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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
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You’re joining us today for a special episode in our 2024 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series and our guests for this episode is Jodi Owczarski. Jodi is the President and CEO of the West Coast Chamber in Michigan. For the first five years the West Coast Chamber Jodi was accountable to provide leadership and all areas of the organization as well as serving as the integrator within the EOS framework. As a vice president and CEO, Jodi was responsible for all human resources, accounting and finance functions, as well as managing the staff, Facilities and Operations and directing the West Coast leadership program. She was made president and CEO of the West Coast chamber on September 1 2020. To Jodi’s limitless capacity for solving math problems has been essential to creating budgets and balance sheets. And her inviting personality and quick humor combined with our strategic thinking give her the edge when making when managing staff committees, volunteers, Jodi’s contagious energy ripples into our business community, and today will ripple into this podcast episode. But, Jodi, we’re excited to have you back with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. For those who are regular listeners she was with us almost a year ago, as I look back on it, she’s back in episode 244. But we’re excited to have you back with us and give you an opportunity to say hello to everyone listening. And I like asking for an interest. Interesting tip. Interesting fact about us so we can get to know you a little better.
Jodi Owczarski 2:49
I love that. Brandon, thank you. I’m honored to be back, especially as a finalist for chamber of the year. That’s something we’ve aspired to for a long time. Well, I almost had to ask the staff an interesting fact about me. But I guess as it relates to being part of the chamber world, I actually started at the chamber as an ambassador, and was an ambassador when I was hired on back in 2017. And was in the leadership class. And part of my new role at the Chamber was to be the director for the leadership program. So I started directing the program that I was still a member of the class were so that was an interesting twist on being a part of that program.
Brandon Burton 3:30
Yeah, very meta, right, like, and leading it. You took good notes at the beginning so you can have some idea what you’re doing. Exactly. Well, tell us a little bit about the West Coast chamber, give us an idea of the type of chambers kind of work, you guys are involved with size, staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our conversation.
Jodi Owczarski 3:52
Absolutely. The West Coast chamber is on the west shore of Lake Michigan. We are based in Holland, Michigan, a community of about 120,000 people in the greater Holland area. In this space, we have 1233 members, as of today, every member counts. And we’ve recently expanded to a staff of eight team members. interesting for us. We have found that we are a very fertile bunch over here. We’ve had four maternity leaves in six months and a fifth one coming. So our small team has been put to the test. Seems like we take having babies two at a time around here. So we’re growing our chamber membership. One, one baby at a time.
Brandon Burton 4:44
Wow. Yeah, your your team is it’s like doubling right. Is called Workforce Development. You bring them yeah,
Jodi Owczarski 4:53
we’re dedicated right to the workforce development. We’re all growing our own.
Brandon Burton 4:58
That’s right. I love it. Well Yes Congratulations to you guys for being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. It is a huge accomplishment I know even to to be selected and I on these episodes I love diving into the programs that were submitted on your chamber the your application. So we’ll spend the majority of our time today talking about those. And we’ll dive into those programs as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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All right, Jodi, we’re back. So why don’t you tell us what the first of the two programs is that you’d like to highlight today? And we’ll dive into the details of it and learn a little bit more.
Jodi Owczarski 7:32
Absolutely. So I mentioned that I was in the West Coast Leadership Program, our community based leadership program. And as I was trying to reimagine what that program could look like, I really worked to reevaluate that last day, the program that we had called graduation, and really thought about trying to discover ways that we could do a better job of tangibly launching those leaders out into our community. And so the first year I had them go around and volunteer around town. And the group of 25 or 30 people in the class at that point, had a great time. And from that, we discovered that we there’s a little something here. And so the next year, we did it again. And we allowed them to invite a friend or colleague along and internet, we had almost 100 people out serving. And that’s when the idea really hit that we could do something bigger. And from that our first initiative was born, which is called Community Impact day. So in 2022, we decided to take the afternoon of the last day of our leadership program, and facilitate volunteer opportunities with people throughout the community that were willing to serve. And so this could be anything from painting to spreading woodchips to helping stuff, mailers for nonprofit. And so we reached out to our nonprofit organizations, we set that up. And in 2022, we had 250 People go out and serve that afternoon. It was awesome. And as we were debriefing at the end of the day, my team was kind of energized and I had that post event high and threw a a b hag out there and said you know what, let’s do it again. And next year, let’s go for 1000 people and and so we did we we went for it. We ended up with 983 which of course is short of our goal, but it felt anything but short of the goal last year when I drove through the town and could see nearly 1000 people out volunteering all wearing our community impact a blue shirts, and and we knew that something great was really underway. This year. We did it again may 15 2024 And we had over 1500 15 122 people serving this year. And next year, we’re shooting for 2025 and 2025. So it’s so much fun. And our hope is that we’re going to get other chambers across our region across the state and even across the country, leaning in and doing this ideally, even on the same day, when that’d be
Brandon Burton 10:24
cool. That would be awesome. So you thought 1000 people out in the community serving was it be hag right? Yeah. And look at your look where you are now, right like that. It almost seems like a small goal, looking back on and seeing the growth and where the vision is going today. I love how you talked about creating something to be able to launch these leaders into the community. So what is their role in this these these leaders that go through the leadership program? Yep. What’s that launch look like?
Jodi Owczarski 10:57
Great question. So I knew that going from 200 to 1000, I had to do some creative things. And the leadership class played a big part in that. So we have a class of typically 25 people, they were each responsible for choosing a site that they were going to volunteer at, and being the leader at that site, which also meant identifying all of the volunteers that were needed for that location. So they had choices of where they could go, but each site needed at least 10 volunteers. So now I knew I was going to have 250 volunteers just with a leadership class. It also gave them a great opportunity to lead at that spot. Undoubtedly, the group of volunteers moved through the volunteer projects quicker than what the organization expected. And so we always need somebody on point to say, what more can we do, and hey, let’s go over here and do this next, and just kind of take charge and continue to make things happen. And so they’re able to serve in that way. Once we saw that model work, we expanded that same thing to our board of directors into our ambassadors, so that you get another, here’s another 150 volunteers coming, here’s another 400 volunteers coming over this way. And so it was it was a quick, repeatable way to gather groups, when you start seeing teams come right from businesses, etc, that it’s the whole IT department from this manufacturer, or, you know, fill in the blank with who that is that they’re coming out as a group to do that together. And in the benefits that they see in that come right along with that. Yeah, I
Brandon Burton 12:44
can see where certain Chamber members is different businesses in the community could see it as a corporate responsibility, kind of a thing to come out and give back to the community so they can create their own teams. And I could see, you know, competition coming out of this at some point for sure, the earning or something. Yeah,
Jodi Owczarski 13:01
there’s some other pieces of this as well, where it’s like, you look at the younger generation, and what we’ve studies are showing is that investing in the community, volunteerism is critical for them. And if they see their employer investing in that way, and allowing them space, to be able to go do that as a part of their work, their retention is so much higher. And we’re hearing that from our employers. We also worked really hard on inclusivity. This year, as we went from 1000, or 983, to 12. To 15 122, we wanted to look at who’s often overlooked in this process. And we went to Senior Centers where we were sending volunteers to go serve these senior citizens. But we also went to them and said, Yes, and we’d love to take your senior citizens out. And we believe that they’ve got great value to contribute, let’s find opportunities that they can serve, maybe it’s not spreading wood chips, but we’ve got some other things that we could create that could be meaningful for them to do. And so we had that happening. Same thing for an organization that serves adults with a challenges and sent the group into serve there, but also brought that group of participants out to come and serve and it was just the coolest thing to see the pride that they had in the work that they did out in our community.
Brandon Burton 14:32
I love it. You’re answering the questions that I have before I asked them about how you grow Yeah, so exponential exponentially like that. But it’s it’s getting you know, those leaders from the leadership class involved and then extending it to the board and the ambassadors and then kind of cross pollinating with those that you’re serving also providing service and I love it. I mean, you guys are just have your eyes wide open to opportunities, and inviting and being inclusive and What What kind of outcomes are you seeing through the community as you guys implement these, these community impact days?
Jodi Owczarski 15:07
You know, there’s there’s these easy, tangible outcomes, right. So if we look at the city of Holland, for example, we went and did two big projects. Last year for the city of Holland in 2023, we built a playground, for them that was replacing an old kind of broken down one and put in a new inclusive playground, that children of all physical and cognitive abilities would be able to utilize. We also went out and painted railing along the seawall and painted miles of painting of railing along the seawall, and for the city of Highland in that three hour time block, we saved them over $120,000. It’s just remarkable right to be able to do that. And it’s, it took us very little effort. But it’s a tangible outcome on on our city. So there’s those kinds of outcomes. Our nonprofits are seeing additional, we’ve tried to coach them up along the way to say, Man, this is an opportunity for you to have all of these people learn about your organization. So as they come there, and they’re ready to get started, take five minutes, give them your elevator pitch, right? Tell them about what you do and why you do it, and what your biggest needs are. And what we’re hearing from those organizations is that the relationships continue beyond this one afternoon. They’re coming in to volunteer on an ongoing basis. They’re becoming donors and, and financial supporters of the organization. They’re becoming advocates and helping to tell the story and grow awareness of these organizations. So it’s cool to see that happen as well. And then we see the impact of the investment of the volunteers themselves. They feel differently about the community when they go to the park where they built the playground, or where they painted the railing. That’s their park, they’re gonna pick up garbage that they see on the ground, right? They’re gonna take their family there with pride, because this is a place that they had an impact on.
Brandon Burton 17:18
I love that skit and people involved. Do you ever see people wearing the T shirts just around the city?
Jodi Owczarski 17:25
I love saw it yesterday, the first time that it happened, I made a fool of myself, I was giddy. I took a picture. Covertly, I’m yelling across the street, I love your teacher. The person looked at me like I completely lost my mind. But we’re intentional and buying a shirt that people are going to want to wear. They’re super comfortable. They’re beautiful blue color. And so we see them all around town. So there’s no charge to participate. That’s the one expense that we have. But the sponsor dollars have come in so readily, that it’s an easy thing for us to do. So you drive through the town, you see the shirts everywhere. And it was fun even to see some of the Facebook groups, you know, if your community has a for us, it’s a Holland informed group, right? It’s where all of the the gossip and things happen. If you want to know what’s happening in the town, this Facebook group, there was a number of questions about, Hey, what’s up with all the blue shirts in town today? And then reading the responses right at the people saying, oh, my gosh, it’s the coolest thing. This happened. And I want to do it next year. And, you know, how do I get involved? It’s it’s going to take on a life of its own. This, this project has legs, and I hope that I’m going to be 80 years old and coming back to participate in community impact day.
Brandon Burton 18:47
That’s great. I love it. Love it. So let’s shift gears a little bit into your second program. I know it’s somewhat connected, but introduce us to it. The second program is you submitted on your application. The
Jodi Owczarski 19:02
two tag team really well, although they were created in separate ways. Our second initiative is called West Coast Connect. It’s an online platform that we’ve created, that has a directory of opportunities for leaders in our community to serve at board elected or skilled committee types of opportunities, as well as a directory of individual leaders who are raising their hand and willing to serve. So our community did a deep dive a couple of years ago to look at what are the top issues facing our community. And at that time, we were going through a pretty big political upheaval and realized that we were going to be late to the game and having adequate candidates for some Local elected positions, and realize that we can’t be late to that, again, we’ve got to be more prepared and identifying and equipping those leaders in advance. At the same time, we’re looking around and seeing generational leaders that are at the same tables over and over, right? You see the same people. And we know from our West Coast leadership program, we have about 1000 people that have been through this program, why do we see the same 20 people serving everywhere, it’s because they’re top of mind, we know that there are far more people willing and capable of serving, we just have to get them more top of mind. As a chamber professional, I regularly would get a phone call saying, Hey, I’m looking for a board member. And here’s what I’m looking for. Right? Ideally, it’d be a female, if that person could be a person of color, that’d be fantastic. We really need somebody who has some financial acumen and, and so you kind of scroll through your brain and you think about the people you see, and you give the same list. This helps us go so much deeper into the list of potential people serving throughout our community. It can be self serve, our organizations can go. And not only post the opportunities they have, but also source their potential volunteers. But they can also come back to us to ask for, like, who do you know, in this directory, and give us the parameters. And we can pull some reports to make sure that we come up with, you know, a list of great people for for them to be able to connect with and explore whether or not they’d be a good fit. So
Brandon Burton 21:45
I know with a platform like this, the one of the struggles at the beginning, it’s like a chicken or the egg and everything, right? If you’re trying to match the two sides together, you need to have, you know, one or both sides populated to be able to make it useful. So how do you get started with creating a platform like this to be able to matchmake? And no, you’ve got kind of that list in your head that maybe you can start with populating that. But then it said that same list that you’re always putting out there, right? So sure, what’s the approach? Yep,
Jodi Owczarski 22:15
great question. We started with our current West Coast leadership class, right there in the class, because they want to serve in the community. And so they were the first 25 people to populate, then we went back to the three most recent classes and had them do it as well. Because we knew, again, they they were looking for those same opportunities. Once we had some of those built out, we could send it out more broadly. And people could see what they looked like what that looked like, and could see themselves in it. And so at this point, we have over 227 individuals that have raised their hand and are currently on this site. So
Brandon Burton 22:55
do they create their own profile, upload a picture and kind of a resume of sorts of you know, what their background is?
Jodi Owczarski 23:02
They do. So we knew for this to be successful, it had to be a couple of things. We were we run lean as a team here. So this couldn’t be something that required a lot of intervention on our on our part. And we needed it to be as self serve as possible. So we built it on our growth zone platform that we already use for our CRM system, they’ve got logins for their accounts already, they could create them right in there. We do allow non members to be a part of this, because it’s really more about the community than just the chamber. And so we’ve set it up so that they non members could could log in and create this as well. So they can update their profile at any time to keep that relevant, if they’ve gotten a few opportunities, and they’re no longer looking for a new opportunity, they could take themselves down, put themselves back up again, when they have fresh opportunity or capacity to grow that. And it’s the same thing for the organization, right? They can log in, they create the whole list of what it is that they’re looking for. And we just approve it, clean it up to make sure it looks good. And get it posted on our website. So it’s it’s very simple.
Brandon Burton 24:16
Are the organizations that are searching, Are they members or is that open to? That’s
Jodi Owczarski 24:22
open as well. Okay. Yep. Yep. Again, we believe that this is bigger than chamber, right? This is this is whole community. And we want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to be able to do this. So you know, when elections are coming around, we have more data behind the screen than what you can see visibly, we’re not going to share people’s personal home address in some other personal information, but information that’s helpful for us to be able to look and see, hey, I need someone in ward three for city council, who lives in that area that It has self identified as someone who cares about advocacy, and may be willing to run for run for a seat on city council in this in this geographical area, we can pull that up and and dive into that a little deeper.
Brandon Burton 25:14
Yeah. So right now it sounds like it’s been filled with leadership class participants, right? Is there any application process for anyone else in the community that wants to be involved? Do they need to go through the leadership class or what’s, how’s that structured,
Jodi Owczarski 25:31
they do not need to go through the leadership class. This too is open to anyone. We the third leg of this stool is education. So we will offer educational opportunity. So if they’ve not gone through West Coast leadership, or they’ve not served on a board of directors before you could come to a how to how to serve on a board class, right? So you understand what it is that you’re signing up for. We’ve also run things like how to run for office and had the County Clerk come in, to help equip people for what does that process look like? What are the financial obligations? What are the deadlines? What are the do’s and don’ts. And so we want to make sure that an educational component also comes alongside this so that we can help equip whoever is willing and interested to serve.
Brandon Burton 26:20
Well, that seems like a great solution. And way to think outside the box to play matchmaker there, if you will. As we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for those chambers who are out there listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you offer them? And it might carry a little more weight this time, especially with you guys being a chamber, the year finalist?
Jodi Owczarski 26:50
You know, that’s a great question. And I think, I don’t know what chambers are going to look like in the future and even day to day, they continue to evolve, right the way that we need to serve our community. And it’s very easy to get up on the treadmill of just continuing to churn out what we’re doing. My tip would be to take intentional, we call them clarity breaks, built in time into your schedule, on a regular cadence that takes you outside of the business. So you can think bigger, you can pause to reflect on everything from like, how’s my confidence? What am I procrastinating on? What do I need to? What do I need to get rid of or focus on? What do I need to make sure my board chair knows, I have a whole list of questions that I’ve worked through. But also pausing to think about how can we serve differently in our community? What needs are we seeing that are going unmet? And A is it something that is inside of our lane? And be how can we then approach it? If that answer is yes, it’s it’s something that we need to focus on. It’s one of our lanes, taking that time to pause and build that into a regular schedule is so important.
Brandon Burton 28:07
Yeah, I like that idea and having a name for it. And clarity breaks.
Jodi Owczarski 28:11
That’s right.
Brandon Burton 28:12
It allows you to to think bigger, and work on those bigger goals. I love it exactly. So I know you just said you don’t know what the future of chambers look like. But I always ask the question. How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Jodi Owczarski 28:27
Yeah, I don’t know what it looks like. But it’s not because we’re not thinking about it. So part of our regular processes is always having a 10 year target. The 10 year target for our chamber is that we will be a trailblazing organization that creates a tidal wave of positive impact. Note that it does not say Chamber of Commerce, I don’t know if we’ll still be called a Chamber of Commerce in 10 years. But if we’re doing things that are causing a positive impact in our community, that I think we’re doing the right things. So we’ll continue to adapt and to learn and to grow in ways that our community needs. So that we can show up and meet those needs in whatever way that is. Two years ago, as I as I moved into the CEO seat, we changed one of our core values from Think Big be great to be a trailblazer. We knew that thinking big and being great was not big enough, it wasn’t great enough to be successful. We’re going to have to blaze a trail, we’re gonna have to go places we’ve never gone before. Maybe the other chambers have not gone before, if we really want to be able to make an impact for our community. And so that’s the mindset that will continue to take into the future so that we can make a positive impact.
Brandon Burton 29:45
Yes, it’s all about making those big swings, making a difference. Yeah, that’s right. I love it. Well, Jodi, for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys how you guys are doing things there at the web. East Coast chamber what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you
Jodi Owczarski 30:03
know, our websites a great spot WestCoastChamber.org. All of our contact information is on there. My specific email is there as well. And that is Jodi with an jodi@westcoastchamber.org. We’d love to connect.
Brandon Burton 30:20
Very good. We’ll have that in our show notes for this episode. But this has been great having you back on the podcast and it says for a really good reason. So I’m excited for you guys and wish you and your team best of luck in Dallas.
Jodi Owczarski 30:34
I appreciate it. Thanks so much, Brandon.
Brandon Burton 30:38
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