museum’s annual major events continue to be designed to drive both its educational mission and its fundraising goals.The renowned NHM Trial Series, for example, serves as one of the Museum’s most dynamic and stimulating events during which top legal minds examine legal and moral questions that originated in Ancient Greece.

The event is so highly regarded that the NHM Trial of Antigone program aired on Chicago’s PBS affiliate and recently was nominated for a Chicago/Midwest Regional Emmy.

The 2018 NHM Trial Series event will take place March 1 and sponsorship opportunities are now available.Additionally, in 2017, the NHM hosted more than 20 public programs with topics exploring the modern-day influence of Hellenism and democracy – such as ethics in medicine and science, and the refugee crisis – to presentations connected to ancient Greece, including new data about Mycenaean times drawn from excavations to research related to the genocide under the Ottoman Empire.