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Kit Cramer from the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina joins us for our fourth episode of our “Chamber of the Year Finalist Series”. The Asheville Area Chamber was recently named Chamber of the Year for 2019 in their category.
Kit introduces a couple of the programs that the Asheville Area Chamber is involved with that are gaining momentum and catching the attention of ACCE.
The first program Kit talks about is a partnership that the Asheville Chamber has developed with their neighboring Haywood Chamber. Asheville is a much larger Chamber than rural Haywood and has had a lot of resources available over the years to promote Haywood’s city, economic development, and tourism. In this partnership with the Haywood Chamber, they are able to bridge the gap between the urban and rural divide. By unifying these efforts, Haywood is able to leverage the name and strong infrastructure of Asheville and the Asheville Chamber is able to share templates for other programs and leads for economic development.
Another great program Kit addressed is called Woman Up. This is a business woman’s organization with a quarterly program for women in business (and for a few smart men). The Woman Up program focuses on helping these business women build their network, find and work with mentors, and build a toolkit of resources. The program has a different theme each quarter but tends to include a breakfast, speakers, panels, breakouts, stories, and much more. One of the recent speakers was Dr. Christine Darden, a mathematician, data analyst, and aeronautical engineer who devoted much of her 40-year career in aerodynamics at NASA and is one of the “Hidden Figures” the movie was based upon.
At the Woman Up meetings, the Chamber integrates Menti into presentations to get instant polling feedback that they can display on screen for the audience to see live results.
Woman Up is a very lucrative program for non-dues revenue for the Asheville Chamber. In it’s first year, sales and sponsorships grossed around $53,000 and netted about $20,000. In the second year, they grossed $126,000 and netted about $72,000! The Chamber is now able to offer scholarships or reduced fees allowing for a more diverse group of women to attend. More information about the Woman Up program can be found by clicking here.
If you would like to connect with Kit Cramer about anything she discussed in this episode or about how they are doing things at the Asheville Area Chamber, she can be reached by email at kcramer@ashevillechamber.org.
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