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Category: Chamber of the Year Series

Richland Area Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Jodie Perry

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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.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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Becki Womble 1:03
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Jody Perry. Jody has led the Richland Area Chamber and Economic Development in Mansfield, Ohio since July 2014 and 2017. She also took over leadership for the Richland Community Development Group. In this combined role she’s responsible for leading the county wide economic community and workforce development efforts. Prior to this position, she led the grease New York and Van Wert Ohio area chambers of commerce and also served on the staff of the Ashland Ohio area Chamber of Commerce. Jody received her Bachelors of Arts in political science and religion from Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. Jody earned her IOM designation in 2008. In 2018, she received her distinction as a CCE the highest certification in the industry. Jody received the 2019 Athena award for Richland County, the important the importance of business was instilled at her at a young age she grew up in a family of entrepreneurs in Rochester, New York. Another interesting fact is Jody was a prior guest on the on the chamber chat podcast back in episode 53, as she talked about community development projects, but Jodi, I’m thrilled to have you back with us on chamber chat podcast. I’d love for you to say hello to all the chamber champions that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jodie Perry 3:34
Awesome. Well, thanks, Brandon. I appreciate being back on and great to chat with my fellow chamber. peers across the country. So something interesting about myself Well, I’m a proud dog mom, to a rambunctious, adopted mutt named Elizabeth Bennett, Lizzie Bennet. I’m a big Pride and Prejudice fan. So so she keeps me busy most days and I love being an aunt to several nieces and nephews as well.

Brandon Burton 4:05
That’s awesome. Well tell us a little bit about the Richland Area Chamber. You guys are obviously doing some great things to get noticed as a chamber, the year finalist. So tell us a little bit about the size of your chamber staff size, budget scope of work just to kind of give us an idea before we get into our discussion. Sure.

Jodie Perry 4:25
So we represent Richland County, Ohio, our largest city, as you noted earlier was in Mansfield, Ohio. That’s a lot of people would know us for that. Fun fact we were where the Shawshank Redemption movie was filmed 25 plus years ago now so yes, so the old prison still brings in hundreds of 1000s of people actually a year to see that. So just kind of fun here. We have a little over 1000 members here. Were a staff of 11 nine full time to part time and Our budgets about $1.2 million. And in my bio, you noted, we are a combined entity. So we have the chamber, we have a chamber Foundation, a 501, C three, as well as another 501 C three, which does our economic development, workforce development and community development. So the staff kind of serves across all those three areas.

Brandon Burton 5:24
Awesome. Now that having two foundations that’ll that’ll help keep you busy and well funded to hopefully so that’s good. So on these chamber, the your finalist episodes, what I like to do is focus the majority of our time on the the two programs that were submitted on your chamber the year application. And what I’d like to do is just have you tell us at a high level what those two programs are, and then we can circle back and go a little more in depth with each of them?

Jodie Perry 5:52
Great. Well, the first one that we submitted was called Richland works. And it was a program that was a fusion of communication efforts and workforce development. We joined with our local job and Family Services Office and that our local area 10 Workforce Development Board, they actually funded this project, which was a unique, we’ve done a lot with our government entities around workforce. So they’ve been able to use some of the federal dollars coming in, which I think is important for other chambers to know, if you’re if you’re not working with them or not regularly reaching out, I would highly encourage that. We’ve done that for many years. In fact, they helped fund our workforce development position too. But this project was called Richland works, the budget was just a little over $100,000. And we filmed 35, about three minutes videos featuring local employers, they kind of went through all the types of employers that we have. We’re a strong manufacturing community. So we did a lot of types of manufacturing, health care, nonprofit arts and entertainment. And the goal is really twofold, I would say first was, you know, these were all businesses that were actively hiring. So in the short term, we wanted to help connect them through this digital marketing campaign to potential employees. And then secondly, and kind of the more long term effect is to be able to use these in the schools, teaching students about the job opportunities that are locally happening. So in addition to filming the videos, we had a promoted social media campaign for each one. They have really done huge numbers on our social media. They’re all hosted also on our website, so we can see the traffic that has been driven to that landing page. We actually also just finished a community wide brands here. So we were able to work the brand into the, to this project as well. So it was kind of a really good fusion of all of those things. And you know, just kind of early return. So we’re still finishing up a couple of the last ones that are being promoted, the all the videos are done. But you know, we’ve had employers say, Yep, we’ve made, you know, direct hires off of this, when when your videos were promoted, we could see the traffic on our sites increase. So we knew it was working. And it’s been good. The other thing that was a part of this was a podcast that we called the workforce pulse. So we talked about workforce development, and interviewed everyone from our lieutenant governor in the state of Ohio, who kind of Heads Up statewide workforce efforts to some of our more local partners, and just really trying to help people put words to a word that we all use a lot, which is workforce development, but I think the average person doesn’t really understand what that means.

Brandon Burton 8:54
Yeah, workforce development has such a wide scope. So for the Layperson in the community to try to figure out what you’re talking about. might need a little bit more context, but I love you guys do a podcast always a big fan when I hear chambers doing podcasts a great job. Are you still doing the podcast? Or was that a series that you did for a limited time sort of a thing?

Jodie Perry 9:16
So far, it’s been limited. We did kind of two seasons of it. And we have talked about continuing it and maybe using it to focus more on people that have moved here. So kind of talent attraction. A little bit more specifically, but we haven’t moved ahead with that. Yeah, so we’re still kind of kicking around. What do we do with it? But But yeah, it was successful and well received. So we were they kind of got our brains thinking around what we could do elsewise,

Brandon Burton 9:47
right, so I know I had asked for the two programs high level but now I’m getting into the details on this. So we’ll we’ll roll with that. And you had mentioned that with these 35 three minute videos that you’re promoting them on Social media. But you had also mentioned that the increase in traffic to that landing page where you’re hosting the videos. Can you talk to us a little bit more about that? Because I know a lot of times social media is going to perform best if you upload the video directly. But how are you still driving people to your website on that front?

Jodie Perry 10:18
Sure. So. So we began, the video started being filmed in early 2022, the social kind of promotion sites started in the middle of last year. And we’ve, you know, dripped, obviously, with 35 of them, we didn’t want them all to hit at once, because that would diminish the returns there. So we’ve been dripping them every week to two weeks, since that point. So since then, to up to the time that we submitted the application, early May, we had over 170,000 views combined on all those videos. So, you know, Facebook being the, by far the leader there, but we have linked to this in with our own Google ads campaign, as well as YouTube and in the other channels that you would expect. Our website, which we, we did have a landing page created for that that has had over 15,000 unique visitors over that time. So certainly a lot less than the views, but a lot more than our normal website hits. So we can see, you know, on the backside with some of the analytics, where those leads are coming from. And the other thing that we did on that page was create a form that people can fill out. So you know, if they’re potentially looking to move here, or they’re looking for more assistance, you know, we have a way of kind of a call to action for them to reach out to us, so that we can help connect them in.

Brandon Burton 11:49
Okay, so you’ve dropped another great nugget in there about how you integrated your Google ads and those sorts of things. So how are you retargeting and addressing these, you know, that your the traffic that you’re getting in here? How are you taking advantage of that going forward?

Jodie Perry 12:07
So Google has so this is where I think having a 501 C three partner with your chamber really can pay dividends. So they have a a Google for Nonprofits campaign, that once you’re qualified for, they will give you up to $10,000 per month for Google ads. So again, that is attached to our kind of economic and workforce development side of the house. So we’re not using our Google ads for the more traditional chamber events and things that you might think we’re using it for, you know, locate your business here, we’ve kind of promoted our industrial properties. And then particularly during the last six months to a year, we’ve had a secondary campaign, running parallel around workforce development. And so, you know, this has been something we’ve been really excited about. And I think it’s it’s been good timing of the, you know, some of the challenges that we had before was we didn’t have the assets to promote things. So you know, we could talk about the community, but we didn’t have good video, we didn’t have good still photography. That was a piece of this campaign, too. And now we have this really huge wealth of assets, combined with that community brand I mentioned earlier, which has given us some really good verbiage and things that we need to describe the community. And it’s all able to come together around the the Google ads campaign, as well as some of the things that are happening on social and so I just it, I’d love to say, Oh, well, we timed that all very strategically to come together at the same time. We didn’t. But it’s, you know, happenstance was it all did come together at the same time. And so I think that we’ve been able to leverage that a lot more fully than we would have two to three years ago, even

Brandon Burton 14:01
Yeah, so much of it is just recognizing the opportunities that you have. And so you have this specific program, which then works but then to be able to add on top, you know, the tie in with the Google ads and the retargeting and everything. And so not that you necessarily plan it with your new branding and everything, but you leverage you see where things would align, and you take advantage of that. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about the education side so and workforce development has a lot of different angles to it. So in the school systems, how are you getting it in front of students? How are you helping to educate them about jobs, and I know it’s at least what I’ve seen in the past, you have a great idea. And when it comes to other people helping to implement it, it may be hard sometimes to execute and have a fulfill. So how are you working through that end of the education side?

Jodie Perry 14:55
Sure. So we’ve been, you know, building relationships with our schools for yours at this point. And so I think that helps us when we been able to go to them, they’ve worked with us on different projects over the years, we have done a very successful student job fair, the last, I think, three to four years. Two years ago, we changed it up to make it a reverse job fair. So the students are setting up the booths, and the employers are walking around. And that has been a really cool inversion. And we’re trying to get more students there, we would love to see better participation from the student side, the employers are all over it, no surprise. But that’s kind of, you know, one of the direct ways that we’re working with them. And then, you know, over the summer, just recently, we’ve done tours, with our superintendents, with teachers, we’ve been a part of all of that, you know, so we have a good ecosystem here, kind of working around the workforce area. So some of the things we lead some of the things we just help connect on. But we have been sending these videos out to the superintendents and the teachers and saying, you know, we want you to think about using them. And we knew we had success, when we, one of the superintendents copied us on what he had pushed out to his entire district, which was the link to the page, and basically said, you’re gonna use these next year in school. And I’d like to see how that happens. And so, you know, we were really excited to just see that pickup happening. And we think that will continue to happen, because really, the videos, I think, you know, they have a fairly long lifespan in terms of the education, you know, obviously, their their hiring needs will vary a little bit, but but they don’t talk specifically about their immediate hiring needs. It’s more about just what is the culture as an employer at that agency?

Brandon Burton 16:52
Right. Now? I’d love that it when you went about that, the idea of having the videos and sharing it with the schools, was it to share it in the classroom or guidance counselor’s sharing it or through social media pages through the school system? What was the vision? And is it is it aligning with what the vision was?

Jodie Perry 17:12
Yeah, I would say probably our primary thought at the time was through classrooms. So really, you know, we have a lot of technology. We’re technology schools here. So those are kind of low hanging fruit. They already do things like this. So we wanted to give them some fresh material for that, and particularly local materials. So you know, don’t just use stock manufacturing footage. Let’s show you the headquarters of Gorman, Rob, can you know manufacturing looks a lot different these days than it used to. But yes, long term, we want guidance counselor’s. We also have a locally funded program not through the chamber, but we provide assistance to them, which puts career coaches in each of our school systems and so they’re working with students every day, they’re not full time teachers or anything, they’re just a lot of them are retired teachers doing it part time but so we’re encouraging them to use these videos to as they’re working with students to try to just help them figure out you know, again, what exists locally, but but just also what exists on a larger scale for them.

Brandon Burton 18:22
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I love the idea of the reverse job fair. And that could be a whole nother podcast episode. I would love to dive deep and just learn all the ins and outs of that yeah, so let’s let’s look at shifting gears and and focusing a little bit more on the other program that was submitted on your chamber the your application as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 22:12
All right, Jodi, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re going to shift over to the second program that you guys submitted on your chamber the your application, can you tell us what that was and kind of what it’s all about?

Jodie Perry 22:26
Sure. So we did a program at the beginning of 2022. This is a long name, but it was called the Richland County COVID-19 Food and Beverage entertainment venue and lodging and tourism grant program. Long name to say we provided grants to small businesses in those targeted areas. We partnered with our Richland County Commissioners as well as the city of Mansfield who funded the grants through their ARPA dollars, the allocations that they received locally. And actually, we had already done a successful version of this program, a little wider scope, back in 2020, where we gave, at that time, over $2.7 million, almost 500 local businesses right in the heart of COVID. And so like many chambers, I think, you know, we found ourselves right at the center of the action during COVID, in really being a key resource and helping our businesses stay active. But as things went on, and in, you know, the initial impact in the 2020 had kind of faded, but we saw just like everyone else, you know, hotel revenues continued to be down a little bit. Food and Beverage, particularly it was still taking time in 2021, we are still having those bigger waves. And, you know, entertainment venues, you know, they things just weren’t back to normal. And so when the ARPA dollars were passed, both the government agencies said, Hey, we did this successfully last time, we’d like to partner with you again. But this time, let’s focus in on the businesses that are particularly still lagging. But let’s give them also slightly larger grants. So we gave grants up to $30,000. And in this program, we gave away over 56 grants, and it was just a little over a million dollars to local businesses. So a lot of work, but definitely things that were much needed, and kept, quite frankly, kept some of those places afloat, particularly some of the smaller nonprofits that fit in that area.

Brandon Burton 24:39
Yeah. So anticipate you I mean, through your your membership database, right. You can sort through these kinds of tourism type businesses and food and beverage and hotels and so forth to target to inform. I’m sure you sent some sort of an invitation to fill out an application what was the process like for them to apply? And to to gain access to these grant funds,

Jodie Perry 25:03
you’re. So actually you didn’t have to be a member. Of course, we did have a lot of members that received grants, but we worked hard to get the word out that you didn’t have to be a member to receive this. You didn’t have to be located in Richland County, you had to be able to show that you had loss of revenue. So there was some members and businesses that just didn’t qualify because they didn’t lose enough revenue, which is ultimately a good thing did make for some interesting conversations. Sometimes when I had to tell them, Well, I’m sorry, you just didn’t lose enough money, which is good. But we did a whole marketing campaign around that we held some online, Zoom informational sessions, and then did a lot of social media marketing to really get the word out there. So then, you know, when it came time to open the grants, which was just after the first of the year and 2022. You know, everyone knew in advance what the questions were, we did operate this one a little differently than our previous iteration. So we looked at the the applications as they came in, even though both government agencies gave us a limited amount of money, they both kind of indicated, look, if you have a, you know, a run on these, and it’s truly businesses in need, we will allocate more funds. So we felt comfortable that, you know, we needed to make sure we went through a really rigorous process to make sure they met all of the qualifications, but that we felt pretty comfortable, we could help everyone who really was going to qualify, so. So it took us probably beginning to end, it was about a five month process of kind of the planning, you know, about a month and a half of the application window. And then, you know, businesses had to provide a lot of documentation, because as you can imagine, with government dollars, there’s a lot of auditing that goes on on the back side, and we have mine that the first time around, so we had to get a lot of information and, and worked through it. But in the end, it was really well received. And like I said, definitely made a difference with some of those businesses.

Brandon Burton 27:13
Yeah. So chamber was very involved in not only just from the communication and and broadcasting the information out there, but actually filtering through the applications and seeing who qualifies and to be able to kind of sort through I can imagine a lot of work. Let alone the the audits and everything afterwards, right. Yes, yeah. So is there any, you know, an example or two that stand out of businesses that that really had a big impact on or, like, I know the industry in general, the tourism industry, but usually there’s there’s a couple that really stand out? It’s like they needed these funds? Are there any examples that you can share with us?

Jodie Perry 27:57
Yeah, a good one would be right in the heart of downtown Mansfield, we have a carousel, a wooden carousel, called Richmond carousel Park. And as you can imagine, they were closed. They’re a nonprofit, and, you know, run mostly by volunteers, and they had not qualified for some of the other grants that were coming out through the state. PPP for them wasn’t as impactful, because they don’t have a lot of employees, they have a lot of volunteers. So, you know, when we reached out, I noticed they hadn’t applied. And so I gave them a call. And I was, you know, just like, hey, I just want to make sure you saw we had this and, and she kind of had already assumed that they wouldn’t qualify. But for us, we weren’t necessarily looking at payroll, that was one way you could get the the reimbursement. But there were other things you can claim, you had to have at least a 10% loss to qualify for it, theirs was was much larger. So they ended up qualifying for the full $30,000. And I thought the director was going to start crying when I called to tell her that it was just, you know, it really made a big impact on you know, them being able to get back in and going again, at more of a full pace. And there was another one too, it was a small local bakery, similar situation where they you know, I think they had received some PPP money, but it was relatively small and just because of their size, and so actually they qualified for $20,000 which was huge to them and they were teetering on closing just because you know, the cash flow wasn’t there. They were still on the newer side and, and that has kept them going. So you know, some really good uplifting stories. It made all of the work and the spreadsheets and all of the things that we had to do to make it work. Definitely very worthwhile.

Brandon Burton 29:59
That’s all Awesome, I love hearing stories like that, for sure, you guys are definitely making an impact in the community. So that that is evident. As we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask if for those listening, if you might have any tip or action item for chambers who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level,

Jodie Perry 30:21
you know, honestly, my best suggestion is to, to apply for this award, even if you don’t think you’re ready for it. So we, I’ve applied for this four times twice at a previous chamber. And then this is the second time that we’ve applied here, the other one was back in 2019. And it was probably about the time I was on here the first time. And, you know, when I was working through the application with our team this year, I really was so excited to see our progress in that time, between 2019 to 2023. You know, I think a lot of times as chamber leaders, you know, we’re busy, and so we don’t often slow down to really appreciate that progress. And it’s definitely an area we’ve grown in, in in that time, you know, we’ve added some staff, we’ve really been beefed up our communications, which has made a huge difference. In in both of the programs that you just heard about, you know, we’re producing annual reports regularly, just things like that. And it really, you know, my my best thing is always to aim high. And then, you know, it gives you an idea of what you need to work towards, even if you don’t ultimately hit it the first time. And, you know, I don’t know if I shared this last time around. But same with your CCE, you know, I I had to go through that program twice, I always joke I was the reject. But you know, the first time it was a really, it was a great process, I just didn’t have a project that was strong enough. That’s kind of where it was, it was also different being interviewed by your peers versus, you know, interviewed by the board. But I came back the next year got it. And you know, in both instances, I I’m super proud of the fact that I can see the growth both in myself and then here at the chamber by kind of, you know, being told no the first time, and I think that just makes you stronger as a leader by not giving up.

Brandon Burton 32:26
But and I appreciate you being transparent and open about that too. And the idea that that there are people that are turned away the first time and it really shows what that distinction means, you know, really means that you’re, you’re you’re taking the profession seriously your professional development and everything that goes with that. Yeah. So Jody, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jodie Perry 32:53
I think the chambers are at the heart of our community. And actually, I think COVID cemented that even more. For us locally, it certainly did. You know, that was obviously a unique and a unique time for all of us full of turmoil. But I would say, you know, those two years of when we’re really in the heart of it, I have never felt like we were more in our mission statement zone than during that time. You know, there was just a lot of things that, you know, you kind of strip away some of the clutter and the things that get in the way. And I will say that, you know, for us now, you know, we have built and cemented a lot of relationships locally that came out of that time that, you know, quite frankly, the chamber is at the heart of almost every major project that’s happening in our community doesn’t mean I’m not trying to take credit for them. But but we’re always at the table. We’re always a player. And I think that, you know, chambers should be playing that role in their community. And, you know, sometimes we have ceded that to other organizations, or other entities and I think, you know, the power of convening, the power of influence that that we have in this role should not be taken lightly. And I think it’s it’s unique. What we do is unique from what government does or from what other you know, the foundation or the philanthropic world does. In we were kind of a good touch point for all of those different entities.

Brandon Burton 34:37
Absolutely. Well, God This has been a blast to have you back on the podcast. It’s always very reassuring to me to see somebody I’ve had on the podcast, you know, it seems like long ago, the selected as a chamber, the year finalist, so congratulations to you and your team. I’d love to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and can To you and learn more maybe about these programs that you guys are are promoting within your community.

Jodie Perry 35:05
There are so definitely first I’ll start with our website which is just RichlandAreaChamber.com. You could Google Richland Works, that should bring up the landing page for that program as well. My email address is just jperry@richlandareachamber.com. And our phone number is 419-522-3211. And I would be remiss if I didn’t give a huge shout out to my team because while I’m the spokesperson on a couple of these, you know, they very much are at the heart of all of this work and super, super proud and it feels special to be going through this with them.

Brandon Burton 35:48
Absolutely. Yeah. Can’t do it without the team so you’re sure got a good one around you. Absolutely. Oh god, thank you for spending time with us today and sharing these insights of these impactful programs you guys are doing there and the Richmond area Chamber. And I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year.

Jodie Perry 36:07
Thanks so much, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 36:08
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North Central Massachusetts Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Roy Nascimento

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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.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guests for this episode is Roy Nascimento. Roy has been President and CEO of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce since January 2015. Under his leadership, the North Central Massachusetts chamber has been recognized among the top chambers of commerce in the country for its impact and operations. Among many of its honors, the chamber was a 2017 and 2021 runner up for the prestigious National chamber the Year Award, the first chamber of Massachusetts and New England to have ever been recognized as a finalist. The chamber also achieved four star accreditation in 2018. As a 20 plus year veteran of the chamber profession Roy previously served as president and CEO of the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce from 2006 until December 2014. Roy also previously led the Attleboro Area Chamber of Commerce and served as vice president at the Metro South Chamber of Commerce in Brockton. Roy is a leader within the Chamber of Commerce Industry. He is the past president of the board of the Massachusetts Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and as past chair of the New England Association of Chamber of Commerce executives, and the MACCE council chambers. In recognition of his leadership and record of accomplishments, Roy was named New England chamber Executive of the Year in 2011. He’s an IOM graduate from Villanova and the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma and has been designated as a CCE by ACC some of you may remember ROI from previous episode 99 episodes ago on episode 134. But, Roy, I’m excited to have you back on Chamber Chat Podcast again as a Chamber the Year Finalist. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and go ahead and share something interesting about yourself so you can all get to know you even better.

Roy Nascimento 4:17
So thank you, Brandon. It’s really an honor to be to be back and especially under the circumstances being a finalist again for for this very prestigious honor. So we’re hoping this is our third time being a finalist we’re hoping Third time’s the charm and that we get it this year but I’m I’m I’m not that interesting. I leave a lead a pretty boring life. So there’s not much I guess I’m gonna lean back on what I mentioned the last time you interviewed me that that’s kind of neat about me is that that I’m most of your listeners probably wouldn’t be aware of this but I’m actually a child of immigrants. My parents were were were from Europe, from Portugal. emigrated here for a better life. And I was born here. So I’m a US citizen. But actually a few years back, I ended up applying to get my Portuguese citizenship. I had a friend who had, who was of Irish descent. And he applied his grandmother was from from Ireland, and he applied and was successful in getting dual citizenship. And I thought that was pretty cool. So I said, let me let me try that. And so I applied and was able to get dual citizenship. So I’m a citizen. And I’m also a Portuguese citizen. And that’s something that I can in turn pass down to my kids, because they can apply for Portuguese citizenship, if they choose down the road. So and it’s just a nice way to kind of connect back with my heritage. And so that’s kind of the different something that your listeners probably unaware.

Brandon Burton 5:53
Yeah, no, I think that is fascinating. And when you share that last time, I thought that was really interesting and fascinating. And I know a lot of people have dual citizenships, but usually with the US and Canada, you know, to be able to have us and Portugal that that’s, that’s pretty neat. Well, tell us a little bit more about the North Central Massachusetts chamber just to kind of set the stage for our discussion, help us understand the type of chamber you are is size, staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of know where you’re coming from before we get into our conversation.

Roy Nascimento 6:30
Sure. So our chamber is based in the city of Pittsburgh, Massachusetts, it’s a city of about 42,000 people. And we are a Regional Chamber. So we cover city of Pittsburgh, to other cities that are in North Central Massachusetts of similar size. And altogether, we cover about 27 communities. And we’re basically, you know, as the name suggests, we’re in North Central Massachusetts. So we’re, we’re about an hour west of Boston. And our region is it’s a obviously I’m a little biased, but it’s a beautiful and really wonderful dynamic region. Here in New England. We are we offer so much, we have a very diverse economy, very, very focused on manufacturing and the largest concentration of manufacturing in the state. But we’re also we also have a good mix of rural communities. So we have a lot of farms and agricultural businesses, we have about 800 farms, orchards and other agricultural businesses, here in North Central Massachusetts, and in you know, we’re our claim to fame, one of our claims to fame is that were the home of and the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed from American folklore, he was actually born here. And lemons stir Massachusetts, which is our largest city in North Central Massachusetts. And so and we still have a lot of or orchards, apple orchards here and and in the region. And we really market the heck out of that as part of our tourism marketing efforts, kind of our agricultural history and in our connection to Johnny Appleseed and American history. In terms of the chamber size, we’re our budget is about a million and a half now. And we have about about 1617 staff that on the professional staff. And we’ve grown over the last few years, particularly around our work around economic development.

Brandon Burton 8:32
Good deal. Yeah, the the whole Johnny Appleseed aspect is, that’s interesting. You definitely have something to kind of plant a flag in and everybody in the country is familiar with Johnny Appleseed, and can really capitalize on that. So I think every community has their thing, right? Your thing just happens to be one that more more people can resonate with?

Roy Nascimento 8:53
Absolutely. And I know, we’re not the only state that has ownership of Johnny Appleseed, you know, he certainly helped pioneer many parts of our country and but it all started here. He was born here. And we really tried to capitalize on that. And we use as part of our marketing that were Johnny Appleseed country. So it’s a great place to for people coming from the city and from other parts of the mainland to come out and connect with their agricultural roots and come out here to some of our origins that have reinvented themselves, you know, and become destinations, really catering to visitors and tourists.

Brandon Burton 9:29
That’s great. It’s got me wondering what his real last name is. So I’m gonna have to do some research. Chapman, John Chapman, all right, save me some some study. Well, I’d like to just have you maybe hit the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber through your application at a high level just to kind of give us an idea of what those two programs are about. And then we can circle back and dive in a little deeper on both I’m

Roy Nascimento 10:00
sure so so the first initiative that we had submitted as part of our application, as part of our synopsis, was around an initiative to engage with the Latin X population here in North Central Massachusetts. And this really was an outgrowth of the pandemic. We, we operate underneath the umbrella of the chamber A, A, our economic development arm, it’s called the North Central Massachusetts Development Corporation. And it’s a 501 C three nonprofit organization. And it is, it’s our economic was formed by the chamber and it’s our economic development arm. And this, under this entity, we are considered we were certified by the US Treasury as a community development financial institution. We’re also an SBA lender, and we’re a community advantage lender under the SBA and EDA lender. So all that means that we are able to provide micro loans to businesses in the region to support economic development. And with that, we’ve also grown our technical assistance, we do a lot of hand holding, providing a lot of counseling and technical assistance. And in recent years, we’ve started providing grants as well, to support startup businesses and existing small businesses that a variety of reasons can’t get through traditional financing. So we will be able to provide them some some capital to help them get that business going with, with the caveat that it creates jobs and investment in our communities. And we’ve been doing this since the 1990s. And we’ve been growing in recent years. And we found during the pandemic that that Latino businesses, and again, Latinos are the largest minority population in the region, and are one of our largest communities that represents about 30% of the population. And if you look at the data, Latinos are starting businesses at three times the rate of the general population. So this was obviously a population that we wanted to engage in support. And during the pandemic, when we were doing so much to support businesses and help help them get through the pandemic, we saw that a lot of a lot of Latino businesses were not taking advantage of some of the resources that were out there to support businesses, they weren’t taking advantage of the PPP loans, they weren’t taking advantage of different grants that were offered by the scheme by our local communities. And so really, this was really an outgrowth of that. And so we, we really decided to focus on the Latin X pot population engaging them, we’re really looking to engage them more, we decided to hire a full time individual on our team that was multilingual, Maribel Cruz, and she’s a great addition, she speaks Spanish, Portuguese and English fluently. And we also developed some strong partnerships with other groups within the community that focus on the Latino population. So as a result, we were able to connect Latino business owners to this to our network of businesses to chamber but also to these different resources, including resources that we haven’t anything relevant about incorporation. And we we saw a really strong impact. Over the last two years. We did about a million dollars of micro loans to Latino businesses that represents now a third of our loans that we made over the two year period, we also provided 1000s of hours of technical assistance to to businesses, and we help connect them to other resources as well. And as a result, these Latino businesses were able to secure loans to other other banks and credit unions and get grants from from from the state as well. So we were able to kind of remember that. And I should also mention, we also evolved. We’ve been evolving over the years. So we’ve started providing grants, as well. So we were able to provide some grants as well to Latino businesses to help them get started or to overcome some some challenges as they were starting so and all that helped create jobs and help create investment within our community. So we’re really, really pleased with the outcome and the impacts from this. You know, these are small loans are micro loans, but they can have a tremendous impact in our communities, helping to start local restaurants and coffee shops and hair salons. And they’re attractive jobs and they create jobs in our community and creates investment in our communities.

Brandon Burton 14:45
Yeah. So as you are reaching out to these these Latin owned businesses, are these strictly Chamber members who are reaching out to is it Latin businesses in general throughout the community, or are you making that approach?

Roy Nascimento 15:00
So we are engaging Latino businesses, they do not have to be a member of the chamber to get a loan from our economic development arm and so. So you know, we were engaging Latinos broadly within North Central Massachusetts. And obviously we’d love to get them more engaged in the chamber. And so that was also something that we wanted to let them know that there’s this network of businesses, and we want them involved, because we think that’s an important part of being successful is networking, and being involved in your local community and, and want them to feel comfortable. So that was an important part of the project, really engaging them, engaging them in the community through some of the partners in the community that they’re already working with, as well as bringing on that staff capacity, bringing someone on that could could reach out to them in their own language, and could provide culturally competent technical assistance and advice to them and engage them. So that was an important objective as part of this project.

Brandon Burton 16:05
Yeah. So with this program, a lot of this is providing micro loans and grants, like you had mentioned. And I know, typically, loans and grants come with some sort of stipulations, you know, an application process and things like that. But being that being a chamber, the year finalist is all about the impact in your community. Because you have these stipulations around loans and grants, what sort of impact are you seeing on the follow up, you know, over time, as these new businesses or especially these Latin businesses are taking advantage of these resources you’re helping give access to,

Roy Nascimento 16:45
so we track the loans and and you’re absolutely right, these are loans, so they have to be repaid. But they’re pretty competitive rates, these are not rates that are not, we’re not a predatory lender, we’re not charging enormous rates, these are same rates you get through a bank. And we do have an underwriting process. So we do have to evaluate each loan. And so a lot of time is often spent with the clients helping them get ready just to secure the loan, because they’re not always prepared and do not have a business plan. So there’s a lot of pre and post loan counseling, getting them prepared to just submit their application, collecting all those documents, and we still do the underwriting. So not everyone gets approved applies to us. So this isn’t free money, you still have to apply and show that they have a plan in place, and that they have, you know, they have a fundamental understanding of their business and what they plan on doing and, and have the ability to repay and be successful long term. And then once they get the loan, we’re still following up with them. So we follow up on a regular basis, our team is meeting with our clients, finding out what are the pain points, where were they struggling? Typically, we see that they’re struggling on things like accounting systems, or marketing, and that’s across the board. That’s not just Platino businesses. And then and then we track the impact, you know, we keep an eye on the loans, we want to make sure that they get paid, as if they get repaid, and we can lend that money out again. So that’s one of the things I love is we continue to have this this impact. But we fundamentally track jobs. And through over the last two years, just just the loans to our our Latin X population that were made, they were about 57 new jobs that were created from that, from those loans that we made an average size loan was just like 25,000. So these are typically very small loans, typically working capital or buy some equipment, we go as high as 250,000. But again, the average is typically about 20,000. That is huge.

Brandon Burton 19:01
That I can I can see the impact that makes individually on each of those businesses. It is a benefactor of those micro loans, and, but also the community in general to be able to have those jobs and the families that are being affected and community and it just it bleeds out throughout the community.

Roy Nascimento 19:18
Absolutely. And And anecdotally, you know, a lot of these loans, you know, really have an impact in the community, we’re seeing loans that a lot of a lot of them tend to be riskier businesses that that that can’t find traditional financing because the industry tends to be very risky. So a lot of food related businesses, coffee shops, restaurants that look at the statistics have a high failure rate. So And typically, we don’t compete with our banks and credit unions. They’re our number one referral source and we partner quite quite a bit with them. So typically, they’re a big referral source for us. So a bank will All Community Bank will will not be able to make a loan to start a business because it’s too risky because they are a startup business. And because they’re looking to open up a restaurant and higher failure rates and, and so that the bank may not want to take that risk. So they’ll pass them along to us. We’ll take a different we’ll take another look at it. We tend to be a little bit more flexible in our lending approach. Again, we still do underwriting but we try to be a little bit more flexible because we have this we’re looking at it through this economic development lens. And as I mentioned, anecdotally, you know, it’s great to see these lawns you know, see these these restaurants start up as coffee shops, startup hair salons in some of our communities. And in some of our downtown’s like we have one community where we got we had one Latino business owner who’s a restaurant tour, who is taking the risk of opening up a restaurant and one of our downtown’s and one of our cities in the downtown is is, is a priority for the municipality, they’re trying to revitalize their downtown. And a lot of empty storefronts there. And so they prioritize bringing in more kind of destination businesses, and they want to see more restaurants in the downtown. So we were able to help them with help this entrepreneur, open up this this Latin restaurant, and that’s, that’s becoming a destination. It’s bringing more people into the downtown. And that’s encouraging more revitalization of the downtown and more businesses opening up in downtown. So it has that kind of ripple effect, beyond just the jobs that we track and the lending dollars that we track, and the job saved, but it’s also that kind of helping to revitalize parts of the community.

Brandon Burton 21:48
Yeah. So the question that comes to my mind is where the initial funding came from, I know you guys have been doing this sort of program for a while, but with the focus on the the Latin population right now. So did that initial funding come through a foundation or, I mean, it’s great as the loans get repaid, and you get some interest collected to be able to get it back out in the community. But for a chamber listening, where where would one get started doing a program like this? So

Roy Nascimento 22:13
that’s a great question. So this goes back, our original lending started back in the late 1990s. So we had a military base here called port Devon’s that was was closing. And so the, the chamber was able to secure a grant from the Economic Development Administration, and utilize that to capitalize our first loan fund. So that’s where it all started, we got this grant, we had to match it. So we have to match it. Think about 25% of the grant medic matched with private sector dollars, which we did at the time. And that capitalized our first revolving fund, which is still providing loans to this day. And so And since then, we’ve expanded, we now have, I think, six loan funds. And one of the loan funds is an SBA loan fund, which we use SBA money, we get a loan from the SBA, at a very favorable rate, and we lend that those dollars in the form of micro loans. And we have to have certain requirements, we have to have a loan loss reserve account setup, and it is a loan, so we have to repay the SBA back, so we’re on the hook for that. But that was that was very useful. A few years back when we needed, we were running out of capital and needed more capital. And since then, we’ve gone out and we’ve been successful and raising other funds, we’ve been able to secure other grants, federal grants, state grants, we’ve also secured private dollars. So we’ve been lucky enough that we’ve been successful, and that our local stakeholders, and our members have been supportive of the work that we’ve been doing. So we’ve been able to secure contributions from some some companies and local local members that have enabled us to capitalize and continue to provide loans. So So yeah, we’ve been successful, especially over the last few years. With the work that we’ve been doing around lending and being able to grow our impact on providing these micro loans. It’s a really nice tool in our in our toolbox to help support community development and economic development here in North Central Massachusetts. And I think it’s something that makes us a little unique, so I know some chambers do it, but not a lot. And so most chambers are not in the lending space. So I’m always happy to talk to any listeners that might be interested in getting involved and, and in providing loans and supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem in their communities.

Brandon Burton 24:50
Yeah, and there could be a whole other deep dive on how to structure that and get set up so any listeners that would take Roy up on that offer to reach out and connect for them to learn more if that’s of interest and providing that resource at your chamber but right let’s say let’s shift gears we’ll we’ll change some focus on to the the other program that was submitted on your chamber the your application as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 27:38
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Brandon Burton 28:27
All right, right. We’re back. So tell us what was the second program that you guys submitted in your synopsis on your your chamber that your application?

Roy Nascimento 28:36
Yeah, so the second second project that we submitted was a project that we undertook last year to modernize and improve our visitor center. So we operate a visitor center, it’s called the Johnny Appleseed visitor center named Alfred. And we’ve we’ve operated the visitor center that the visitor center was a byproduct of our of our our regional economic development plan our original regional economic development plan back in the 90s. I mentioned the lending that we do that was also a product of that. So we underwent this kind of big regional economic development planning process when port Devins was closing had some major importers that were closing. So we kind of led this effort is before my time. But out of that came this whole kind of blueprint to really advance our economy here in the region. And and that included supporting startup businesses through micro loans and technical assistance growing our tourism economy because we we really didn’t have much of a tourism economy at the time. And but we’re a beautiful area that has a lot to offer visitors and groups. So out of that came our visitor center that was one of the recommendations so that chamber led this effort to get this visitor center opened in the operate the visitor center with operating successfully since the 1990s. This project really was to modernize and update it. So we operate the visitor center it’s on, it’s on our route to, which is a state highway. It’s actually owned by the state. But we operate it as a partnership with the state. And so we pay for all of expenses, we staff it, we cover all the expenses, I think they, they cover the electricity on the on the lights out in the parking lot, and they plow, but other than that, we cover most of the expenses. And so we really wanted to as part of our new economic development plan that launched in 2021, we wanted to grow our tourism economy. And uh, one of the recommendations was as an as a real action actionable step that we could take was modernizing the visitor center, and really trying to make it really trying to reimagine it and transform it from from a typical kind of visitor center and rest up to more of a unique and inclusive kind of anchor destination that really showcases North Central Massachusetts and really helps to advance our economy. So, so we took on this project, we were lucky enough to secure a small grant on the state of about 75,000 from our Office of Tourism, which we matched. And a total project was, I think, at the time about, but 170,000 altogether. And since then, we’ve made some additional improvements. So it’s probably over 200,000. But we were really looking at at improving Visitor Center and modernizing it adding some amenities that we knew visitors were looking for. Wanted to really tell the story of North Central Massachusetts there. So we wanted to include adding some new interpretive displays, or adding new signage for the collection of historical items that we have there. We have this really, over the years, we’ve built up this enormous collection of historical items that help tell the story of North Central Massachusetts, including a lot of Johnny Appleseed memorabilia, and so we wanted some, some better signage within a visitor center showcasing that collection to visitors. And then we had some added over the years some some interesting artwork, we have this, this, what we call the Big Apple at normal, and which is this big foot 10 foot Apple sculpture. That’s a nice, nice attraction there that people have take photos in front of and have this beautiful sculpture of them Johnny Appleseed there that’s also very popular. So we added some signage to those. And we included a lot a lot of local artwork. We also wanted to make the center safer. So we added more more video cameras on the grounds, we added one and make it more inclusive, so we added more. He added ADA compliant in cap doors, which we didn’t have there. He added shading over the over the picnic tables we added. We added a dog walking station there, which was something that visitors had requested. We added a water bottle bottle refilling station digital screens. And then we really improved the appearance there as well. So we added a new, a new sign. And inside we did a lot of cosmetic renovations to the visitor center, adding a lot of wood paneling to give it kind of that rustic look. And new floors and and we invested quite a bit in landscaping as well. The Visitor Center also has a lot of apple trees, including two apple trees that were from saplings that we received as a gift from Ohio, years back from the original from an original last remaining Johnny Appleseed tree. And planted it’s called a Rambo tree. That’s the variety of apples. And so we made some improvements to the apple trees in the landscaping and throughout the visitor center again, all of it with a goal of trying to improve the visitor experience and also to make it more inclusive. And to better tell the story of North Central Massachusetts. And again, this was so all aligned with our regional economic development plan that identified tourism as priority sector as a way we can grow that and as the as the visitor center as like a really key piece of that infrastructure in the supporting the tourism economy here in West Central Massachusetts that we could improve to help build up our economy here around tourism in the region.

Brandon Burton 34:46
And I like that you’d said the giant Apple, the photo op for tourism to come through there and take pictures and I think it’s a great idea to be able to provide something like that as a tour. Just attraction because it ends up getting shared out on social media, it gets amplified. Oftentimes they’ll tag where they are, you know, at the location they were at when they took the picture. Yeah,

Roy Nascimento 35:09
it’s great. Those types of those types of photo ops are really popular. And we take really great pride and Johnny Appleseed Visitor Center, it’s really a very unique, we like to say it’s not your typical highway rest stop, you know, there there. This started again, back in the 90s. And there were I think, 15, or 16, State Highway visitor centers that were operated on a similar model, there were partnerships with local chambers, or local tourism groups convention is bureaus that would operate the visitor centers in partnership with the state. And unfortunately, a lot of them have have gone out of business they closed. And there’s really no state funding per visitor center. So so the organization really has to operate it and funding, again, provide all the staffing, and most of the costs, most of the expenses are covered by our organization. And we’ve been able to, we’re successful on just being able to keep the doors open and run this visitors very successful Visitor Center, we’ve also again, been able to make it into a very new destination, we want to continue our vision is to be the best Visitor Center in Massachusetts and really tell that story. And it’s great that we’ve gotten some national attention. We were, we were there was a story in by the BBC, about our visitor center, there was a story on our local television is a Boston, Boston television station called WC TV, Channel Five. And they have this is very popular program called Chronicle, which is kind of a lifestyle and Tourism Program, they came out and did a story on the visitor center as a very unique destination. So so we’re not your typical restaurant up, we’re not your typical Visitor Center, we’re really trying to make it more of a destination. And by virtue of making a destination, we’re helping to showcase the region.

Brandon Burton 37:09
Yeah, I think you guys are on the right track with it for sure. I was curious, as far as the vision for the revitalization, and like the actual aesthetics in there, and the displays and the wood paneling, those sorts of things that you described. Did you have some consultant that offered suggestions on those those improvements? Or was it a committee within the chamber? Or how did that unfold? Yeah,

Roy Nascimento 37:35
a lot of it was, was it was combination. So a lot of it was staff driven. So we do have a full time visitor center manager, so she she knew what, you know, visitors were requesting, the amenities they were looking for. And she had a kind of a wish list of what you’d like to add there to help support, you know, give give these visitors great positive experience when they were coming to the visitor center. So but we also didn’t check in with with members over the years, we brought in some members of our board that specialize in retail, and we have a small gift shop there as well, that sells local items. And so we brought them in and had had some retail experts come in and how do we how do we improve this experience for visitors? And how do we how do we get them to to purchase more local products there, because that’s helping to tell the story of the region, and also, again, generate some income to help us support the visitor center. So a variety of different input from different stakeholders. We also had a member who is in, in in the construction and developing area. And so he volunteered his time and gave us a lot of pre pre work and kind of helping us figure out some initial costs and things of that nature. And then we do operate this again, we operate the visitor center, and it is on state property. And we have to get approval from our state highway department. And in our initial plans, we had to scale down because there were some things that they just weren’t comfortable with. And they didn’t want us wanted to expand, expand the visitor center, it’s opened down a wall give us more space. So we can have more displays, historical displays. They were very uncomfortable with any kind of construction. Or like if you start knocking down walls and we have this whole process you have to go through and we actually also wanted to add a small playground on the grounds and they were concerned about liability on kids using the playground. So we had a we had a kind of Nick’s that having a playground to the grounds of the visitor center. But you know, but they were still great partners. They were really they believed in our vision and were very supportive of the project and we were able to get it done and I’m really proud of the visitor center and the impact it’s having on region.

Brandon Burton 39:55
Yeah, sounds great. Well, Roy as we start to wrap things up Yuri, I wanted to ask you if, for listeners, if there was any tip or action items that you might suggest for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.

Roy Nascimento 40:10
So I think I think I’m gonna give the same advice I gave last time two years ago, and that’s to be entrepreneurial. And really, it was the advice I was given by my predecessor. And it’s really looking at your, your community, your region, what are the needs there? What are the challenges? Now? How can the chamber help with those challenges for us here, I talked about lending, you know, that was, and that was something that was missing here, you know, and, and the Chamber was really able to fill that void and become kind of that alternative lender helping to provide startup businesses with that capital and that technical assistance they needed. And that has evolved over the years and but it’s been able to, to help us provide have an impact here in the region, and, and the tourism stuff, you know, we that was was a gap, you know, that was an opportunity. And we saw that, that’s a way we could diversify our economy. And so we stepped in and have been able to provide great leadership there, and helping to drive our economy and transform our economy here and in North Central Massachusetts. So, you know, be entrepreneurial, find out how you can best help your members, I’m always amazed when I listen to your podcast, you’re about chambers to all kinds of impactful things. And what might work in one community might not work in my community, but I’m always able to learn about it. And I’m always amazed at the ability of these chambers to be able to adapt, flexible, and be nimble and be entrepreneurial, to serve their members and to have an impact in their communities. And so I think that’s important.

Brandon Burton 41:50
Very good. So I like asking everyone as I have him on the show about the future of chamber. So I know I asked him a couple of years ago, but how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Roy Nascimento 42:02
So I think it goes back to our roots, you know, I think we’re, if you look back at chambers, chambers, we’re always those those we are by our very nature, we’re a big network of businesses in the community that come together, to have an impact and community to advance the community. That’s our mission statement is to advance in one central Massachusetts and, and so I think it’s going back to your roots just looking at I think a lot of chambers have become transactional, they focus on the networking and networking is important, we do a lot of networking, but don’t lose sight of your mission. And that’s really to promote the community. And that whether it be through advocacy, or economic development, through through events, you know, whatever it is, it’s don’t lose sight of that mission. And I think it’s getting, it’s providing that that leadership in the community. And that’s, that’s the future we’re seeing chambers continue to evolve. And it’s kind of going back to, to our roots being those organizations that provide a leadership in the community. And that really helped to drive the economy and, and helping their communities think about, about change and leadership and the future.

Brandon Burton 43:12
That’s awesome. Yeah, the mission is important and keeping you know, those roots close by so you remember why you’re there and, and let that chart your course. Well, Roy, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you maybe take up your offer on learning how to provide loans and in access to grants like you guys are doing, what would be the best way for for someone to reach out and connect?

Roy Nascimento 43:41
Sure. So first off, our website is NorthCentralMass.com. So all my contact information is on the website. Again, that’s NorthCentralMass.com. And I can also be reached the email at rnascimento@northcentralmass.com. Or by by phone call me anytime 978-353-7600 extension 225, it’s 978-353-7600, extension 225. And what I love about our industry is that we’re always wanting to help each other. And I’ve had a lot of chamber execs that have friends and mentors that I’ve always been able to have always been willing to take my phone call and and provide advice and support. So feel free to reach out to me anytime.

Brandon Burton 44:34
Awesome. So I will get your contact information in our show notes for this episode as well. So listeners can look it up there and connect with you. But Roy, I’ve enjoyed having you back on chamber chat podcast and catching up with you and hearing more of the great things you guys are doing there in North Central Massachusetts. So thank you for for joining us and congratulations. Congratulations to you and your team again, being selected as chamber the year finalist, and I wish you guys the best of luck.

Roy Nascimento 45:03
Thank you, Brandon. It’s been it’s been great. And hopefully this was helpful and it’s really an honor thank you for the opportunity to be.

Brandon Burton 45:10
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Pearland Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Jim Johnson

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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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.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

Learn how you can partner with Community Matters, Inc. to produce your next Chamber Directory, Community Guide or Map.

Our guest for this episode is Jim Johnson. Jim has worked in the chamber industry for over 12 years and is currently the President CEO of the Pearland Chamber of Commerce in Texas. In his role, he oversees the daily operations, strategic planning and partnerships with multiple community organizations. Jay Jim came from Georgetown, Texas, where he was president and CEO of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce. Prior to Georgetown, he was the president and CEO for the Lufkin Angelina County Chamber of Commerce and the Lufkin Angelina Economic Development Partnership. He started his chamber career as the Vice President with the Pearland chamber. He currently serves as faculty for the US Chamber of Commerce Institute organizational management program, and as the Chair for the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives. He previously served on the board of directors for WACE and for the Texas Association of Business. He holds a bachelors of arts and history and a minor in Political Science from Texas State University. Jim is a CCE from ACCE and IOM designation as well from the US Chamber of Commerce. He was recognized as a 40 under 40 in 2021 by ACCE and Jim is married to his wife, Jasmine and they have one son, but Jim, I’m excited to have you back on the podcast before we hit record, we realized that you were you were on the podcast way back in episode 22. And as this releases we’re on 232 now so it’s been a minute but wow. Yeah.

Jim Johnson 3:48
That’s so congratulations to you, Brandon. I mean, that’s, you know, we’re, you know, still going strong and still great resource out there for the chamber profession.

Brandon Burton 3:55
Well, that was the hope that was the hope when it started and it’s still going so love to give you an opportunity, Jim to to say hello to everybody listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jim Johnson 4:09
Yeah, that’s great. I glad to be here. Glad to be back here on the chamber chat podcast. Something interesting always is a US palsy go what is something interesting? I will say I’m in Pearland Texas, it’s interesting to me is that it though it’s a town about a fruit. I was thinking today I can’t think of a single place in town where there is a pear tree even though we are parallel and so maybe it’s not interesting about me but interesting about the town I’m in right now. So we’ll go with that.

Brandon Burton 4:43
Yeah, that’s good. Sounds like a project for the chamber.

Jim Johnson 4:46
Yeah, right. You know, I thought about and I’d like to do pear trees even grow in parallel and so to be determined for for Chamber Chat Podcast when I come back and another 100 or so

Brandon Burton 4:57
that’s right. That’s right. Well, we’ll get an appt and see how big those trees are then. Yeah. Well tell us a little bit about that parallel Chamber of Commerce, the size staff Scope of Work budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Jim Johnson 5:12
Wonderful. The Pearland Chamber of Commerce is a town located directly south of Houston, Texas, our northern border is the South border of Houston, Texas. We are a have been a fast growing community that times rated one of the fastest growing in the United States, and continues to be a growing in our business in our population. Our chamber has a annual budget of over $700,000 a membership that this year eclipsed the 700 mark. And I have a great team with me. And we have including, myself six full time staff members.

Brandon Burton 5:57
All right, that definitely helps kind of prepare us for our conversation. I like to think, you know, these programs that we’ll talk about as a chamber of the year finalists should be able to be scaled up or down depending on the size of the chamber and the community. And, of course, the relevancy for your community as well. So thank you for for sharing all that. The way I like to structure these chamber, the year finalist episodes is to really spend the majority of our time focused in on the two programs that were submitted on your chamber the year application. So what I like to do is just at a high level, have you explain what the two programs are? And then we can circle back and dig a little deeper into both of them. Wonderful.

Jim Johnson 6:40
Yeah. It’s always a great process going through the ACCE chamber the year because when you get that notification that you’re a finalist, you pause and think what are the two projects that we really want to focus on in showcase and for us to really stood at the front. The first one was a local opportunity to engage with the public sector and our local city council on a proposed fee proposed storm water fee that was designed to help solve our drainage issues. But during the discovery, and I know we’re talking about this more we uncovered, businesses weren’t aware of the fee. They weren’t engaged in the process. So over a period of time, we engage with our local public City Council, to educate them on the impact of the fee on the businesses to remove that fee from consideration and to move them towards a bond study. That was a bond study and a bond to really have a true solution to drainage, and our community. And our second one focused on workforce related to the large amount of people being a suburb of Houston, that leave Portland every day for work. And with unemployment under 4%. In our community, we recognize that one of the best ways to fill jobs in parallel in was to showcase the jobs to local residents, and created a comprehensive resource board of career opportunities in our community. That wasn’t your traditional hey, here’s a job posting allowing folks to interact with companies allow them to search jobs. And on the flip in, allow the employers to tap into and see the job, the applicants in our community as well.

Brandon Burton 8:40
Awesome. Now two very worthwhile programs and interested to learn more about both of them. First of all, we’ll take a quick break and then we’ll come back and dig in deeper on both of those.

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Raquel Borges 11:30
Hi, I’m Raquel I work with Yiftee to help over 500 chambers cities and downtown’s across the US keep local dollars local and support their small businesses. Our CEO Donna Novitsky and I will be at the ACCE Conference in Salt Lake City from July 31 to August 3, and we would love to meet you swing by our booth to say hi and learn about our community gift card program, Community cards are custom branded for your community, and can only be used at your Chamber members businesses, plus the program is free. You can learn more by visiting yiftee.com. That’s yiftee.com or emailing us at sales@yiftee.com. See you at the ACCE Conference.

Brandon Burton 12:19
All right, Jim, we’re back. So you kind of piqued my interest when you said a storm water fee. Like we’re who comes up with ideas to charge people for storm water? Like, how does this come to be? And then to pick a fight with the Chamber of add it right?

Jim Johnson 12:36
Yeah, um, you know, Pearland is a, we’re a coastal community. And after Hurricane Harvey, in 2017. It, our community recognized that we needed to be more proactive with drainage. And throughout this local elected officials uncovered a way to do a storm water fee. And what that was, was a charge on impervious coverage in our community, a monthly ongoing fee per 1000 square feet of impervious coverage. And that doesn’t sound like a large amount. And so it was just kind of dripped to us in conversation, and it perked our ears that council had taken action to place this. This was in August of the year that it was gonna be placed on the ballot for voter approval the next May. So about 10 months down. And over time, we learned this is a no clue. And that that small fee of $1.79 per 1000 square foot adds up over a period of time for the average business that had 10,000 square feet is gonna be a little over $200 a year. But as we dug deeper into this and started talking to businesses and started pulling our members and gaining and listening to them about the impact. It wasn’t just $200 for some companies, it was $10,000 For some it was $100,000 a year. For some it was over $400,000 a year, every year forever. Right. And we listened and that was shocking and alarming to us in our businesses.

Brandon Burton 14:13
Yeah, and so often once a fee like that is in place like you say it never will go away and and oftentimes it may even increase over time. It’s like you’re already getting some let’s go back to the well and get some more like all these water analogies that the information is drip to you going back to the well, storm.

Jim Johnson 14:34
You’re absolutely right. And that was we realized that that was a concern. And we wanted a true solution to drainage in our country. We don’t want our residential and our businesses to flood and in the event of natural disasters. So it started a true education process and information gathering for the chamber. As we looked at the overall impact this would have On our businesses, and then the challenge of trying to educate counsel on the impact would have businesses, it was a five two vote in favor to place this on the May ballot in August of that year. And I’m proud to port Brandon by over a course of time. In February of that year, we’ve we changed that to a seven Oh, vote against the storm water fee being placed on the May ballot, and to move towards a bond study, which would lead to a community wide bond, which would be a more comprehensive solution to drainage in our community.

Brandon Burton 15:38
Yeah, that’s, that’s two big wins right there. Because just by having it ended up on the ballot, you know, to be able to have, you know, propose for businesses to pay for this. If you’re not a business owner, and you’re like, yeah, let them pay for it, you know, it’s off my plate, if I could see it very easily passing that way. But to be able to shift it as a bond, where everybody has buy in, in the community, really is much more equitable way of approaching it anyway. So as far as the bond process goes, did you guys go about educating the community about it? Because it was a big win with Ryan? So what was that process? Like?

Jim Johnson 16:17
Absolutely. So you know, we we over that that first initial period are asked to council was to postpone the storm water fee, and to do a bond study. The bond study, what was nice about us being proactive in this public engagement, is that the chamber it was a close committee of a roughly 11 individuals, and two of those people on that bond scope committee, were appointed by the Chamber of Commerce. So we had a seat at the table allowed us to share the impact on it. And over that that bond study group came back with a little over $100 million storm water bond, our largest bond package related to drainage projects in our community, the Chamber came out fully supported that package, because bonds, those tax rate increases was smaller than the original storm water fee, and over a period of time would be paid off, and would not be forever. And then on May 9 of this year, that bond related to drainage pass with 65% voter approval in our community. So it was a great win in a lot allowed us to truly work with our public sector. And, and live up to what we say we want to our tagline is, we’re the voice of business. But we have to speak up for business. And we it’s comforting to know that when we were at Council multiple times talking to about this, the room was packed, and it was business leaders in there. Some of them don’t have a vote in our committee because their businesses here, but they live in another community. And that was humbling, but spoke volume for our credibility as a convener of individuals throughout parallel.

Brandon Burton 18:00
Yeah, no, that is awesome. That visual of having a roomful of business owners saying, hey, this, this matters to us. That’s absolutely Oh, that’s awesome. But let’s, let’s shift gears a little bit into the other program that you guys submitted work in parallel. And you kind of gave a little bit of background on that. But maybe go back to some of that origin of you see people, you know, leaving and going into Houston to work and things of that nature. How did how did that evolve to be the program that it is today?

Jim Johnson 18:33
Absolutely. So our chamber in partnership with our economic development corporation or higher ed partners or workforce issues, did a comprehensive Workforce Strategy. During this input about what our workers were doing what was taking place, a stat stood out to the chamber. And it was that 38,942 workers commute outside of our community every single day. So we’re losing roughly 40,000 people. At the same time, we recognize our unemployment was less than 4%. So we have low unemployment, but mass exodus of people going into the fourth largest city of the United States for work. And so we wanted to showcase careers and opportunities in our community. And it actually started with a business trying to convince the chamber to buy a massive billboard on a major highway. They say stop driving on your road work in parallel. And it sparked interest in our staff and our board and our leaders to say how can we show folks to work in parallel and so we started researching different platforms for job postings spraying and you know, I mean, you can turn on the radio or anything. There are lots and lots of companies out there that focus on job postings, and we wanted to find a way that we could do it differently in our community to be hyper focused on jobs in parallel. And so that was the creation of work in parallel, which is a free standing standalone website. That is comprehensive job board, an employer Resource Center. So what we mean by that is you can go there and see over 200 job postings at any given moment. But also, if you’re an employer going there, we want you to come to this site, because we can highlight resources that are beneficial to you grants, training opportunities, childcare for your employees, so they can know were going on. But even better, you can look at all the applicants that are on the site, all those job seekers that are on there, and you can engage with them. This is 24/7 Metaverse, ability to interact schedule interviews, chat, share information, all through a virtual platform, all focused on pair land, and all absolutely free to businesses in our community. Because if we can move that needle and fill jobs, we can truly make an impact and see that large, almost 40,000 People start to work here locally.

Brandon Burton 21:09
That’s right. I like that. And it’s a two sided part with the website. So you get the job seekers, you know, with the job boards, and they can put, you know, fill out applications and whatnot. But to be able to track the employers there with these things, like you said, the grants and resources and everything for them. And then while they’re in there, they’re just kind of that stickiness factor of let’s see what else is in here, you know, resource wise, including, you know, workers, you know, staff. So I think that the billboard idea that that is interesting with that, you know, the origin there, it’s like, yeah, that that can be impressive. Like, you don’t need to convince anybody that a commute is terrible, right.

Jim Johnson 21:50
And that’s what’s great, Brian, I mean, you’re so this the platform, we chose what I remember, when we were researching platforms, this one you go to, and it’s it reminds you of a virtual trade show. I mean, that’s what we created an ongoing 24/7 virtual trade show. But what’s great is when you log into the site, the first thing you see is the exterior of the country, the virtual Convention Center. And there are billboards all over the place. And we’re like, that is our platform that we’re choosing for this site. And he talked about commuting, and part of the conversation that we uncovered during our research is that the average commuter spends 45 minutes one way in their car. And so we dug into that if you work locally, it’s about 15 minutes. So that’s 30 minutes, both ways. If you commute twice a day, we uncover that that leads to about 240 hours a year that you spend commuting, and I can do math, but 30 divided by eight, that’s 30 days, or 240 divided by eight, that’s 30 days, you get back, or 10 full days, so 30 working days, or 10 full days, you get back by working and living in the same community. And and that’s part of our message to folks is like, yes, you might want to spend time in your car, I don’t, I want you working in parallel at these great companies. And that’s what it does. It’s ongoing showcase of these great career opportunities for talented people.

Brandon Burton 23:17
Ya know, I love it when people are in cars listening to this podcast. But other than that, it’s a it’s not a fun thing to have to commute a long commute like that. And so with the work imperiling website and I’m intrigued, just because you said like, there’s a lot of companies out there that focus on, you know, hiring needs, right and matching employees with employers. So to be able to make this different and unique and targeted for parallel? And what are some of those things that are really driving traffic to it that are getting that attention that are making it stand up and above what other sites might be out there? And because I imagine some of these job seekers are probably on, you know, some of these other sites as well, in addition to work in parallel and but what makes it stand out in your opinion?

Jim Johnson 24:08
Yeah, a couple different things. Your absolute we’re competing with major companies in recruiting, we’re trying to showcase a job board when companies out there spending millions of dollars in marketing. What was the for our screen, this is the first time that we’ve gotten into Google advertisements in targeted that so we’re trying to be very proactive, like our businesses are in place ads, but actually what makes this stand out is we’re getting community wide buy in, in this process, or school districts or cities or elected officials are out there utilizing this message of work in parallel and.com And because by getting their involvement and recognizing to make it success, we need our major employers and our major stakeholders to show it out. That’s how it stands out. And We are seeing every month that this man has established astonishing growth. Like I mentioned earlier, over 200 jobs posted on the site at any given time, nearly 1000 applicants are already on the site looking for jobs interacting. It’s, it’s, it’s exciting. It’s, it’s our first, we’ve always had a job board. And I think that’s you what chambers can do, you’ve always had a job board, it’s been known as a member benefit, you can post your jobs on your website, we flipped that narrative and said, This is a community benefit. This isn’t just for you to post your jobs. This is a community wide benefit to know that if you’re looking for a career in our town, all the major companies are on it, all the major stakeholders, you go to one place and find all of their jobs. But the second fold, is it always the booths, the interactive side of it, you can learn about these companies. So you might not find a job with XYZ company right now. But you can learn about their culture, their benefits, their resources, and guess what, if you can interact with them, say, Hey, I’m in your community. Now, when there’s an opening that fits my skill set, I’d love to chat with you about more.

Brandon Burton 26:08
Yeah, and I just pulled up work in Portland website while you’re talking and, and I see you’ve got some of the major employers in your community that are sponsors of the website, and what a great way for them to get in front of these people who are job seekers to sponsor the website, be their front, you know, front and center, and help make some of those connections.

Jim Johnson 26:31
And, you know, the Chamber Leadership, our board through this process is we live our mission to serve business, promote growth and empower our community recognize that this is, it is it is non dues revenue for us, it is that we do have sponsors, as you mentioned, but we believe this is the lane we need to being going forward, we need to be the hub of information, we need to share this data that we have of careers, and send that back out to our community because the success of this is yes, we’re interacting with our businesses, we’re gonna fill their jobs. But the majority of our audiences, the community at large, an area that chambers traditionally don’t get into, unless it was a festival, this is our lane to say, This is why we exist. And we’re here to help our businesses by showcasing those shops.

Brandon Burton 27:17
Right. I love it. So you had mentioned kind of at the beginning of that part of the discussion that the in parallel, you had like a 4% unemployment rate. It makes it too early now to be able to see the change. Like I know, this is all pretty new. But yeah, it’d be interesting to follow that and see, you know, gee, bring it down to 1%. Or yeah, how does it right, and

Jim Johnson 27:38
that’s the greatest. Yeah, that’s the greatest thing about this, this this site is the we’re able to use metrics, we want to see that percentage of unemployment continue to go down, we want to see the next time we do a comprehensive study on commuting patterns that we want to see less folks commuting outside our thing. We want our companies to continue to see applicants come from our local area, we want to see continue to see people hired through our site and current or awareness of jobs in here. That’s that’s the approach is we have great companies, we’re a large community in the Houston area, and we need to showcase those jobs and get those individuals to live and work here so that ultimately their quality of life goes up to.

Brandon Burton 28:21
That’s right. I love it. It’s a great vision, and you guys are executing very well. So great job. As we start to wrap things up here, I like to see, you know, for those listeners who are out there, who are really interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tips or action items might you have to offer to help them in accomplishing that goal?

Jim Johnson 28:45
Yeah, I, I, this whole journey for us, was very strategic. And I think too often people look at strategic planning data. As a, as something that is scary or not what they should be doing it, I wouldn’t encourage and say it should be required that if you don’t have a strategic plan and a roadmap, not staff, that is truly as a not staff driven staff should be driven on driving it. But that’s, that has community wide support that has your stakeholders in your community and your board involved. That will allow you to continue to be a catalyst in your community. And if we hadn’t had a goal of two years ago to get 75 job postings on our website, and to recognize then that it was working but it wasn’t meeting that need to modify that to look at third party sites. We wouldn’t be having this conversation today Brandon about work in parallel. And so get a get a strategic plan and get a roadmap so that you can see truly be a a chamber that is moving in the right direction?

Brandon Burton 30:04
Yeah, no, I think that that’s so important. You need to know where you’re going right? You need to have goals need to be able to have that clear mission and vision. As we look forward to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jim Johnson 30:20
I think chambers, I think engaging with the public sector is so important of the future. And it’s not always advocacy, I think, as you engage and truly work with the public, the community, in your community, is that we have to recognize that we have to be involved with more than just what we do. And if we do that, you’re going to uncover more opportunities for your chamber to be a problem solver. Because they’re gonna look at us for those those issues, and ask us to step up, and if it aligns with what our community needs, what our chamber needs. That that’s the future, we’re gonna we saw that during the pandemic, you’ve had many podcasts talking about, chamber stepping up. In that area, during the pandemic, we build on that momentum, continue to be the person continue to be the trusted resource for information, truly, truly the trusted problem solver and community. And we want to say we do that. But you got to engage with the public sector, your elected officials, your community partners, your stakeholders to really make that happen.

Brandon Burton 31:37
Absolutely. That’s a great vision. And I like the idea of aligning your organization with those needs in your community. And I think that goes right along with your idea of having that strategic plan and, and that that needs to be part of it is being in alignment going forward. Well, Jim, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners out there who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things, or maybe to do a little R&D with working in Pearland, and what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Jim Johnson 32:14
Sure. I’d always encourage people to go to their website, PearlandChamber.org, because you’ll find under our staff section, my email, and my LinkedIn profile link either ways to connect, but because we’re on a podcast, and people can pause and make sure they write it down appropriately. It’s jim.johnson@pearlandchamber.org. And Brandon, I always think you at the beginning because you knew this a Pearland and not pearl. And that those that would I know, it’s the sales call, because they think we’re the land of pearls. But like I said, we’re the land of pears. asterik not really

Brandon Burton 32:48
fruitless pears, right.

Jim Johnson 32:51
There are a lot of those fruitless pear trees here that, but I don’t think that was your original idea with the message.

Brandon Burton 32:56
That’s right. That’s right. So I’ll get all that in our show notes for this episode makes it even easier to find you and reach out and connect. But I want to wish you and your team have first congratulations but wish you guys Best of luck as chamber the year and I look forward to seeing the results in about a month from now in Salt Lake.

Jim Johnson 33:18
Yes, sir. Thank you, Brandon for hosting me again. Thanks for bringing me back on and let’s make sure it’s not 210 episodes before the next time we do this together.

Brandon Burton 33:26
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Barren Inc.-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Maureen Carpenter

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Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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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.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guests for this episode is Maureen Carpenter. Maureen was born and raised in upstate New York. Before moving to Bowling Green in 2011. Maureen was president and CEO of Commerce Chenango responsible for chamber Economic Development and Tourism. She came to Bowling Green, Kentucky in spring of 2011 and started work at the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce where she held held four different positions from economic development coordinator to vice president. She later was promoted to vice president partnership services to bring the economic development perspective to chamber partnership. And January is January 1 2020. Maureen began her position as President and CEO with the Barron County Economic authority. In the last three years, her primary focus has been on property and infrastructure development workforce and facilitating the process of consolidating economic development and the Chamber of Commerce. Maureen officially became the president and CEO of both in January 2022.

And Maureen I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. First of all, congratulations to Barren Inc has been selected as a 2023. Chamber, the year finalist. But I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Maureen Carpenter 3:42
Good morning, I’m so happy to be here. We’re very excited to get this far in this process. And to be a finalist. It’s been a lot of work, but we’re excited about it. So I appreciate you bringing me on here to talk a little bit about what we’re doing here in Barron County. Something interesting about myself, I don’t remember if he said this in the bio, but I am the youngest of nine children. So a lot of people when they find out about me say that explains a lot. You know, that’s just par for the course. But yeah, I mean, that’s probably the most interesting thing other than that, you know, work family. Yeah, try to have some fun every once in a while.

Brandon Burton 4:22
I purposely left that out of your bio, because I thought that might be something you might want to share. So well tell us a little bit more about Baron Inc. I know that your bio kind of tells a little bit of the history there but just tell us what the organization is about size staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing. Just so we know what type of chamber you are as we get into our conversation.

Maureen Carpenter 4:46
Yeah, so we are definitely a growing chamber. We are just under 500 Members we’re hoping to be to 500 within the next month or two. We have five full time staff and we have the From great privilege of having an intern with us each year from one of the high schools, so total of six, if you count our intern, our budget is just just over about a half a million dollars a year for just then that’s the chamber side. We, we are an economic development and chamber combined organization. So we oversee both the Small Business membership side of things as well as our industrial development. We also have a chamber foundation where we do our workforce and talent initiatives, including our leadership programs. Though, Barren County, we’re a rural community in South Central Kentucky, we are centrally located between Louisville and Nashville. And we have about 45,000 people that currently call Barren County home.

Brandon Burton 5:50
Right. So that does help paint the picture very well, as far as you know, the size of the community and of your chamber and the you guys are busy there, you know, the chamber and economic economic development and ran the foundation as well. So I hope we’ll hear a little bit more about the foundation, possibly as we get into our discussion today. And hopefully, that’s picking the ears of chambers that are listening to see how they can best utilize or maybe better utilize the foundation at their organization as well. But typically, the way that I like to go about these chamber, the year finalist interviews is really focused on the two programs of work that you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application. And I’d like to just have you at a maybe a high level, just tell us what the the two programs are about. And then we can get into a little more detail on those.

Maureen Carpenter 6:45
Yeah, so our first synopsis was about about the housing analysis that we have completed last year, and then the impact that that has had in both our ability to enact some changes that needed to happen to incentivize growth in housing, and then also how that has resulted in multiple different types of housing being developed in the community. And then our second is our action for leadership program. It’s the A Pharrell through the Center for the Kentucky Center for Leadership, and really how that focuses on everybody can lead and pulling community leaders, business leaders together to really look at a challenge, put together a solution and then actually implement those solutions in the community.

Brandon Burton 7:32
Very good. They both sound like great programs, and I’m excited to learn more and dive deeper into those. And we’ll do that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 9:31
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Brandon Burton 10:19
All right, Maureen, we’re back. So before the break had mentioned, what the two programs are kind of the the areas of focus one being on housing and, and the analysis of the needs of housing in your community, and the other on the action for leadership program. So let’s dive in a little deeper on the housing initiative. And what brought that to the forefront kind of the background of that and how you guys have approached that issue?

Maureen Carpenter 10:49
Well, honestly, first, it came with own pert my own personal experience, trying to always helps unity, finding housing for myself and my husband. But then we also brought a lot of people with us. So my in laws, were looking for a house, you know, retired couple looking for a smaller home. And then my youngest son decided to leave the nest, and he was looking for a place to live. And then my oldest son, we brought him back from New York. And, you know, we were looking for an apartment, and I’m like, you know, I kept telling people, you know, we need more housing, we need to understand this. And so I’m like, you know, we really need that data, we need that information that we can take to developers that we can take to our elected officials to make some things happen. Yeah, sometimes you think there’s a problem. But if you don’t necessarily understand the depth of it, nothing is going to happen. So we we put out a bid, we worked with Boeing International, to put together the study for us. And they came in it took about six months to do the analysis and give us the results of that.

Brandon Burton 12:01
So from the analysis, what what sort of things did you learn? What direction does that kind of point you guys as a community, and maybe some action items for you to take from that, that those results?

Maureen Carpenter 12:14
Well, what we learned was we really needed housing, in every aspect, everything from low income housing, affordable housing, you know, the upper end housing, you know, 350,000 $500,000 house, but also senior living capacity and nursing homes. So it really, you know, ours was really just kind of looking at that workforce housing. But then we found that there was really a gap and everything. And it really showed us that we needed over 3000 units just to meet our market demand. That is powerful information. When you go and say, Hey, developers, here’s an opportunity, you have this land, why are you not building and so being able to show them that show them the the numbers of if you build it in this category, they will come being able to take that to the banks to finance their projects, and then being able to take that to our planning and zoning and say maybe we need to look at some of these regulations, maybe there’s something that on the front end of the development costs that we can still require, but maybe it’s a little bit farther down the road. So making those changes, having that information has really resulted in a boom in housing. Very good.

Brandon Burton 13:36
So with that analysis, does that kind of point you in a way? Because he said, There’s housing of all different needs, from low income to nursing homes and everything in between? Did it help give you a direction of kind of where to put your focus first? Or is it more of a shotgun of let’s just try to get it all at one time?

Maureen Carpenter 13:57
You know, we from from my perspective, it was really working with us developers on the workforce housing, to get some new developments. So we have a new housing development that’s going up, that’s going to have the nice one, two bedroom apartments, but then behind that, it’s going to have some nice workforce, affordable housing. And then we also worked with our housing authority, you know, people were able to use this information to to get grants. So we have some new housing authorities section eight housing that’s going up. And it’s beautiful. I mean, we have an amazing Housing Authority, and they maintain their properties extremely well. And then we also, you know, this encouraged some others to do some more rental properties, the nice, you know, workforce, young professional housing for them, as well. So and then it also helped with connectivity within the community. So our parks and rec department, were able to take this information, look at where those housing needs were and then we now have connectivity between two school districts, three different residential developments and multiple parks. And so it really helped to bring their application together and talk about the different areas

Brandon Burton 15:12
that needed improvement. Yeah. So I think from an economic development standpoint, it’s a no brainer, you know, to to make the his directional changes in housing and focusing on Workforce Housing First, of course. If because you guys are chamber and economic development, how did the chamber side play into that, as far as interacting with the community and either support or pushback on different housing, we know how much people love change. So how did you guys navigate through that?

Maureen Carpenter 15:43
Well, really on the chambers that it was advocating, to those elected bodies, that they they needed to make some changes that we still could have the regulations that we wanted to protect the homebuyers eventually, but also help the developers to be able to invest those funds. The chamber also it was getting it out there and promoting it, going to the realtor association meetings going to rotary, you know, just how we hosted multiple meetings with our stakeholders, because people know people and the network. And it’s not just developers that are in our community, but it was reaching out, saying, here’s an opportunity in our community as well. So really, the Chamber side was a lot of the communication strategy to get out there, and make sure people do. And again, I think the most important thing with this is a lot of communities know that they have a housing issue, but they don’t have the data that they can then use to really identify it. So you know, it’s a costly endeavor, you know, it’s not cheap to get these done. But, you know, just the tax revenue that will be generated from the new housing, more than make up for that return on investment.

Brandon Burton 16:58
Yeah. So just out of curiosity of myself. So as you brought in this se consultant to gather this data and do the the analysis, what sort of things are they looking at to collect the data as far as data points go? And what’s the involvement from the chamber in that process?

Maureen Carpenter 17:18
So they look at all the different data points, they obviously they look at our housing database, how many houses are on the market, what type of housing how many days are they been on the market, the pricing, phone calls with the apartment complex managers to talk about their vacancy rates, talks about their rental rates, talking with the assisted living in the nursing home. So they did a lot of outreach and surveys, we also gave, so from our perspective, it was really getting them the right contacts, the right people to talk to making sure that they talked with our Planning and Zoning Commission, and understood what they’re doing, understanding the comprehensive plan of where is residential housing planned for, so they could kind of say, just here’s some recommendations at the end. Also, you know, making sure that they provide us with some examples, what are some places that have done this well, and come up with solutions to these things, so we’re not recreating the wheel. So being able to go and see what other communities are doing, and bringing that back to our leadership? So really, I mean, they did a lot of the work for us, it was creating the bid packet, reviewing the bid, and then providing them with the information of here are the people that you need to talk to here, the survey, the people, I would survey if I were doing that,

Brandon Burton 18:45
yeah. Now that that’s helpful for anybody who may be considering taking on this kind of endeavor. So let’s maybe shift gears a little bit to the the second program or the other program, not that they’re in order around your action for leadership program. Tell us what that’s about how is it different from other Chamber Leadership Programs and just kind of walk us through the development of that?

Maureen Carpenter 19:11
Yeah, so the action for Leadership Program is a two day very interactive. Workshop. So you come in in the morning, you’re immediately doing scenarios and working with other people in the room in the community. To identify what are some issues and it really takes you through the process of identifying what is something that is important to you, that you feel is a challenge in the community? What are the different ways you can work with people? How do you see those different perspectives? And then really put together a plan of how you’re going to address the issue. What are the steps that you can take? Who are the people that you need? to bring in to help with a project, and really have that catalytic leadership of anybody can leave, you know, if it’s just simply, we want a different selection of books at the library. Okay, well, how are you going to do that? Who do you need to do that with? And how are you going to get it done? So it really just takes you through that process. I think one of the biggest things that people struggle with is they come up with all these fantastic plans, and they come up with all these ideas. But then how do you implement and this program really teaches people how to implement the plan and come up with I’ve been we used it, we developed a strategic plan last year. And we use this process to come up with our strategic plan, and identify those issues and how we would address them and how we would implement the programs and the changes to be able to do that.

Brandon Burton 20:53
So how does that look, I as you’re explaining this, to me, I’m thinking, I’m thinking of like in Boy Scouts, right? You have those who are candidates for Eagle Scout, and they go through the whole, you know, Eagle project, they identify a need and challenges the community. And they attack it, they gather support, create a team, they go after this, this initiative that they’re trying to help solve. So as your participants, as they are in leadership class, I don’t know how you necessarily turn them. But as they find that thing that’s important to them that challenge in the community, how do you help guide them and and lead them to become leaders in implementing this, because that’s what stood out to me is how you teach them how to implement the plan or lead them on implementing Yeah, it’s,

Maureen Carpenter 21:44
it’s really taking those steps of the process. I mean, there’s, you know, there’s a workbook, there’s a book that you’re supposed to read before you get there. But then they help you facilitate, and you actually go through the process of identifying it, writing it down, getting it on that paper, and then doing checkpoints. So you know, we obviously anybody. First of all, we did this, we identified people, we wanted to go through this program, we said there, there are some things in our community, we need these people on the same page, we need them to understand this process so that we can work together, you know, so we made sure our judge executive went through it, our mayor, our city council members, some of our fiscal court members, and then our board members, this school system, if you if our application comes out, I mean, there’s a video from the school system of how they had a few people in this class. But that led to, you know, over 1000 people being able to use this process together within the school system. So it’s really teaching them the steps that they have to take and giving them the tool that when they’re sitting there, they can go back to you and use that to move forward.

Brandon Burton 22:58
Okay. So are there maybe a couple examples of some of the outcomes of this program that you’d be able to share with us just to see kind of the impact being made in the community?

Maureen Carpenter 23:09
Well, I think the school system, again, is a great example of that, you know, they’ve taken this, and they’ve gone through several different process changes with their Board of Education building, and how they use it. We have a, it’s called Beyond the bell. It’s a daycare program. And so they’ve used that and now they’re coming up with a solution to expand daycare to add not only spots during the day, but to add a second, second shift daycare. How are we going to do this, we need second shift daycare, we need more daycare, in our community. And through this process. We’re now in the in the in the stages of they’re getting into location. They’re working with the the school system, the city, the county for the funding to be able to open additional daycare. Okay, so that’s kind of one example. Another is just our community leadership. We went to Frankfort, which hasn’t happened in probably 10 years to gather. As a team, we were able to sit down and use this process and identify what are the key thing that we need to go out there and say, This is what Barron County needs to be successful, not going out there and all being on a different page. But really going out there and saying, Here are challenges. Here’s what we need to do to improve these challenges. And here’s specifically as a team, what we’re asking you for. So those are just a couple of examples of how how we’ve used it again, we use this process in our strategic plan. And now we’re implementing multiple things out of that plan.

Brandon Burton 24:53
I love it. Yeah, no good good examples and definitely making an impact in the community and and I love the Do you have been able to have that unified effort to as you go to address issues together? As we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask if for anybody listening, who’s looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item? Might you share with them? As maybe based on your experience, maybe based on some of the things that we talked about today? But what would you suggest for them to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Maureen Carpenter 25:28
I think, you know, coming in, like I said, we took over in January of 2022. And our chamber has done a 180, we’ve added 167 members, since that day, since January 1 2022. We’ve re evaluated every single thing that we offer to make sure that we’re not just relevant, that were essential. So really focusing on what are those things that our membership needs, versus focusing on the things that we’ve always done? You know, we can still do those things. We still do a Christmas parade, we still do our business expo. But modifying those things to meet the members needs. And again, making ourselves dissent show that if something were to happen to the chamber tomorrow, it would be felt throughout the entire community. And so listening to your members, and really, then evaluating what you’re doing, I think is the king.

Brandon Burton 26:28
Yeah. And my ears perked up. And he said, relevant to essential for anybody who hasn’t read and Casey Steinbacher is it gets an ebook, but at that same title from relevant to essential, it’s an a plus for me. So get a good good review there. Check it out. Marine, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Maureen Carpenter 26:55
You know, we live in a very strange time, there’s a lot of things that go on that are out of our control. When you look at legislative when you look at what’s going on with the different countries, and I think the big thing for chambers is going to be making sure that their membership is informed, you know, how, how did they and keeping up with trends? You know, who would know who would have thought that? You know, we’d all be doing meetings over a computer instead of face to face. So I think, again, chambers of the future really have to grow, they have to think outside the box of what do our chambers need? Or what our members need? And how do we deliver that that may be? Again, not the way that it’s always been done, you know, chambers need to evolve, it’s no longer. It’s no longer just about networking events, and it’s helping to grow their network, it’s helping to bring them the resources they need, in this ever changing market.

Brandon Burton 27:58
So yeah. Now I’d like that helping keep your members informed and keep the trends in the forefront of mind as well to help your business community stay on top of those things. Marina, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who have really noticed that you guys have really turned things around in the last year, you know, catch the vision of what you guys are doing there, I want to reach out and connect with you about the the awesome things you guys are doing there, Bernie, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect. That’s why

Maureen Carpenter 28:33
it’s through email. It’s just maureen@barreninc.com. You can also visit our website. I encourage everybody to do that and check out our video. If you want to see more about Barron County, we’ve got a great video on there. But go to BarrenInc.com. Or you can email me at maureen@barreninc.com.

Brandon Burton 28:51
That’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes for this episode. So people can go there and check out the video and website and shoot you an email as well. So Maureen, this has been great having you on the podcast, you guys are definitely making an impact in your community and, and really it blows my mind in the last year to be able to already rise to the top to be considered as a finalist is chamber the year. And I wish you guys the very best of luck as as chamber of the year.

Maureen Carpenter 29:21
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. We’re just excited to put Barron County on the map and let people know that we’ve had a lot of amazing things going on here we’ve got tremendously viewership in our community.

Brandon Burton 29:33
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North Tampa Bay Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Hope Kennedy

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Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

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.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and you’re joining us for a special podcast episode as we are interviewing the 2023 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalists.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

Learn how you can partner with Community Matters, Inc. to produce your next Chamber Directory, Community Guide or Map.

Our guest for this episode is hope Kennedy Hope is the President and CEO of the North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce, and she assumed this role in July of 2012 and as a Florida certified chamber professional. Since this time, she’s led the organization through two chamber acquisitions and name change, a brand change and a stringent certification process. You may remember hearing hope on the podcast last year is episode 178 as the North Tampa Bay Chamber was a 2022 Chamber of the Year finalist for ACCE as well. In 2019, the North Tampa Bay Chamber was recognized as Chamber of the Year by the Florida Association of Chamber Professionals hopes work to support businesses of all sizes spans her entire career before joining the Wesley Chapel chamber in 2012. She served Pensacola Chamber members as the organization’s vice president and membership. In 2017. The tampa bay business journal named Hope is one of Tampa Bay’s most 100 influential business people. In 2005, the Mississippi Business Journal recognized hope as a top 40 under 40 for the state of Mississippi in 2008. ACCE awarded her for outstanding membership and in 2010, the independent news and Pensacola named Hope a rising star. Hope we’re excited to have you back on chamber tap podcast as a chamber the year finalist again back to back years. Welcome back. We’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber chamber, my goodness. And thank you share something interesting about yourself too. And we can all get to know

Hope Kennedy 3:40
oh my gosh, oh yeah, interesting is I gotta totally update that bio. So it’s out of chronological order, and it’s not important anymore. Our most important is what we’re doing right here right now. So I am so thankful for you for having me back again. This year. We are delighted to be a finalist again, back to back years for ACCE Chamber of the Year. It is definitely a labor of love. We can I can tell you all this stuff about it. But we’re here to just talk about chamber and how we got here. So thank you.

Brandon Burton 4:20
Yes, absolutely. So I didn’t catch any something interesting about yourself. We’re throwing

Hope Kennedy 4:28
interesting yeah, about myself. Oh gosh, that is on the spot. I I love to cook and make things out of nothing. I guess it’s a chamber thing that we you know, we make something out of nothing all the time. So that is that is what I love to do. I

Brandon Burton 4:49
love to create. That’s awesome. I love to create Yes. Well as a chamber that you’re finalists, I think everybody would be curious to know a little bit more about the North Tampa Bay chamber just to give some size, scope of work prospective budget just to kind of set that table your discussion and know where you’re coming. So

Hope Kennedy 5:09
we are, yeah, we’re in category one. So it’s under $500,000 annual budget. Our chamber is a two County Regional Chamber. Our our demographics are very interesting for a Chamber of Commerce in our community. We are for all intensive purposes, a bedroom community of the Greater Tampa Bay region. So we are just north of the bay, our main industries in our community, our medical and medical professionals. So our demographics are very, very different. Our average age in our community is 37 and a half with 97,000 annual household income, dual educated, dual working families. So we have a very unique chamber demographics are we have a lot of small businesses with about 75% being small, classified are small was under 10 employees. And then we’ve got our key industries, again, if the medical professionals so we have a lot of service industry, we have a lot of restaurants, we have a lot of shopping, the ancillary benefits of being a growing very growing community.

Brandon Burton 6:36
Yeah, there’s a lot of excitement and being part of a growing community. And I know there’s communities out there that may be a little jealous that you guys are growing and other parts and may be shrinking. So mean a lot of that has to do with the work that you guys are doing. So I’m I’m excited to get into some of that work is and really highlight what you guys are doing there at the North Tampa Bay chamber. And typically what we like to do on these chamber the year finalist interviews, I like to highlight the two programs these submit on your chamber the your application. So for those who may not be familiar as you submit the application to the chamber the year to be considered for for chamber the year, you submit to programs of work that you guys have focused on, I believe within the last two years if that’s correct. So it needs to be something relevant and making an impact in your community. So we will dive into what those two programs are and the impact that the North Tampa Bay chamber is making in their community as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 9:36
Hi, I’m Raquel I work with Yiftee to help over 500 chambers cities and downtown’s across the US keep local dollars local and support their small businesses. Our CEO Donna Novitsky and I will be at the ACCE Conference in Salt Lake City from July 31 to August 3, and we would love to meet you swing by our booth to say hi and learn about our community gift card program, Community cards are custom branded for your community, and can only be used at your Chamber members businesses, plus the program is free. You can learn more by visiting yiftee.com. That’s yiftee.com or emailing us at sales@yiftee.com. See you at the ACCE Conference.

Brandon Burton 10:24
All right, hope we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re we’re gonna be highlighting the two programs of work you guys submitted in your chamber, that your application, maybe just at a high level, tell us what the two programs are kind of what they focus on, and then we can go in a little deeper on both of them.

Hope Kennedy 10:44
So when it came time when we were invited to submit, so you have to fill out the benchmarking application or survey to even be invited to submit. I’ve struggled a little bit with what our programs synopsis, we were going to present. Because we did not go into this year with the mindset of presenting this as chamber of the year, both of these programs came out of an immediate need. So a quick action response. So we kind of had to do some inventory when when we started looking at what we were going to do. But what we submitted was the employee retention tax credit, we did a campaign around that to inform and educate our members of their potential eligibility to receive those tax credit dollars back. Our second program was advocacy for affordable housing. And that came out of a obviously, those are both topics of interest. But that particular one came out of a conversation with with our local sheriff’s office about the he was understaffed, and he couldn’t afford or he couldn’t bring on new staff people because they couldn’t afford to live in the community in which they served. So that started the conversation. So both of those items were topics that just kind of percolated because the employee retention tax credit language changed back in October, which gave more people eligibility. And so it again, it was something that just came up and we we picked it up and ran with.

Brandon Burton 12:30
Very good. So what let’s maybe focus on that first to integrate retention tax credits. So I’m curious, I have heard of a few chambers that have kind of dabbled in this or maybe partnered with another business in the community to to share, you know, what those benefits are, as people try to, you know, claim those tax credits. So how did you take that approach to educating your members and getting that information out there?

Hope Kennedy 13:01
Well, first, you have to be educated yourself. So I had to educate myself, I found a an attorney who is a tax attorney. So obviously she was in the state of Mississippi and we had some mutual friends and got really educated on the the topic. As the chamber, we are the leading voice of business and we became a trusted voice during the pandemic. And so our members knew that they could trust what information we provided to them, but it was imperative for myself to learn about the program, what is available, how you qualify, who qualifies? What are what are the stipulations and then how to avoid being scammed because obviously when there’s money floating around there scammers no matter what. So the employee retention tax credit, ERC is part of the Cares Act. And the legislation that was written for that was was pretty vague in the beginning, and they buttoned it up a little bit in October, which gave a lot of businesses the opportunity to apply for that. So the campaign around that is we did a very similar video. It was called chamber in the know. And we brought the tax attorney on to talk us through the process what ERC is where it came from a few of the FAQs. After we published that we put together a whole web page on our website that has FAQs from leading tax attorneys, obviously at the very top of it. It’s our legal statement that says this is not intended to be actual advice, please do your own research to find out but we were able to put links to the IRS we were able to link to we put out an email to our members in the financial sector, asking if they were filing these employee retention tax credits so that we could have a direct on our website of our members that were that were doing the filing for them. So it was really an educational component and a resource component that we that we wanted. In addition to that we did a survey of our membership to find out had people did people know about it? If so, did they get any funds, we were able to trace back in our community $3.5 million in returned funds from our efforts as the chamber. And we have members that were able to speak to that that said, if not for the chamber, we would not have received this 90 $1,000 That’s going to save us save our business for this year allow us to give those employees an increase. So it was an education, and it had dividends coming back.

Brandon Burton 16:11
Yeah, no, that is that is huge. So I really like how you guys reached out to some of those financial professionals members in your, in your organization to be able to see are you guys helping people navigate through, you know, reading these tax credits? Because I know there is there has been a lot of scams out there, right? Like you said, money’s flowing. People are out there trying to be opportunistic, and not good ways. So being able to have a trusted partner of sorts to be able to refer people to is huge. I’m curious, just for other chambers listening, as you reached out to those accounting professionals, what kind of response did you get were several of them already involved in helping with that. And

Hope Kennedy 16:55
they were there, there’s a few companies that that now we’re focusing on it, because it is the topic du jour, it does have a shelf life. So I would tell everybody, if you’re going to promote this in your community, get to it right now. You feel free to use our website and use our information. It’s there for anybody to r&d, rip off and duplicate. Because it is something for the business community, our our tax professionals, some were only doing it for their current clients. Some were because they already had their books, it’s a little bit of a process, you’re filing an amendment on your employment taxes from 20, sir to q3, and four of 20. And then 2021. So it’s, it’s a little bit of a process. One of our members focus specifically on that. And so they were they’ve been able to make some proprietary systems back office systems where it’s pretty streamlined. So in addition to that information, we gave those members a platform to talk face to face with our members to educate them and inform them. So essentially, we somewhat endorsed the these folks to to do to get their money back. Yeah. From from the government. It’s a it’s not a fast process. No, by no means but government process it is, but it’s there. And you know, we became a trusted source with that information.

Brandon Burton 18:36
Yeah, I like that. You do the due diligence, you get all the information, you find those trusted resources, you make those connections, you’re doing the things that a chamber does, right to a trusted source, make those connections be the convener. So I think that’s awesome, that three and a half million dollars coming back to the community is a huge benefit as well, I would say windfall, but I know that spread throughout the community, but it’s still it’s keeping that dollars in the community. It is. So any idea and you may or may not know numbers, but I’m curious of how many businesses participated in, you know, applying for the retention, credit and play retention. I.

Hope Kennedy 19:16
So it was hard for us to kind of quantify that. So we just took the list that we know about and took out just geographically. So I would say we probably had about 35 Okay, members that we know about that that did the application and that are receiving funds back there were some that still didn’t qualify. Some that were told that they didn’t qualify in the beginning, but they did after. And so that’s, you know, something we’re very proud of. So even if it was just $100 or whatever the case may be, we didn’t have any financial output whatsoever. It was just my staff time and it’s our website. So there was nothing for us to lose. And everything to game.

Brandon Burton 20:07
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s awesome. And I’ve heard that a lot as people go to apply, they either they may not think that they qualify, and then they ended up getting a good chunk of change back or the other way to where they go to apply and find out they don’t, they don’t qualify. But either way until you talk to that tax professional who can help you navigate through it, you don’t really know for sure. You don’t

Hope Kennedy 20:31
know. And there’s a few, you know, a few stipulations that you can do like a self assessment real quick. As long as you have w two employees, and they were on the payroll during that time. Even if you got PPP funds, you still qualify. So, you know, we it’s just an educational process and getting people informed. And I think that that’s what the Chamber’s can do. You don’t have to have a lot of money. You don’t have to have a big budget to make an impact. Yeah, listen, we’re staffing. We’re a staff of two. So we just say we have three and a half million dollars coming back to our community from maybe a couple hours worth of work. It’s a really big return on investment.

Brandon Burton 21:12
Absolutely. So let’s shift gears a little bit into the other program that you guys submitted on your applications about advocating for affordable housing. So you kind of talked a little bit about the origins of that, is there always departments looking to hire they can’t they don’t have the affordable housing to be able to bring people on. So how do you? What was your approach to attacking the big problem?

Hope Kennedy 21:36
Well, you know, it, it’s my approach to for everything is I need to educate myself, I’m definitely want to be able to speak intelligently on the topic or the subject. What what’s happening in our community is we are rapidly growing, we have so much coming so much under construction, our permitting department is six months behind because they can’t keep up with it. There’s a lot of rezoning that has to take place to be able to accommodate the rapid growth. The sheriff’s office liaison came to us and said we’ve got a problem. And we don’t know how to fix this. And if we don’t start thinking about it now, we’re we’re going to it’s going to be a housing crisis. Right now. It’s just an issue, but it’s going to be a crisis. At the same time, simultaneously, our county commission was putting a moratorium on multifamily housing units, which was extraordinarily counterproductive. So, again, this was not something that was on our radar as far as needing to take quick action. But we did, we took quick action, we went to the County Commission, we informed them of the unintended consequences of a moratorium. And what a moratorium actually says to developers and the outside world about your community is you don’t have it together. You put a moratorium on something and the big box stores, they’re going to pump the brakes, if not do a complete U turn and head for the hills. So we were fortunate enough to have some developers at our fingertips that could come and help us speak to it. They were simultaneously having issues with the county with their projects with their development. And so it just didn’t seem to be a cohesive understanding in our area of what comes first the the housing and the infrastructure and those those tax dollars to create the infrastructure. We’re at a 95% occupancy rate of our of all of our homes, all of our multifamily homes. So my message and I will tell you, it was not a pleasant experience doing this. I pretty much got got handed on a silver platter. I went to the commission and said that moratoriums were lazy. It was not a way to show the nation what we have going on here. A developer is not going to spend their millions of dollars coming into an oversaturated market. So let’s take the politics out of this and let’s let the market decide what it is we need. The Urban Land Institute stood up next to me and said, You are not an oversaturated market. In fact, you need X amount more than what you already have on the docket to be able to keep up with your growth. So again, it came back to being an edge Keishon and being an advocate for the developers and educating the community to, because the community was very much ill informed on multifamily housing units, multifamily housing units are vertical. So they’re not taking up all the land that these massive neighborhoods have that seem to be so appealing to everybody. And the demographics of our world are changing to where not everybody wants to have a great big, huge house and a pool and all of this to take care of. So, you know, we can’t cut off our nose to spite our face. And so educating the community about multifamily it’s not a bad word, it is not. And so we took that we took that ball and we ran with it. The The results were the moratorium was eventually lifted. We are back on track building more. And so will most certainly and it also elevated our chamber status for in the community, with with the elected officials on we will not sit by and let us make terrible mistakes that are going to have more consequences later and create a bigger problem.

Brandon Burton 26:20
Yeah, I love how you guys approach this before became a crisis. So you took it as an issue before it became a big problem in a crisis. But so I also I live in a fast growing community right now too. And so I see a lot of the same things that you’re identifying in the community that they’re seeing, and maybe getting a little worried that the multifamily housing comes and, you know, what do you do with the school district we can’t keep up or what to do with our roads or all these different there are issues that you need to address for sure. But multifamily housing is is a sure way to be able to help provide some affordable housing, and there’s always the people that don’t want it in their backyard. Right. So I like to know more how you educated the community.

Hope Kennedy 27:05
Honestly, it’s all about conversation. And it’s it’s the it’s the it’s the old adage of playing telephone or gossiping or somebody I spoke at a Rotary Club, and I said, I need y’all to calm down about this multifamily housing. Somebody had called me from the crowded said, they’re gonna turn into section eight housing. I was like, they are not going to turn it into section eight housing was like, do you just educate yourself Be informed before you open your mouth? To talk about things I say the the, the most dangerous people are the uninformed, the ones that just felt out opinions, and we all have them. We all have them. But it honestly was just conversational. And starting to get that, that turn that shift in thinking of? Hey, did you guys know that the majority of nurses that serve at the hospital live in apartments? Right? So it’s just that, you know, they don’t, they’re very busy, they don’t want to keep a house, they want to have access to our shopping in our restaurants. It’s not turning into section eight.

Brandon Burton 28:27
They want to spend money here and your businesses. Yeah,

Hope Kennedy 28:30
that’s right. And but they don’t want to live in their house. So the times are changing?

Brandon Burton 28:36
Yeah, that’s good. I think you guys have taken a great approach on that. And it’s it’s a topic that I know a lot of communities struggle with, and being able to have those those conversations and you guys, you know, may very well set another template here that other communities could look at and see. How did how did the North Tampa Bay chamber address this issue? And how can we adapt this to our own community.

Hope Kennedy 28:59
But one thing I just want to reiterate brainon is we don’t have to have a lot of money to make a difference. Yes, any programs that you’re doing at your chamber, they do not have to be expensive, they don’t have to be put on a slick sheet of paper and you check it off and all your metrics, all of that. No, the the the, the chambers that are so effective, are those that can see what their community needs and and make things happen and you gather a few like minded people, and you can most certainly move at all. Without having a lot of money or a lot of staff. You can be influential as a chamber.

Brandon Burton 29:43
Absolutely. That is such a an important key to hammer home. And as we start to wrap things up here and maybe that plays into this, but I was going to ask if you have any tip or action item for listeners who would like to take their chamber up to the next level. What might You I have to offer that

Hope Kennedy 30:03
might my tip would be inform yourself of what the process is. Because it is. So doing it two years in a row, I’m now going to carve out the whole month of May, or actually yes, May to take No, actually it was April, the whole month of April, because you have to submit by May to work on this project, it is very rewarding. But look at the finalists, or I think they’ll put the winners application up on ACC review that look at the application itself. And see if you want to start putting yourself in that that position to be able to apply, understand the the Horizon Report from ACC, and how that that report now I think is probably seven or eight years old, at least, and how futuristic it was, then it’s spot on for the times now and the changing of our, our demographics as a community or as a nation as a whole, to just really be in the know about your chamber, and how you make a difference within your community. My programs and events are not going to look like anybody else’s programs and events. So don’t don’t compare yourself or try to emulate anybody else. Just do what’s right for your community.

Brandon Burton 31:30
Yeah, no, that’s that is a great tip. I like asking everyone, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the futures of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?

Hope Kennedy 31:43
Well, if you don’t adapt and evolve, you’re going to die. Quite frankly, I’m seeing a lot of chambers that are losing their, their their luster and their gusto because they’re not changing and adapting to their, the needs of their community with technology with ease of access to information, it chambers are the future, they’ll they’ll be the same at the core of of promoting a thriving community. But it, you have to change, you have to change and adapt, also showing your businesses that they can to just being that leader in that space and the business community is vital. And chambers are needed. Now more than ever, it’s not that we’re not gonna, that we’re not needed, we must certainly have a place in every single community. It’s just figuring out what your your niche is going to be. But if you do not evolve and adopt and kill those sacred cows, you’re you’re gonna be spinning your wheels and not moving that needle.

Brandon Burton 32:52
That’s right. I think that’s a great vision of the future. And I think I see you applying that counsel as well as I can see chambers who get hyper focus on the next event, the next luncheon or whatever that that big event is, if you’re too hyper focused, you may miss these bigger things that need attention, like helping your your businesses get this employee retention credit or to focus on the housing issues in your community. So keep an open mind and be willing to adapt and not be so hyper focused on what you’ve always done. Very good.

Hope Kennedy 33:30
Yep. Great words. Great words.

Brandon Burton 33:33
So I hope I like given you have an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you, it’d be the best the best way for them to do that.

Hope Kennedy 33:46
Our website has every piece of information on there, it’s NorthTampaBayChamber.com case, it couldn’t be any longer. My I’m right there on the below the fold, and you can reach out to me there directly. I’m very active on the social media Facebook chamber page. There. I like to pay it forward and give out advice. I’ve asked questions there as well. But you know, we’re all we’re all here together. So please feel free to call (813-994-8534) me. And I’m happy to help.

Brandon Burton 34:27
All right, well, I will get your information in the show notes for this episode and make it nice and easy to find. But again, help I just I wanted to congratulate you and your team and the work that you guys are doing and being selected as a chamber they are finalists for two years in a row. So best of luck to you guys and look forward to seeing what happens.

Hope Kennedy 34:50
Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you in Salt Lake City.

Brandon Burton 34:54
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

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Dallas Regional Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Dale Petroskey

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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Dale Petroskey. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

Now your host during hot Texas summers he is always grateful for air conditioning. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I am your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Matt Morrow President and CEO of the Springfield Area Chamber in Missouri to learn how the Holman Brothers provided value to his chamber.

Matt Morrow 0:47
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

Brandon Burton 1:09
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another one of our special episodes in our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series, and our guests for this episode is Dale Petroskey. Dale is the president and CEO of the Dallas Regional Chamber. Dale has more than 35 years of leadership experience in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. In April 2014, he became president and CEO of the Dallas Regional Chamber, one of the largest and most established business organizations in the state of Texas. The Dallas Regional Chamber works to strengthen the business community by attracting companies and talented workers from around the world. improving education, advocating for pro growth public policies, and enhancing the quality of life for all in the Dallas region. Dale’s career also includes service as assistant White House press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, Senior Vice President for mission programs at the National at National Geographic and president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Dale is a member of numerous boards, including the alfalfa Club of Washington DC SMU is Lyle School of Engineering and Dallas medical resources, educate Dallas Clayton Kershaw’s challenge, the Dallas Mavericks Advisory Council and the Texas Rangers baseball foundation. Dale and his wife, Ann both graduated from Michigan State University and live in Dallas, they have three married children. Dale, I’m excited to have you with me today on chamber tap podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions. And if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well, Brandon,

Dale Petroskey 3:00
thank you for having me. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the Dallas Regional Chamber. And and it’s just going to be fun. One thing you should know about me is that I’m one of nine children. And you don’t run across a lot of folks these days who have eight siblings, but I do. And they’re all from the same parents. And I’m the second oldest, I’m the oldest son and the second oldest of those nine children. All right, yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:29
you’re right. You don’t come across that very often these days. So that is interesting. So why don’t you Well, first of all, congratulations, being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. It’s a great accomplishment. And I know you’re in great company with others in your category as well.

Dale Petroskey 3:47
Appreciate that. We’re very excited. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 3:51
Why don’t you take a moment and tell us a little bit about the Dallas Regional Chamber just to give us some perspective as to the scope of work, the size of the chamber staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion.

About the Dallas Regional Chamber

Dale Petroskey 4:04
It sounds great. Thank you. First of all, there are Dallas is a big market. Dallas, Fort Worth is a big market. 7.8 million people here. It’s the fourth largest market in the United States. And there are 175 chambers in Dallas Fort Worth, believe it or not, we’re the largest. And number two is half our size. And all those 173 are below number two. So we’re twice as large as number two. We have 55 full time staffers. Our budget is $12 million a year. And we have our own research team, which very few chambers do. But we have a very sophisticated research team, you know, staffed by professional researchers, which really helps our work. And why we’re very different than a lot of chambers is that we don’t take a dime from any public entity. We don’t take a dime from the city. We don’t take a dime from the county. We don’t take a dime from it. anybody except our member companies. And that gives us independence. And it allows us to do what we do. So we are the Regional Chamber. So all we care about is that companies and jobs come to this region. And they that there’s the best fit for them when they do come here. So when we go to California, and talk to companies who are thinking about moving to the Dallas area, we’re the ones they talk to, and they say, we’d like to go up and we’d like to have a campus. So we take them up to Plano and Frisco and introduce some of the folks up there where most of the campuses are in this area. That we want to be in the research area. So we take him to Richardson, where a lot of the research is done, we want to be near the airport, we take him to Irving and hand them off to Irving. Whatever the need is, whatever their wishes are, we want the best fit for them. We’re like a point guard and basketball, who’s dishing off to the guys who can score. And so as a result of that, we’ve been very successful since 2012 200 headquarters have moved to the Dallas Fort Worth region 200 In the last 12 years, and 1.3 million new jobs in the Dallas Fort Worth area in the last 12 years. Those are crazy numbers, those there no other market is even close to those numbers. And I think one of the reasons we’ve been so successful is that we have this model of sort of the artists broker, us making sure that these companies get the best fit. And they go up and work with these economic development organizations in all these great areas in the Dallas Fort Worth region, who can make them feel right at home in their areas. So that’s our reason for being is economic development. But for that to happen, we need to do three other things very well, one talent. So we do a lot of work in education, and workforce making sure that every youngster has a chance for a good education. So they can have a good job and a good life. We also attract talent from the outside, talking about the virtues of Dallas as a place to start your career, continue your career move up. Because we have so many companies we have 23 fortune 500 companies 43, fortune 1000 companies, lots of opportunities here. So we’re always looking to attract talent here as well. So number one is talent. Number two is public policy. And that means having a business climate that is strong and welcoming, low taxes, low rate, low regulations, and welcoming, welcoming for everybody. And then our third leg of the stool for supporting economic development is diversity, equity and inclusion, because we’re not going to reach our full promise as a community until everyone can participate in the prosperity that’s going on here. And we have in some ways, some areas where people don’t have those opportunities. They don’t have the educational opportunities, they don’t have the job opportunities. So we work really hard in that area as well. So that’s a little bit about the scope of our work. Yeah. Hey,

Brandon Burton 8:17
I appreciate that. And, on a personal note, I appreciate the work you guys are doing here in the Dallas region since I I’m a part of that here in the Dallas region, I get to benefit from a lot of that work you do.

Dale Petroskey 8:28
Appreciate that. I’ll pass that along to our great staff.

Brandon Burton 8:31
Yes, please do. So as they do these chamber, the year finalist interviews what I like to spend a good majority of the discussion on is around the two topics that you guys submitted on your chamber the your application. And what I’m thinking we’ll do is we’ll just we’ll touch on what those two programs are just at a high level. And then we’ll circle back and go into a little bit more detail on each of those problems. Each of those programs not problems. As soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Dale, we’re back. Do you would share with us what the two programs are that you submitted on the chamber? The your application?

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Dale Petroskey 11:59
Yeah, happy to do that. Brandon. The first one was a vaccination program for communities of color during the middle of the pandemic. Okay, the second one is something called P TECH, which is our businesses actually being embedded in our schools, to work with students to tell them about their industries, their companies, give them internships, give them opportunities to get a leg up in the work world. So those are the two basic programs.

Brandon Burton 12:30
All right, let’s say let’s start with the vaccinations for people of color. And that’s a that’s a program that I haven’t heard of other chambers tackling. So I’m interested to hear kind of what brought that to the forefront and how you guys approach that.

Dale Petroskey 12:47
You know, early last year, we were sort of in the middle of the vaccinations in a big way. And you know, the pandemic had started the previous March, and people were getting sick. But there were no vaccines available. And finally vaccines became available. And yet, they were not reaching everybody that they should have reached either folks didn’t want to take them, or people didn’t know how to get them or didn’t know enough about what the rules were around, signing up for them, registering for them going to get them and so forth. And we thought, what can we do most at this moment in time, to help our community and help our business community. And we realized that communities of color, were dying at higher rates than anybody else. They were going to the hospital at higher rates than anybody else. They were losing their jobs at higher rates than anybody else and losing their businesses at higher rates than anybody else. And so we started to look into this. And we realize that a lot of folks in those communities either didn’t have any information about how to get vaccinated, or they were getting wrong information about vaccinations. And so nobody asked us to do this. Our board didn’t even ask us to do this. We just believe it was the right thing to do. So we embarked on a campaign that had sort of two prongs one was public service announcements, aimed at communities of color that were on there were messages on billboards, on television, and radio, in doctor’s waiting offices, and in pharmacies, about the vaccinations and if you chose to get them how it would protect you and your family and your jobs, basically. And so we worked with we put out an RFP request for proposal to a bunch of marketing agencies, and we chose one so that was one piece of it. The second piece of it was the ground game. So we worked with another organization marketing organization that works very closely with communities of color here, in order to micro target those areas and get that get them the information they need, and set up clinics on site. So if people chose that they wanted to get a vaccine, they can go right there and get their vaccine. Okay, we set a goal of getting 600,000 More people vaccinated between June and September last year, basically the summer. And by September, we had 660,000 More vaccinations in the Dallas area, most of them in communities of color. And the our budget for this was close to a million dollars. Again, nobody asked us to do this. But we thought it was the right thing to do. And we because we are very careful with our money. And we’re very good about keeping reserves, and in our, every year putting some money into our reserves, we actually had the money to do this when it was needed most. So we’re very proud of that program. And it was a great community service to our to our, to our folks and to our business community. I’ll mention one other thing, Brandon, we enlisted the help of a lot of our member companies or businesses, to get the word out to their employees, and to share information with their employees about how they could get vaccinated because there was a lot of misinformation, or people just weren’t paying attention. It was complicated. You remember the messages that were going out. And so we tried to simplify it, get it out. And our businesses are very appreciative of the educational role that we played in all of that.

Brandon Burton 16:52
That’s great. I love hearing how, you know, partnering with other organizations that service these demographic of people of color and being able to really, you didn’t mention it directly, but it’s data driven, you know, when you’re looking at who are the people most affected right now, with the pandemic? How can we make the largest impact? And the data was pointing to this program, and you guys listened and responded. So

Dale Petroskey 17:18
I think that’s what we try to do. We try to listen, we try to decide and then we try to act. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:25
So let’s shift gears. And tell us about the you say it was called P TECH getting the businesses in the schools. Is that primarily with high schools? Or is it different levels, it’s always about that.

Dale Petroskey 17:37
It’s high schools. And, and, you know, several years ago, the Dallas ISD, Dallas, Independent School District, you know, was struggling, and like a lot of urban school districts. And we have a very innovative superintendent here, Dr. Michael Hanna HOSA, actually just retired. And, but he was always wanting to partner with with everybody he could, okay to get things going in the right direction for Dallas, Independent School District. And he came to us and we came up with the idea of reaching out to our big companies mostly, and getting them to work, to adopt a school and to work in that schools. So for example, AT and T, you know, they adopt a school, they go, they send him plays into that school every day. That’s their job to work with those kids on technology, and what it might be like to work at at&t, maybe not in a technology role, but an accounting role, an HR role, showing young people, the future, showing them that what a job looks like, what working inside a company looks like. And then at&t provides internships for a lot of those students, and ultimately jobs for those twos. Okay. But we have companies like Frito, lay, Boeing, you know, gosh, Texas Instruments, all the big companies of Dallas are involved in this. In fact, 90 companies send people into these schools every day to work with these youngsters to provide internships, job opportunities to teach them skills. And as a result of that, more companies work in Dallas ISD schools than any other school district in America. And literally what it is if you think about it, you know, most of us were in high school, we don’t know what we want to do. We only know what our parents did. And so so often what happens is people go into jobs into the the industries that their parents are in because they don’t know anything else that’s out there. This gives them a chance to really see See some other things, test some other things and be exposed to other companies, other industries and know more about what, what the possibilities are on the job market, and what they might be going to college to study for. So that when they come out, they’re a little bit more targeted.

Brandon Burton 20:19
I like that. So when you talk about these businesses being on the campus every day, is it the same employee going to the campus every day? Do they have multiple Pete is that their full time job is to be the campus representative?

Dale Petroskey 20:33
Yeah, most of the time? Yeah. It’s varies a little bit. But yes, that’s their job to be a math

Brandon Burton 20:39
school. And then they get worked into the curriculum for the different classes to

Dale Petroskey 20:44
kind of show. Yeah, they were the counselors, work them in teachers work them in, so forth.

Brandon Burton 20:52
That’s fantastic. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, very innovative,

Dale Petroskey 20:55
very innovative. And, and as far as I know, one of a kind, at least at this scale.

Brandon Burton 21:02
Yeah. Whenever I hear these programs of chambers, getting involved with education and showing these job opportunities, I’m always a little jealous that I didn’t have that when I was growing up to be able to, you know, see what the world has to offer.

Dale Petroskey 21:16
No question, you know, what I, when I was growing up, I grew up in the Detroit area. And, you know, I didn’t know what was out there at all, really, and my wife says, she said, I think you could have been a great architect. Because you know, you’ve got a good sense of space. You aren’t you are good with pen and paper, you can draw, you know, I’m not a trained artist in any way. But it comes easily to me to draw and sketch things out. And she says, You would have been a great architect. When I was growing up, I had never met an architect, I didn’t know there was a job, such as architect, right. Or when I went to Washington, and I started working, you know, in the White House and on Capitol Hill, and, and I would see people who are in the Foreign Service, you know, who are diplomats or working in an embassy, I never knew that those jobs existed in high school. But I might have loved to have done that. So the more we can expose kids to various things that maybe fit their capabilities and their interests, the better off we’re all going to be,

Brandon Burton 22:24
right? Absolutely. And it sounds like both of these programs make a huge impact in the Dallas region. I’d like to ask as a chamber, the year finalist, and you kind of alluded to this earlier with your your metaphor of being the point guard, you know, getting those assists. But how do you see your role with the Dallas Regional Chamber within your community?

Dale Petroskey 22:48
Yeah, I think Dallas Regional Chamber is viewed in our community, as a go to organization. When when when things need to get done, people tend to go to us, because they know that we have relationships all throughout this region, with other chambers, with economic development organizations, with political leaders, with business leaders, and we are a great convener, to bring a lot of people together. And other folks, in many ways don’t have that scale or that that perspective, to bring all those folks or those relationships to bring all those folks together. So I think that’s, that’s one way that we are seeing, I think the other way we’re seeing as an organization that steps up, and something needs to get done. We’ll take it on, just like the vaccine program. Nobody asked us to do it. Nobody expected us to do it. If we didn’t do it, nobody would say why are you not doing that, but we just knew it was the right thing to do. So we did. And so you know, it’s a great, we feel like we’re in a great position. And I’ll say this, it’s, it’s building your reputation and your brand every single day in order to be in that position, that it was you have to be trusted. So you have to you have to do good work. You have to work with people, you have to they have to know your hearts in the right place. Right. So that you are trusted and and can have that kind of oh, I don’t know. Brand in order for people to want to go to you or to say they’re the they’re the natural organization to go to on this.

Brandon Burton 24:38
Yeah. And I think that’s so important is that the showing up every day and being an impact in the community. So when a real crunch time comes or real crisis, people know who to turn to for answers.

Dale Petroskey 24:50
I’ll say this to Brandon. You know, my we have a staff of 55 and everyone here is taught and believes say that we are here to be of service. We are a service organization, we are here to help people. And so whatever needs to be done to help them. That’s what we’re here to do. Okay. And and that’s, uh, and you know, that’s the way you’ve got to look at it to be so public servants.

Brandon Burton 25:20
Yeah, absolutely. So I look at all the chamber the year finalists as kind of being organizations that are, you know, doing great things right now, making a huge impact. And I like to see if you might have any tips or advice action items for listeners that might want to take their chamber up to the next level, what

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Dale Petroskey 25:44
would you suggest? Yeah, I would say, you know, it’s so hard to give advice to others, because so many people are doing so many good things, right? I would say, to be very, to be very good with your finances, you know, so you, you’ve got members, you want to serve those members in the best possible way. But make sure that you are paying attention to the bottom line, so that you can put money in the bank every year, so that when times get tough, or a crisis happens, you have something to draw on. So for example, during the, during the early days of COVID, I was scared to death, I thought we were you know, we were gonna face $2 million losses in our budget, and we’re gonna have to lay people off and, you know, all these kinds of things. And in the end, and I went to the board and proposed that, okay, we’ll take salary cuts for, you know, as long as it takes. And we, you know, I took the most and it went down by, you know, great, and so forth. But in the end, we didn’t have to do that, because we were able to manage our way through it, okay. But the fact is that we had money in the bank, so we had a cushion, to get through this. And that’s from years and years and years of paying attention to the finances and being good with your finances. So I think that is a an important piece of this. Because, you know, having money in the bank gives you a lot of flexibility and gives you a cushion, when you need it, or gives you the money to do things like a vaccine campaign, when when the time comes. So that’s, that’s number one, I would say number two is just really try to get to know as many people as you can in your community, and build trusted relationships with them, provide programs that will want them to join your membership. So that you’ve got a great base of support among your membership, that allows you to do a lot of things, if you have relationships with a wide array of companies across the spectrum, you know, and try to think about what you offer, that maybe they need, right, the various people in various sectors of the economy need, so that you can build this broad base of support among a lot of folks, you know, and then I would say, third, from a staffing standpoint, is just hire the best possible staff, you can treat them really well. You know, make it fun to work here. Remind them every day. This is a privilege. It’s a privilege to work for a public service or focused organization, and that they’re doing really important work, I often will relate to them. My favorite quote is by Teddy Roosevelt, who said, the greatest prize life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. And I remind them often that we work hard at work worth doing. And that not everybody out there comes to work every day, able to work hard at work worth doing. They are working off and at things that need to be done. But we actually get to work hard to make this a better community and to to really move the needle during our time here.

Brandon Burton 29:26
I love that. And I think all three of those tips that you suggested they really they position an organization well to be able to serve their community in the best ways. You know, when you’ve got those connections in the community, you’ve got the great staff you’ve kept track your finances and prepared for the rainy day. It makes you available to make clear decisions that are not fogged up with some of those other things that could get in the way and distract you.

Dale Petroskey 29:52
Yeah, well said Brad. I love that.

Brandon Burton 29:55
So I like asking everyone that I have on the podcast about the future of chamber. So how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Dale Petroskey 30:05
Yeah, I think, again, as some people have a notion of a chamber as sort of a dusty old place that’s for the past, we feel just the opposite of that, you know, we believe that chambers really are the central point, it shouldn’t be the central point in a community that people go to, and for resources or to for help to get things done. And so that’s the sort of the incoming, the other piece of that is for chambers to be always having your ear to the ground with their community, and saying, what needs to be done? How can we best help? So there’s a little bit of defense, like, we’re here to help. And there’s a little bit of offense, which is, here’s what needs to be done. Let’s go out and do it. And I think if you keep in mind those two things, you’re going to be a very relevant and very important organization in your community.

Brandon Burton 31:08
I love it. Great advice. So I’d like to give you an opportunity for anybody listening who maybe got intrigued about any of these programs, or the way the Dallas Regional Chamber is doing things, what might be the best way to reach out and connect or to learn more, what would you suggest that? What’s the best way to reach out and connect with you? Yeah,

Connect with Dale Petroskey

Dale Petroskey 31:29
I think probably the easiest thing just send me an email at dpetroskey@dallaschamber.org. And I will you know, I’ll be initially answer it but I’ll get it to the right person, my organization who can help them the most.

Brandon Burton 31:50
That’s perfect and we’ll we’ll get your email in the show notes for this episode as well. So people can look that up and and connect with you and learn more if there’s something they they need to dive in deeper with. But, Dale, I really appreciate you spending time with us today here on chamber chat podcast. Again, personally, thank you for what you guys are doing to the Dallas region. I wish you guys Best of luck to you and your team as chamber the year and I look forward to seeing you in Indy. Well,

Dale Petroskey 32:21
it’s been great fun. Thank you, Brandon and appreciate your what you do, and love the questions you ask.

Brandon Burton 32:29
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Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Charlie Clark

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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Charlie Clark. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

Now your host he recently took his dad to shoot machine guns. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I am your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Kris Johnson, President and CEO of the Association of Washington Business in Washington State to learn how Holman Brothers has provided value for him. 

Kris Johnson 0:45
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 1:26
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another special episode and our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series, and our guest for this episode is Charlie Clark, Vice President of Communications at the Hilton Head Island Bluffton Chamber in South Carolina. Charlie is a proud Island graduate and has been in the chamber industry for over two decades. She serves as Vice President of Communications for the Hilton Head Island Bluffton chamber which is also a three time winner of accs chamber the Year award. As a combined chamber and Visitor’s Bureau. She oversees all communications for the organization as well as leading the charge for public relations efforts for the Hilton Head Island destination which hosts over 3 million visitors annually. During her tenure, she has helped Garner national broadcast coverage for the destination with the today’s show, Food Network, CNN Good Morning America and many others. She has also earned coverage from a variety of other media outlets including New York Times, USA Today Travel and Leisure and the Wall Street Journal and more. The chamber is the proud winner of numerous awards for communications excellence from ACC including the coveted Grand Award. In addition to awards honoring the Chamber’s efforts from the SE tourism society, HSM AI Adrienne awards and national awards for broadcast excellence. She’s a frequent public speaker committed and involved in her community having served on the boards of a number of organizations. She and her husband Tom are the proud parents of two sons, Brennan and Cameron. And, Charlie, I am excited to have you with me today on chamber chat podcast. Why don’t you take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you better.

Charlie Clark 3:24
I’m so glad to be here. Brandon, as we were sort of talking about earlier before the before the podcast started. I love podcast, I listen to yours, as well as many others and it’s just such a great resource for information especially when you’re on the go. So, gosh, something interesting about myself. I think most people are often surprised to know that I actually moved to Hilton Head Island from Wyoming of all places. Wyoming after one too many good vacations, you know, I thought I was so original in moving to hills and hatches chucking it all and moving to this destination and found out that the island was full of people who had done the exact same you know, most people do for a job or they move for family. I literally moved just based on the sheer beauty of this place. And my husband I’ve always said you know, we will we will figure it out when we get there. And sure enough, the communications position popped open for the chamber and I said I think that’s what I’d love to do. And I’ve been doing it ever since and that was over 20 years ago.

Brandon Burton 4:24
Yeah, talk about a leap of faith and nothing against Wyoming. There’s beauty there’s just a different kind of beauty compared to the beach and you know, everything else that you guys have. It’s a

Charlie Clark 4:35
little it’s a little snowy or the last year I was there. I it snowed on June 27 Oh my God. I said you know, I think it’s time to go. So yeah, the only thing Yeah, the only call was the ice in your drinks here as they like to say so. living on the island. It’s wonderful.

Brandon Burton 4:52
That’s great. Well tell us a little bit about the Hilton Head Island Bluffton chamber just to give us some idea of perspec Did as to scope of work the size of your chamber staff budget, things like that, just so we have an idea of as we go into our discussion,

About the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber

Charlie Clark 5:08
you know, I think people are often surprised that they help them out. And Bluffton chamber is as large as it is we are almost 1400 members at this point. They have a staff of about 25 budget of about 8 million. We’ve been we’ve been at it for gosh, almost 60 years. So very entrenched in a community. And as you know, as you mentioned earlier that we have over 3 million visitors a year. So our chamber from a scope of work perspective is a chamber in the traditional b2b sense. And also combined with our visitor and convention bureau. Because when your economy is so heavily based on on tourism and is here, and for the state of South Carolina, and as a whole, it just makes great sense to combine those two organizations.

Brandon Burton 5:54
Absolutely. Guys have a lot of great chambers. They’re in South Carolina as well. So as far as a destin destination, you guys are, you know, supporting each other very well. From what I can say the

Charlie Clark 6:06
Carolinas do have very strong chambers very strong, very connected. It’s a great place to do business and chambers really do work well together here.

Brandon Burton 6:16
Absolutely. So with these chamber there finalist interviews, what I like to do is focus on the the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber through your application. And what I like to do is just go at it from a high level at first just what the two programs are. And then we can dive into a little bit more detail in each of them as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Charlie, we’re back. If you would share with us what what are the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber that your application

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Charlie Clark 9:29
is always interesting when you decide what programs to submit for your synopsis? I mean, it’s always wondering what this year it honestly it wasn’t as difficult based on the you know, the couple of years we’re all coming through with COVID. Two things we did one was called the path forward readiness plan. It fell under the sort of the heading of cataclysmic leadership. Just a comprehensive strategy for reopening our community post COVID You know when you have a community that is so heavily based on tourism Wow. what a what a game changer COVID was and how do we how do we reopen safely? How do we do that? So what we did is we we formed immediately we had 150 people on nine different task forces, everything from you know, churches and childcare to hoteliers, small business, retail service industry, you name it, we had it on those task forces. And as we were all just sort of starting to reopen and try and get back to business, which South Carolina did very quickly, by the way, but it’s just how do we how do we develop these industry specific protocols that ensure the safety of our residents, our workforce and our visitors? How do we make sure we’re all comfortable with that? So in a short amount of time, we convened those task forces. And they came up with those safety protocols. Those were then reviewed by a steering committee. And it just it just turned out to be such a great way to launch people back into business safely, and it worked really well. And the other. The other synopsis that we entered was a program near and dear to my heart that we did call them help for hope. We partnered with again, that word partnership comes through, I’m sure for a lot of award entries. Help for Hope was something we did in partnership with the Waterson Family Foundation and the Community Foundation of a low country. If you remember back when when COVID really hit was scary. It was a scary time when you have a workforce as many of ours here are and elsewhere as well. Going paycheck to paycheck, where your next meal was coming from was a reality. It was an actual reality here for workers, not just in f&b and restaurants, but in a variety of different when hoteliers are closing down those types of things. So we developed this plan that actually, you were given like your family, a community card for help for hope you could take that car to a restaurant, we had over 50 participating restaurants handed over, they’d give you a meal for four. And then the restaurant in turn, would take that to the Community Foundation of the low country for reimbursement. So restaurants were supported. People were getting fed. And you know, there was also a contingent of people who wanted to give, you know, how do I help if you remember that everybody wanted to dive in and do something this was a very tangible way. We had, we had donations from over 37 states. Coming in, in addition to corporate and people within our own community, people have a love affair with Hilton Head Island. And that really showed they had their favorite restaurants. They wanted to make sure that they felt supported. So those two programs were the ones we launched for synopsis and just just really, really great for our community and a great game changer for all.

Brandon Burton 12:47
Yeah, so let’s let’s start with that one with help for hope to just dive in a bit deeper. How did it get started? Like who who approached to with the foundations that you partnered with? How long did it take to develop the plan to actually work and then that, you know, broadcasts that out to the community to those people that needed it to, to either donate or to be a recipient of?

Charlie Clark 13:11
Well, I don’t know about you, but it seemed like during during the pandemic, things happen slowly and they also happened at lightspeed, you know, things just started moving. It just some conversations that got it started really and we looked around at our workforce and thought, you know, we knew we’d already on the on the kind of the bandwagon with the path forward and just really putting together those programs. But this was an issue hunger became an issue. We had some of our self help our Bluffton self help and soup kitchens coming to us and letting us know that oh my gosh, we’re inundated. So we thought how can we do this for this workforce? Who is really quite frankly, not used to utilizing those resources? So that’s how helper hope began. And originally, I remember when we first started this, it was somebody said, Well, what paperwork are we going to have people fill out for their, you know, to their meal? We said, there’s no paperwork. We’re not we’re not doing any paperwork. People who who come we were just going to give that handout that meal. And then the other thing was is how do you distribute it? Right? How do you get these community cards into the hands of families who needed them? We knew that that that wasn’t going to happen in the traditional way. We knew that some of those workers who had never been to a soup kitchen or bluffed and self help weren’t about to start now. So with this partnership, we launched popups, we launched pop ups and parking lots. And if you remember early days of the the pandemic as well, there was that no contact that type of thing. So we launched drive thru pop ups, and I’ll never forget, we launched our first one in a restaurant parking lot. One of our participating restaurants, had no idea put it out through social media, no idea how it was going to go or if anyone was going to show up. And the lines just started forming, snaking around the parking lot. And we ended up having to grow from larger and larger and larger venues because the word spread in the domain When was that great, we gave out over 19,000 meals, 19,000 meals distributed. And over, gosh, almost a quarter of a million dollars donated one of our restaurants who was participating in this, let us know that, you know, during during the help promote days, on the days those cards were distributed, he would see a 20 to 30% bump in his, in his restaurant traffic, which for his restaurant was was great too, you know, keeping those revenues and keeping people employed and, and getting paid. So it made a big, big difference. By the end, I knew we had something going when the second pop up we did. We had the sheriff’s department come and say we got to help you manage traffic. There’s too much traffic out onto Highway 278. So it was just a great, you know, feel good. I think for everybody involved, the folks who were in it was a happy, you know, help for hope. We had T shirts, it’s in hope dealer. You know, these pop ups? Yeah, these pop ups were very uplifting. You know, we were a little worried of like, oh, is this gonna be a downer, but we had music going smiles all around. And it just was. I mean, it just people were so grateful restaurants were grateful those receiving the cards were grateful. And it was just, quite frankly, one of the most rewarding things that that we’ve had the opportunity to be a part of.

Brandon Burton 16:18
Yeah. And I like how you guys remove the hurdle of having the paperwork to fill out and applying for program and all that. How did you identify who to target as people that may be in need for this? And then did it just spread word of mouth? Or how did you get the word out?

Charlie Clark 16:36
You know, social media, social media, social media, that became a conduit of information, we had a help for Hope website, we had help, perhaps social media, we had the restaurants themselves, we had businesses who were pushing out for their employees, hey, if you need this, take advantage of this, this is a great thing. So really, really spread that way. Could also could kind of gauge as things were happening, maybe there were restaurants who weren’t seeing as much traffic. And we were using social media to say, here’s the list of restaurants participating. Don’t forget about this one or that one, they’re doing this meal or that meal. So it became really through word of mouth and social media. And as we knew it continued to grow to the point where our last help for Hope drive thru pop up was in a university parking lot. That gives you any idea the size that was needed?

Brandon Burton 17:28
Yeah, well, I can imagine because just thinking back in those early days, the pandemic where there was so much uncertainty going on, that we didn’t know how long this is going to last, we didn’t know what businesses would survive, we didn’t know if your own job would be around, you know, a month or two from then. So being able to be to keep money set aside, as you know, the storms keep coming or you know, however, just to be prepared, it’s nice to be able to have some kind of relief like this even just to go out and enjoy a meal. And I can anticipate even especially in the Hilton Head area where you’ve got a lot of hospitality and tourism based businesses that there was probably even a higher level of uncertainty with a lot of people where this became a great program of rescue.

Charlie Clark 18:16
We all forget that too. We forget the early days of the pandemic, you know, we all seem so settled in now in terms of knowing what’s what and what’s going on. But those early days were scary. Yeah, they really weren’t for a lot of people. So we just sort of this as many communities do you just bootstrap you roll up your sleeves, you partner with your community and and you make things happen. And that’s what I think chambers, the role of a chamber can be so so beneficial when when times of crisis are around.

Brandon Burton 18:43
Yeah. And it could have been easy just to sit back and say, well, maybe this will be over in a week or two. But you guys didn’t you got together, you rolled up your sleeves and you acted and then maybe kind of transitioning into the other program to path forward readiness. The term has been overused but the these are unprecedented times. Right. So to be able to navigate your way through, you know, something that we’ve never seen before. You talked about 150 people nine dis different taskforce How did that develop? How did it evolve? What What kind of outcomes Did you see as you roll that out in the community?

Charlie Clark 19:27
You know, it came about quickly. I think a lot of us were like different timeframe when it came to putting programming together. During this time and putting we just again, we had we did a thing also that kind of leads into this Brandon which was we launched a thing called Power Hour power hours a once a week call where people could kind of get unfiltered information about everything from the latest COVID news to the community to what was happening and we weren’t finding that in the media a lot. You know, this kind of unfiltered there were those headlines that were or built for click throughs not for information. And it was a real need. So once we developed that, we saw that people, I think one guest in particular, we had Peter Greenberg on who was CBS News. He’s does all their travel coverage nationally. And he said to us on this call, he said, people who are coming to your destination, they know you’ve got great beaches, they know you’re a beautiful place. They want to know they’re safe. They want to know, they can travel somewhere where they’re gonna be safe. And again, the residents as well. They wanted to know we’ve coexisted with visitors since the 50s. They wanted to know that this was going to be safe for them as well, and the workforce, those people who were working with our guests, they needed to know so when you convene those task forces in every industry is different, what’s going to work for childcare isn’t going to work for a restaurant. So we brought together those task forces that were also made up of not only industry, peeps themselves, but also residents in the community when we wanted everybody to be involved, and have a voice in what safe look like in those early days, the pandemic and they did it. They came up with those safety protocols by industry. We had a steering committee that was overseen by medical professionals, and by the hospital CEOs in our community to to sort of say, Yep, this is this passes muster, this works. And then we immediately put it into action. We had businesses involved, we had hundreds of businesses do what we call take the pledge, they signed a pledge that said, here are the safety protocols, I adhere to. Those protocols were available on our website in English and Spanish. And you were given a seal to put on your door now that was actually adopted by many other communities. We saw that happen. We were sort of early in that game, the state of Florida through vacation rental Management Association, they adopted that for their locations in California and in Florida. So it kind of took off other communities as well. We’re interested in in doing that. And it really did Garner its fair share of immediate as well over 126 media outlets picked it up. And I think one of the best quotes we had was just that, you know, this is a community that’s doing it safely. This is a committee that knows what they’re doing. And that came out of Redbook magazine, Yahoo. So it really did it was great to see people coming. And then people actually asking going into business is going where’s your seal? Versus your seal? I’m not coming in without that. So that was a catalyst to

Brandon Burton 22:26
Yeah. So as things evolved, and coming through recovery and so forth, did you guys have to go back and re address some of those? Look, I’m struggling for the right word, but the the plan of action, the safety protocols and everything. How often were you guys addressing that?

Charlie Clark 22:49
We could convene those task forces really quickly. And as you know, we all became Zoomers, right, that was a whole different ballgame. So we could Can we still we still convened those task forces to this day when it comes to issues affecting their industry. So we also immediately set up resources, Zoom rooms, different things that we had here at the Chamber of studio that could help in that process. But yeah, it was it was honestly a process that we evolved over time. It wasn’t unusual at all for us to reconvene just to ask questions and to garner feedback, what’s working for you what’s not working for you? And times we put too fat task forces together so they could speak to each other so they could talk and I get the needs and and issues from from, for example, what does what does the hotel industry need from childcare? What is how those two work together? So it was a rewarding, rewarding part of what we do. I think like I said, I think it was the Redbook magazine said Hilton Head Island paves the path forward for fun and safe family travel and vacations. What is that big we were we were concerned for people that are going to come this summer and turns out 2020 occupancy for us was actually down only about 2.9%. Over the prior year. Our Yeah, our July of that year was up 17% over the prior year, because the word was out. And this was obviously wide open space. It’s a safe place to be families were coming and they were remotely working. They were remotely schooling, and they felt safe doing that.

Brandon Burton 24:28
Wow. That’s great. So it sounds like the task forces are still operating. The program’s still going for I was that was gonna be my next question. If it’s still operating, or if you’re able to sunset some of these task forces, or maybe hibernate them for a little bit as things get better. But how’s that landscape looking? Now?

Charlie Clark 24:48
Definitely, definitely. You know, we as we all did, we evolved as as the pandemic evolved, and we’re able to sunset implement whatever we needed to do on that front. So we’re just really, you know, proud of our business community for stepping up to the plate and doing it very quickly. I think speed was at the essence, because there were so many unknowns as COVID was making its way through our country. And I think that really did help a lot as well. Right.

Brandon Burton 25:15
So I’d like to ask how you guys at the Hilton Head, Bluffton chamber, how do you view the role of your chamber in the community?

Charlie Clark 25:26
You know, I think, I think in any community, and especially now the Chamber’s they’re really the ones that are getting it done. The one sort of doing the impossible what others say is impossible. Chambers often say, No, I think we can handle that. I think we can get that done. And we do it in partnership. And I think chambers are really often put forth those initiatives and programs are sort of game changers. For us, I know whether that’s attracting Southwest Airlines to start flying out of our area what you know, big, hairy, audacious goals are usually things that chambers don’t shy away from. And I think our role became even more pronounced as Chambers as we’ve gone through the last two years.

Brandon Burton 26:09
Yeah, I like that response. That’s great. I love that chambers are the ones that get it done. That should be a slogan on every Chamber of Commerce.

Charlie Clark 26:18
Yeah, as the other slogan, you never waste a good crisis. I think leadership always rises to the top. And I think that was definitely true for a lot of chambers across this country, during the past few years to take that leadership role was an important one for chambers.

Brandon Burton 26:36
That’s right. So I’d like looking at the all the chamber the year finalists as those kind of setting a benchmark in the chamber world, as far as you know, areas of work and the example you’re setting, if you were to provide maybe a tip or an action item for for those listening, who would be interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what might you suggest?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Charlie Clark 27:02
Well, you know, I think first and foremost is to utilize all the tools in your toolbox, I mean, utilize the incredible resources we all have with ACCE, and with the US Chamber, you know, the mentioned earlier about the power hour, we just pick up the phone and call and say, Curtis Dubay, chief economist for the US Chamber, could you be on our Power Hour and explain inflation? Yes, I can. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s great. And then it’s a two way street, you can ask questions. I mean, it’s not every day, you get to ask questions from the chief economist or epidemiologists with the hack during the height of it. So I think utilizing those resources, whether it be web based resources, it’s just it’s all out there. And it’s really, really helpful. I’d also say, in terms of, you know, chambers, going to the next level is know your voice, I really encourage you to we encourage chambers to know the power and behind what we represent as chambers, you know, we always like to talk and our number of businesses or a number of members, but sometimes it’s easy to forget their their jobs and faces behind those businesses. Each business represents the livelihoods of so many people. And so I think to just know your voice to know that what a critical role that chambers play in the community and not be afraid, you know, to shy away from that, that, that we are the ones who who make change in our communities. And I think it’s hard to sometimes I think, for chambers to take that 40,000 foot view that often it’s easy, as I like to call it to major in the minors, you know, chambers are often held responsible for everything. And, you know, just you know, we get it done, and so

Brandon Burton 28:43
all credit for very little credit.

Charlie Clark 28:46
Right. So sometimes I think it’s hard to to look at your community from that 40,000 foot view, and not major in the minors because it’s easy to get get packed by those. And in addition to, you know, our mission statement, which every chamber has, we have a set of guiding principles, and we believe in only taking on endeavors that that we can do better than others in the community that we have a voice to pull people together to convene the community. So I think that’s an important aspect of of being an excellent chamber as well.

Brandon Burton 29:18
I love that. I love that response. So I like asking everybody who I have on the show about the future of chambers. And so how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Charlie Clark 29:32
You know, I think chambers are now more relevant than ever. I think the last few years have been a proving ground for chambers and boy did we all step up to the plate. We actually gained members during during the pandemic, at a time when economic uncertainty was tough for a lot of businesses based on our response and our ability to connect the community and offer information that was relevant. So I think the future of chambers is bright. I think we’ve been I’m more prominent in terms of our community leadership, I think we are viewed in our communities as as, as I said, conveners connectors of people in a world that while we seem to be more connected than ever, we’re really more disconnected than ever, in so many ways. And I think chambers do a great job of, of really having a coalescent community that you can actually, you know, take action and make change in your community, on those big, scary goals that often bring, you’re always gonna bring, you know, good and bad, you know, your goal is headed in the right direction when it comes to whether it’s a, you know, infrastructure problem or a piece of legislation which we all handle, you know, you’re doing something, right. If you have a little bit of a balance of people going yay, on that front, big, big projects always have that. So I think the future of chambers going forward, we feel it’s a really great time to be a chamber and a great time to make a

Brandon Burton 31:00
difference. Yeah, I think a lot of chambers, almost were surprised that they gained members during the pandemic, because you figure things are shut down, businesses are struggling, but they forget to remember that, that there’s a need, you know, and there’s that stress going on with these businesses, there’s a need. And so that bump and membership and then whatever, you know, recession we have that’s being talked about coming up on the brink of us. I think there’s going to be more businesses that are returning to their chamber to to figure out how do I navigate through this now. So we

Charlie Clark 31:38
saw we saw you know, we, we saw in our surveys, everybody our membership surveys, which we do each year, we saw some changes, which was interesting to see as the pandemic went on. That just speaks to I think, what’s happening and going to happen in the future chambers. Um, as you mentioned, with a potential recession, what’s happening economically is that we saw really rise to the top, the benefit for chambers for, for us being the ones to convey relevant, timely information, they want information, they’re starving for information, many of us are no in a world filled with it, you know, how do you localize that? How do you make it mean something to your business community in a way that makes a difference, and I think that’s going to be in a really important factor coming up as well,

Brandon Burton 32:21
and being trusted information. That’s key. Charlie, this has been a lot of fun having you with me on the podcast today. I’d love to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and maybe learn more about these programs that you talked about what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you.

Connect with Charlie Clark

Charlie Clark 32:41
You know, I would love for people just to reach out directly to me. I would love to have those conversations other chambers I can be reached easily at cclark@hiltonheadisland.org or you can always go to our website as well. hiltonheadchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 33:02
That’s perfect. Now I’ll get them both in our show notes for this episode, so people can find it easily and have to write while they’re driving or anything like that. So Charlie, this has been great. You guys are definitely making an impact in your community there and appreciate you spending time with us today. And I wish you and the and all of your organization Best of luck is chamber the

Charlie Clark 33:25
year. Thanks, Brandon. I’ll see you in Indy.

Brandon Burton 33:28
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Portland Business Alliance-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Andrew Hoan

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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Andrew Hoan. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

And now your host he is glad he attended the ACCE conference. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Jason Mock, President and CEO of the San Marcos Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for his chamber.

Jason Mock 0:47
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.

Brandon Burton 1:04
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another episode in our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series. And for this episode, we have Andrew Hoan with us. Andrew is the president and CEO of the Portland Business Alliance, greater Portland’s Chamber of Commerce and joining the organization in 2018. With years of experience with successful business association executive leadership experience previously, Andrew served as the president and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, which was awarded the 2017 New York State Chamber of Commerce of the year. He’s a resident of Rose City with his wife and three children. Andrew, I’m excited to have you with me today on chamber chat podcast. Congratulations for being selected as a finalist. Why don’t you take a minute to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Andrew Hoan 2:39
Sure. Well, thank you, Brandon. And also thank you to all the chamber champions out there who are listening and tuning in. My name is Andrew Hone, and again President CEO of the Portland Business Alliance, which is greater Portland’s Chamber of Commerce and really happy to be here with all of you today, listening in and just to give you a little bit of background for myself, I will I will admit that I am born and raised Wisconsin native. So I am a cheesehead proudly owner of the of the franchise and moved to Brooklyn, New York. When I graduated college and set up residency there worked in both homeless services in national service through AmeriCorps VISTA and then moved into politics, working for the Brooklyn Borough President and then eventually into the chamber of commerce world. And then followed my wife’s career out here to Portland, Oregon, and settled in and we’ve had our three children here and just absolutely love life in the Rose City. And really, really proud to represent the business community here in the Pacific Northwest in the flagship city of Portland, Oregon. So that’s me, and it’s good to meet all of you.

Brandon Burton 3:48
Absolutely. That’s great. I know, Oregon is a wonderful place and lots of great activities. So I’m sure you guys are enjoying the lifestyle there in Oregon. So why don’t you take a few minutes and tell us more about the Portland Business Alliance kind of this scope of the chamber? Staff budget just overall. You know, those key key indicators, I guess chambered it give us an idea and perspective before we get into our topic?

About the Portland Business Alliance

Andrew Hoan 4:18
Sure, well, we are a little bit unique and so much as we’re a three in one organization. And so that is why we are called the Portland Business Alliance. And so I’ll give you a sense of what makes up that three in one and first and foremost we are the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce where the leading voice of business in the region. We advocate for businesses at all levels of government to support commerce, community health and the region’s overall prosperity. And we do that like a lot of other chambers by offering a variety of networking events and professional development, opportunities to connect and foster growth in our region’s business community. And number two, we manage the 213 blog I have downtown Portland. That’s the enhanced service district that’s called Downtown Portland clean, safe. And then in addition to that, our number three is we are the fiscal conduit for an organization that we call partners in diversity. And this is an affiliate of our charitable Institute, and partners in diversity works to create competitive advantage in Oregon and southwest Washington to attract and retain and develop diversity influencers, and professionals of color. So three and one three corporate identities in one organization. And we add the chamber side, which is most relevant, I think, for folks listening in have over 2100 members. And just on the chamber side alone, we have over 15 staff. But you expanded out to the enhanced service district and of course, partners and diversity, we tip the scales of 25. The combined entities this year have a proposed budget of over $11 million. So we have a significant budget, much of that is dedicated to the direct services of cleaning and maintaining and security for our downtown core, which is our obligation and contract that we have to run, enhance service district. So that’s who we are. And this is our 100 and 52nd birthday. And so we’re an old chamber. And we’ve been a lot around a long time and taking a lot of different forms and shapes. But we’re very pleased that we’re on our third and final year of a strategic plan that we launched in 20. And it was our first time that we ever did that process ever had a strategic plan since the founding of the organization. So learning new things and doing our best to be our best.

Brandon Burton 6:41
Yeah, when you said three and one these are different things and what you normally see chambers that are three in one chambers, I appreciate you going into a little bit more depth with that. And it is very different with that a scope of work. So with these chamber, the year finalist episodes, what I like to focus on is the two programs that you submitted on your chamber that your application. So we’ll we’ll dive into those programs and get into some depth with them. But what makes them work as soon as we get back from this quick break?

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All right, Andrew, we’re back. So as we dive into the programs that were on your, your chamber of the year application, what are maybe just from a high level, what are the two programs and then we can circle around into a little bit more depth?

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Andrew Hoan 9:40
Sure. So by context, one of the most important things that we do here in the organization when we approach policy, and when we approach economic conditions is that we lean heavily on the data and the science and so each and every single year we ROI, public sentiment polling. And we commission, something that we call the regional state of the economy. So we lead with, where are the voters? And where is the economy, and that drives all of our decision making. It drives the consideration of the board. It asks the tough questions around where do we prioritize our time, and our influence. And something that’s important for listeners to be aware of that helps to contextualize the two things that we put forward is that Portland and Oregon, not not dissimilar to any other place in the nation has depth of disparity that is driven in large part by race, and also has an impact on geographic disparity with in our region. And the state of Oregon when it was admitted to the United States join on the side of the Union, but it built into its constitution, a complete exclusion of free blacks. And so oftentimes, the relationship with race and business and our region is extremely troubled because of our history, and because of the unique nature of the way that we enter the Union. And so the data pointed us in that direction. We have monumental differences in the income and the well being of black Portlanders. And that is exacerbated by region. And we are in what’s known as Multnomah County and within our county, the west side is the wealthiest part of the state. And the east side is the poorest part. And it also happens to be the most diverse. So two specific programs that we submitted for our application addressed those disparities. The disparity between East and West Multnomah County, and how we could support businesses in East County specifically, by working with our partners at the federal level, state level and county level during the darkest days of the pandemic, when the closures due to public health reasons were most significant to prop up businesses that were in desperate need of resources. And that was what we did to stand up our East County Cares Act initiative. The second was something that hearken back to the immediate days after the murder of George Floyd, which was the question our Blackboard members asked to all of us as a community, what are we doing as a business community support black prosperity in our region? And from that was born out our second proposal that we’ve included in our application, which is the black economic prosperity agenda, and the development of our public private and philanthropic effort to fund and support regional black economic prosperity for all those who live here in the region, but specifically, black Portlanders. So those are the two programs and that’s their genesis.

Brandon Burton 13:09
Wow, that it gives a good history lesson two that maybe a lot of the country is not aware of, as far as the forming of the state. And it really does cut the workout for you guys is the chamber to see that that disparity is dealt with and and to make things more equitable across the state for all the residents. So I don’t know if it makes sense to start on one of the programs to go into more depth first or not, but maybe maybe let’s start with the East County Cares Act. But I’m assuming that had to do with somewhat with the federal aid with the cares, or am I wrong thing?

Andrew Hoan 13:51
You’re absolutely right. You know, and a lot of states are given latitude around how they dispersed resources and who would be allocated what and oftentimes leaned on the private sector to be able to assist in making sure that the funds got to the right places to those most in need. And we received a call from the governor’s office and from the county asking us as the business community to stand up and deliver in under a two to three month period of time, in enormity of resources, specifically to each county, there are about four different cities that live within our county that are defined as East County municipalities. And so we were targeting these unique cities that oftentimes get left out from conversations around economic development, because they’re not quite as large as Portland, even though they’re in the same county. So we stood up and formed an incredible cross collaboration of intergovernmental agencies, philanthropy and and the business community to determine how we would disperse over a million dollars in resources to small businesses, but the focus on making sure that these were equitably distributed to prioritize businesses owned by individuals of color, and make sure that the resources were sent to Those businesses most impacted by closures, which should come as no surprise to people where restaurants and retail and healthcare establishments that face the biggest challenges from the pandemic. And if you don’t know this about the state of Oregon, we were one of the first into public health closures. And we were one of the last out of public health closures. So while we had a lot of differences in the way that states dealt with the pandemic, ours was the most aggressive from a public health standpoint. And at the end of the day, we all know that the more aggressive you were on the public health standpoint, the more damage that was wrought within the economy. Again, these were simple trade offs everyone had to make. But the reality was, we were able to save lives. But we did exceptional damage, especially to our leisure and hospitality scene. So the ability to stand up these kinds of Cares Act was a derivative of federal funds from the state. And we lead the way in establishing the criteria, the funding matrix and who would get what resources. And what I’m so proud about is that we delivered over 400 grants, ranging in size of $2,500 or more. And of those 400 grants to East County businesses, all of them were small, so very small mom and pop, typically retail brick and mortar, half of those businesses were owned by individuals of color. So this punches way above the weight of the demographics in the region. But we were able to deliver it in a three month stretch of time, in a way that was truly aboveboard, financially speaking, it was an outstandingly well propped up effort from a legal perspective. And we made sure that the resources got into the hands of those that needed it in really, what were their darkest hours. So that’s the East County Cares Act initiative.

Brandon Burton 16:50
So how did they did the county come to you and say, Andrew, we need help on dispersing this this money, or because I know, counties all over the country had federal aid given during during the pandemic, and especially with those shutdown periods to help relieve some of that burden put on the small businesses. But I don’t think every county reached out to the Chamber of Commerce to help disperse it. So how has that relationship developed? And how did that come about? Yeah,

Andrew Hoan 17:22
it was really, you know, our county has a obviously, just like a lot of other counties, their various commissioners are, the legislative side of the county government has representation by district and the representative from each county knew that there was a once in a generation opportunity to capture resources and deliver it to that part of the district or excuse me, that part of the county. So we were approached by the county to facilitate and manage the entire process because they wanted to make sure that this was done in a timely fashion. And that was done in a way that was it was communicated accessibly in multiple different languages, that was done with a level of financial acuity and sensibility that the business community brings alongside the accountability. So those were the ask to us is to make sure you lead with racial equity, but do this accountably and do this rapidly. And so to be able to stand up and get out the door, that amount of resources in such a brief amount of time, required the thing that we all love, which is public private partnership. And so that was the hallmark of the initiative, was bringing the resources and the guidance of government, pairing that with the expertise of business to get grants into the hands of businesses that would probably have had to go under, or turn off the lights if it weren’t for these resources.

Brandon Burton 18:46
Right. And I think, you know, none of us want another pandemic to happen. We don’t want to have to go through that whole mess again. But you know, if it did happen, it’s good to have those relationships in place, have those public private partnerships, have that good relationship, the seat at the table, having those conversations with your, your counties, their cities, with those in your jurisdictions to be able to be there as a support for the business community when the time when when you’re called upon? So that I think that alone is a good example of the positioning that you guys were in to be able to help execute that. Let’s, let’s shift gears over to the other programs, the black economic prosperity agenda. What did that look like? And how did you guys go about execute executing that?

Andrew Hoan 19:35
Yeah, I think yeah, I would really want to talk about how the inception. And I think like so many of us when we sat in our homes because of the pandemic and watched what was happening in Minneapolis and with the murder of George Floyd, we all we all knew that there was a time that this this felt different, right? I think it was because we were kids. Assuming news and information and the brutality of it was just so distinct, that it caused the reaction we saw around the country. And we are fortunate in our organization to have the leadership of a really thoughtful black business leaders, and from different types of companies and both as owners, and those that are multi generational family owned businesses to C suite executives at large companies. And we really turned to them and said, What, what, what what can we do? Because I think there was a lot of action immediately after across the country from the business community supporting racial justice, nonprofits and stepping into this space of supporting social justice programming. But there was a bigger question we want to answer, which is, what can the book book in the business community? What role do we have in this conversation? Not all of it, we can solve. Now, not all of it is in our lane, not all of it is in our expertise, right? Whether it’s criminal justice reform, or any of the other big issues that were brought out by the murder of George Floyd weren’t always things that are just natural areas of expertise. So what role do we play and it was decidedly presented and agreed upon to our board in collaboration with our Black Board members, that we would take a stand, and our stand would be economic, and it would be based in business. And so our board and our organization issued a statement called the invisible knee, which really harkens to the visuals that we all saw on the TV, of how George Floyd was killed. But representing that in the manner that we speak, which is akin to Adam Smith’s invisible hand and what moves the economy, and noting that for too long that the black community in this country has suffered under an invisible need that has prevented growth and shared prosperity for all of us, and specifically black Americans. And so from the invisible need came out a okay, it’s nice to say something, but what are you going to do about it? And just like any good Chamber of Commerce, we put together an action plan. And that action plan was very straightforward. It’s we need to get the data understand what are the disparities in our region between black individuals and the rest of us? And what is the strategic plan to address those disparities. And we need to resource this appropriately, and hire an individual to enact this agenda. And out of that bore a two year fundraising effort where our board of directors did for the first time ever, and all board give to be able to be the first in as an investment in establishing the resources necessary to bring that agenda to light. We then brought in city, county and state money, and philanthropic money all matched to be able to stand up this initiative, we recruited from a national search a leader to advance this agenda, who was hired just a few months ago, and is working on establishing the dashboard of economic data to help guide policy and inform policymakers about what actions they can take to close the wealth disparities between black Portlanders and the rest of the residents. And also to establish a strategic plan, actionable economic plan to close those disparities based on that data. And so that’s what that program represents. The thing that has been so rewarding about it is it was a leap of faith for our board to fund it to be the initial dollar in and that the government and philanthropic sectors matched us nearly dollar for dollar tells the story that durable change comes about in ways that are collaborative. And if it was just the business community going alone on this, it may not see a long life. But right now we have investors from all the sectors that matter to make change, both systemic and durable. And so we’re just in to the launch phase, we’re really thrilled with hiring of an executive director to lead this effort. And we know that we have the seed funds necessary to enact the agenda that our organization supported, and that has been backed by the government and philanthropic sectors. So

Brandon Burton 24:33
that imagery of the invisible knee I think is so powerful, and kind of equating it to the invisible hand like you had mentioned. Can you share maybe what a couple of those action items look like is as you go about to put this plan into action just to kind of give people an idea of how does the business community get involved with with rolling this out? Yeah, it’s

Andrew Hoan 24:57
really to look first and foremost about establishing A totally transparent open source dashboard around economic prosperity for black Portlanders. So it’s about the data first, just like every other thing, just like I had mentioned, around everything we do, is driven by data. And so right now there is a lack of understanding, from every level about what are the actual underlying data points that drive the differences. So oftentimes, you’ll see issues around racial economic disparities called out in different ways, but not in totality. So you might see out there’s a new analysis about how there are challenges amongst black communities in accessing capital, or around wage differentials or around health disparities. But there’s never a single place where all of those are aggregated into one published annually, and demonstrated around how we’re making progress in closing the disparities that exist. So the first action item is to establish this annual disparities dashboard that allows everybody to look at either the progress we are making or not making, and then knowing whether there’s a new policy or a new action that government can take, or the business community can take, what lever does it pull within that dashboard? Does it close the disparities? Or does it worsen them. And I think that part of an awareness focusing on black prosperity at the data points that underlie it, is the is the most important step we can take from awareness. Because a lot of times actions that we all take, whether we’re in policymaking roles, or government or business, we may have the intentions of closing those disparities. But if you don’t have the facts, data and science to back them up, then you don’t have really a proof point or a concept to prove that what you’re doing is the right thing. And that’s just an awareness piece. So the first action that’s been taken is to build out this dashboard. And then once you have this awareness and the underlying data, like any good business, when you’ve established what the problem is, then you develop a strategy to address it. And so born out of the dashboard, the next step will be to create a strategic plan for addressing the gaps. And they’re very simple things. But it’s what businesses do day in and day out, they identify where they they take that SWOT analysis of their own services, see where the pain points are, and they create an action plan to address them. So we’re just simply taking that good old fashioned business practice, about being driven by data being driven by the science and the economics, and then creating plans to ultimately address them. So those are the two major actions that we expect the executive director that we just resourced to be able to take.

Brandon Burton 27:51
I love how it’s all data focused data first, and to be able to see, you know, the actions you make, is it positively or negatively possibly affecting your goals and outcomes? And hopefully, you have a method of sharing and broadcasting what’s working for all those of us who who don’t have dashboards that are buttons, so that those things can start being adopted more nationwide. So I love that though. So Andrew, I wanted to ask as a chamber that you’re a finalist. I see you guys is kind of setting a benchmark of sorts. How do you view the role of your chamber within your community? I think you’ve been speaking to it on these topics. But it may be more generally, how do you how do you view your role?

Andrew Hoan 28:41
Yeah, you know, these two items we advance for application are really specific to the role of business and race. But what I think is really important, or the way that we view our role and this is more broadly is somewhat rooted in the the nature of Portland, and I’m sure it comes as no surprise a lot of people have heard about Portland more in the last two years than they probably have in their entire life. And not all of it for the right reasons. And

Brandon Burton 29:11
and I’m surprised you don’t have a head full of gray hair.

Andrew Hoan 29:15
Well, I used to, but now it’s all gone. Right? So the difference is that not a lot of people have heard from Portland. And what I think is important for listeners to understand is the political dynamic here is worlds different than anything I’ve experienced as someone who’s had the privilege of growing up in the Midwest living in the northeast and now settled here with a family and the Pacific Northwest. The receptivity to business and support of the business community in the Pacific Northwest is hard to come by the politics here are not just liberal in the way that we all would understand that word but progress Have is not even adequate to describe it. It is, you know, in a quite astonishing level of progressivism here, that just makes it challenging to work in government with government. And what is interesting from an advocacy standpoint isn’t necessarily that we’re fighting over, you know, tax breaks or incentives or a regulatory condition. It’s that the business community is here that our top priorities really tend to focus in on issues of livability. So the explosion of the unsheltered crisis that’s happened in the region, public safety, cleanliness, these things are not exactly what you would call core business issues. I mean, they’re important to everybody. So they’re not unimportant, but there’s simply not typical business issues. But what while that seems, sort of on the surface, a challenge is presented an opportunity to be collaborative with what I would call strange bedfellows for lack of a better word. So while we may look at traditional political divides as businesses over here, Labor’s over here, environments over there, in Portland, those divides don’t exist. Our partnerships, political partnerships are not just solely business community partnerships. They’re with labor, we stand side by side with the AFL CIO, we work with the environmental lobby. And the reason we do that is because the issues that we all face, are somewhat the same livability issues impact labor as they do business. And so it’s brought us together in a way that I never thought possible. And so when you ask the question, what do I view our organization’s role, it is the convener, and in the one that has done more outreach to our partners that have traditionally, or that most folks would would view as traditional opposition or opponents, or, you know, adversarial here, it’s collaborators, its partners, the individuals I rely on are, of course, my members and other business associations. But I’m really proud to stand with labor on issues. And we don’t always agree I’m not painting a rosy picture of just, everything’s perfect here. It certainly isn’t. We’ve had our challenges, but it’s also given us an opportunity as an organization to say, you know, let’s not just fit in a box, let’s take the box, throw it out and do a dance on it. And that’s what we’re doing here. And it’s pretty cool, because you learn that when you’re in crisis, you don’t always sit there and choose, you know, the issues, the times and the battles that you’d like. But it’s allowed us to really work with folks that we probably should have been working with better in the past. And we’re learning how to do it now. And I hope that it continues even when we pull out of this crisis, and we’ve recovered, and now we’re back on top of the national, you know, rankings of places to do business and where people are moving again. So that’s what I think our role is. It’s to be a convener and to really get rid of the box.

Brandon Burton 33:14
Yeah, I like that a lot. Especially I mean, you guys are in a unique situation to be in that convener and bringing everybody together for a common goal and, and driving the city forward. I wanted to ask you, if you might have any tip or action item for chamber champions listening who may want to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you offer for them?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Andrew Hoan 33:40
Yeah, he is the so I’ve had a great opportunity. When I was the head of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, we were a finalist. Back when the convention was in Savannah, I’ll never forget how hard it was. And now I’m lucky enough to lead an organization here in Portland that’s never been considered for this this award. And I didn’t win. We didn’t win the Brooklyn Chamber didn’t win back in the Savannah convention. But I can tell anyone that’s listening first app, just competing, is so much fun. Because filling out the application tells you a lot it tells you what do you want the world to know about you, it tells you Are you a champion for best practices, are you you know, breaking the ice on things that chambers have never done before and that you’re proud of and that you know, your boards proud of and your staff feels good about? And everybody has that and sometimes it’s just about asking the question, well, what is it? So for anyone listening and wants to ask the question, what do you do to get to the next level? I think it’s following The Ark of your strategic plan that has always paid dividends, and then picking something big and going in on it and not being afraid to fail. For every good idea we’ve had here in the organization, we’ve had a dozen total busts, we are well informed by failure. And that’s okay. And also allowing your staff to fail and feel supported as long as they’re trying, you know, chambers get to be innovators, because every one of the individuals and members we serve, are inherently innovative. That’s what business does and is. So innovate, be bold on at least one thing. Because if you can enjoy the work you’re doing, and frankly, whenever we do these big ideas, it’s stuff we want to do. It’s the stuff we like to do. It’s the stuff we feel calling to do. All the things I mentioned, our big programs. Everybody in the organization feels good about. It’s the good work that we do. And so have fun with it, and innovate and don’t be afraid to fail.

Brandon Burton 36:05
I think that’s great advice go big. How am I like asking everyone this question, but as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Andrew Hoan 36:19
You know, one thing that struck me this fascinating article that was published last year by the New York Times, or maybe could have been 2020. Now all the pandemic years seem like, right now she’s together.

Brandon Burton 36:31
Yeah.

Andrew Hoan 36:33
But it struck me that they identified that this one political year, I do believe it was November 2020, saw the largest turnover in municipal leadership that the country had ever seen. In other words, how many mayor’s have just simply declined to run again, for office or who had, you know, been defeated by a challenger? Because obviously, the world is not a fun place, right? There’s there was no good. No one had good choices to make. So you saw this leadership turnover at a municipal county level, I think across the nation, you just saw this incredible flux happening in government, and chambers sit at that intersection between government and business. And so when I think about what chambers present right now, is the fact that we are durable. We are not a new institution, businesses will always advocate for themselves. And so right now as society, in so many ways, phrase all around us, right, we’re seeing the common threads are the institutions that were irreproachable in the past democracy. Things are being called into question constantly. chambers are that pillar of stability. And I also think, reason and rational decision making that in this environment of inflammatory rhetoric of public discourse that has turned so toxic, and chambers can be the high road. And so if there’s a future and there’s a message we can convey, it’s the one of being back to that convener and collaborator role. While everything else falls around us. We’re still here, and we’re going to be here into the future, and we will help mend all these torn edges in society.

Brandon Burton 38:31
Right? I love that responsive chambers are durable, and that you always hear about chambers need to be relevant. But man, what can your chamber do to be durable? That is a huge takeaway for me. So I appreciate that. Andrew, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things. They’re in Portland, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you? Sure.

Connect with Andrew Hoan

Andrew Hoan 39:01
Everyone should give me an email. I’m Andrew Hoan. And my email address is really easy. It’s ahoan@portlandalliance.com. So a hoan at Portland alliance.com. I’d love to hear from you. I also not just want to hear about questions, but I want to hear about what you’re all doing that’s innovative and exciting. And that you’re leading the way on and just wish everybody well and hope all of you are feeling like the future is a little bit brighter right now, because it’s been a rough couple of years.

Brandon Burton 39:34
That’s right. I’ll get your email in our show notes for this episode. So anybody can look it up there and reach out and connect with you. But Andrew, I appreciate you spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast guys are doing some great innovative and durable work. They’re in Portland. So I appreciate that. This has been a great conversation and best of luck to you guys is chamber the year.

Andrew Hoan 39:58
Thanks so much Brandon and take care everyone And

Brandon Burton 40:01
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Eugene Area Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Brittany Quick-Warner

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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Brittany Quick-Warner. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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Introduction

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.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host, he realizes that the next generation is already doing commerce in the metaverse.

He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:22
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman brothers membership sales solutions. Let’s hear Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Diane Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for her.

Diann Rogers 0:47
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Brandon Burton 1:02
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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another episode and our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series and for this episode, we’re joined by Brittany Quick-Warner. Brittany is the president and CEO of the Eugene Area Chamber in Oregon. Brittany has successfully served in multiple capacities in her seven years with the chamber. Beginning in late 2016. Brittany served as interim president and CEO during the sudden medical leave and passing of the long term president and CEO and was ultimately selected in September 2017. To serve as the next President and CEO of the Eugene chamber. Brittany is the youngest and first known woman to lead the 1200 member organization. She has been active in the community since her arrival, serving as board member for several organizations including onward Eugene, travel Lane County, the Arts and Business Alliance of Eugene, bring recycling, better Eugene Springfield transportation and the Junior League of Eugene, as well as serving on the Eugene sustainability Commission and the Lane County poverty and homelessness board. She currently serves on the board of directors for WAC II and ACC. Brittany, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast and congratulations being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. I’d love for you to take a minute to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Brittany Quick-Warner 2:41
Thanks, Brandon. I appreciate it. Super excited to be here with everyone. Like Brandon said, my name is Brittany and I have the honor of being the chamber CEO here at the Eugene Oregon chamber. I have actually been with our chamber for nine years, I realized, as you read that my bio, um, the small things that you’ve never remember to do. Yeah, so it’ll be nine years this summer. And when I got into this job, it was one of those things I definitely never knew or thought I would be a chamber staffer. I really honestly came into it not really knowing exactly what Chambers of Commerce do so. But I very quickly caught the bug and have been incredibly honored and blessed to have opportunities within the industry that have really kept me here because it’s a little bit sticky once you get really dug in. So something people don’t know or might not know about me. So I’m from the Midwest, I grew up in Kansas City. And my whole life I was a huge weather nerd actually got my bachelor’s degree in atmospheric science and was on the tornado chasing team. And that’s one of the I think most um, I don’t know, one of the saddest things about moving to the West Coast is we have much more boring weather.

Brandon Burton 4:02
We don’t have tornadoes, and yeah, exactly

Brittany Quick-Warner 4:04
my husband’s like, Okay, you have a different bar than most people. But yeah, and actually, I worked in emergency management before I moved to Eugene. So I work for the State Emergency Management Office in Missouri. And it is remarkable how many of the skills that I learned in that job, I deployed over the last couple of years as chamber CEO during the pandemic, so you never know where those previous lives will come back. So

Brandon Burton 4:30
yeah, so I’m in the Texas area. So I know what it’s like when these tornadoes pop up. And it is very interesting. And I’ll have family and friends call me and say, Are you okay? And I am on my back porch watching this thing, you know?

Brittany Quick-Warner 4:45
Yeah, it’s funny when I talk to people and worrying about that. They’re just like, wait, what? How are you kidding? I’m like, no, that’s just when you’re from the Midwest. You just kind of get used to it.

Brandon Burton 4:54
Let’s roll with it. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about the Eugene’s. chamber, give us an idea of the size of the chamber staff budget scope of work just to kind of give us an idea before we get into our discussion.

About the Eugene Area Chamber

Brittany Quick-Warner 5:09
Yeah, of course. So our chamber has about 1200 Members, we have kind of bounced around between second and third largest chamber in the state of Oregon. We have currently 15 staff. When I got into this position five years ago, we had about six staff. So we’ve grown really quickly and pretty significantly in the last five years. We our budget this year is about 1.9 million. And it’s pretty split between a couple of different revenue streams. So we obviously have our membership base, which is about 30% of our income. We also just a couple years ago, which we can talk a little bit more about launched onward, Eugene, which is the economic development kind of entity for our region after a lot of turmoil in that space as a community for a while. And so a good portion of our income comes through the management of that entity. And then our sponsorships are about 35% of what our revenue is and and then we do a handful of events that bring in a little bit of revenue to

Brandon Burton 6:20
Alright, that’s good. Yeah, that that really helps to kind of set the table for discussion. So as a one of these chamber the year finalist episodes but at what I’ve been doing, what I like to do is focus on the two programs, the program synopsis included on your chamber the year application, and I look forward to learning about these programs and sharing some of those details as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Brittany, we’re back. If you would just take us through what the two programs are that you guys submitted on your chamber the your application, maybe just from a high level and then we’ll we can circle back and go into some more detail on those programs.

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Brittany Quick-Warner 9:52
Yeah, of course. So this was our first time applying for chamber of the year at least in my tenure, and honestly we were pretty intimidated by the process for a while. And I will say it’s not an easy or it’s not a quick process. There’s a lot of time and effort that has to be put into it. But for those of you listening who think, oh, gosh, I don’t know if I could ever do that. It’s totally worth it. And I will say that because one of the things is it forces you to really think about, okay, where have we found success? And what programs do we have that are really cutting edge, and we’re really kind of pushing the envelope. And I think as chamber executives, we, we sometimes often move on to the next thing very quickly, without celebrating like, hey, we actually are doing some good stuff here. And we should, we should think about that. So it was hard for us to kind of whittle it down to a couple of programs that we really wanted to highlight. But the two that we did choose, one of them is last year, we launched a freemium membership model. So a basic membership that is 100%, free to, to folks to join the chamber, and took a lot of time to really analyze that decision to do that. Think about pros and cons. But ultimately, the reasoning behind it were was a couple of reasons. One, we were diving really deep into work on equity, inclusion and diversity and really trying to analyze internally, what can we do as an organization to really create a more equitable, membership and organization and more inclusive, and have a lot of listening sessions with bipoc members in our community and businesses who maybe weren’t members of the chamber and giving some perspective as to why. So that’s one piece. But then we also do a lot of advocacy as an organization. And we wanted to make sure that we could really bring in as many businesses as possible to help advocate on their behalf. Which leads to the second synopsis that we applied, using, which is the work we’ve been doing around homelessness. So the city of Eugene and Lane County, which is a county we sit in, we have more than 4000 individuals living on the streets of our community on housed. It’s one of the highest per capita in the country. And it is a really, it’s a crisis. And it is growing. And it’s feels to a lot of folks in the community like it’s completely out of control. And that was an issue that our businesses really kind of stepped up and said, we have got to do something and where is the chamber out on this issue? And how are we influencing the future of, of our community and the prosperity of these individuals who have living on the streets. So we dove in really deep, and we can talk a little bit more about the details of that program. But ultimately, what we ended up doing was releasing a really extensive report on the state of homelessness in our community. And then that has catalyzed a ton of things that have come out of it. One of it being a business leaders taskforce of over 100 businesses who’ve come together to really say we want to provide leadership in this space. So I can go into more detail about

Brandon Burton 13:09
let’s, let’s start with that one. So homelessness, and the focus you guys are putting on there, because I think there’s, there’s so many unique traits and attributes, you know, they go across that topic that, hey, and you guys probably ever realized there’s no one one size fits all right, for all the different reasons why somebody may be homeless. So as you dug in, and did research and and looked at what the problem is, what are some of those things that you’ve discovered? And have you gone about addressing it?

Brittany Quick-Warner 13:42
Yeah, good question. So when we decided that we needed to have some sort of voice in this, I very much said to my board, I don’t know what our role should be. At this point. There’s a lot of places where it feels like, we need improvements. And I don’t know what the Chamber’s role is. And I think we have two options. One, we can either just get really mad and angry about the state of this crisis and marched down to City Hall and pound our fists on the table and tell our city councilors, you have to do something about this. Which if I looked, you know, if I fast forward five years, and I looked back at this moment, I could not honestly say that I felt like that would make an impact on the number of people sleeping on the streets. And the other option was to get really deep and strategic and to to flex that problem solving muscle that a lot of chambers have that they might not feel like this is their problem to solve. But the reality is it’s impacting our businesses. It’s impacting our local economy. It’s impacting the overall livability of our community. And those individuals living on the streets obviously are in dire need of someone to advocate for better quality of life as well. So we decided to go that route. It was the harder of the two options. But what that looked like was, was us as it’s chamber has staff going out and having individual conversations with over 200 people in our community to really understand the issue deeper and to try to help suss out what are some of the barriers or the roadblocks that we’re facing in our system that has gotten to this point, we talked to unhoused individuals themselves, we talked to business owners to every nonprofit that works in this space in our community, which there’s a lot of them. We talked to communities across the country to try to find out best practices, what others are doing. And ultimately, what we had was about 250 pages of notes from all of these conversations that we realized we needed to do something with. And we knew we weren’t the experts on this. But we had gleaned an enormous amount of information that we really felt like if we could summarize this down and boil it to a handful of recommendations, just based on what we’ve learned from all these experts in our community, that we could bring a lot more clarity to the conversation. And so that’s what we did, we’re gonna release this report, which is a living document where, you know, we’re kind of always sort of going back and finding ways to improve or other ideas. But one of the things, you know, that we heard a lot in the community is we don’t know what’s happening in this space, or whatever is happening isn’t working, or we don’t think anything is happening at all. And all of those things were leading to this sense of hopelessness amongst community members that we will never be able to get our heads wrapped around this problem. So out of that, what we came up with was eight recommendations that we felt like if we could focus in on these eight areas, and move some initiatives forward together as a community, that we can make a real, real dent, in in that enhanced number. And a couple of key areas that we really pushed on is one, better accountability and transparency. Our city and county officials are the entities that control really the conversation around homelessness and services and funding. And they’re doing good work. But there’s not very good communication or transparency coming out of those entities. And so it’s causing this sense of hopelessness. The second was, there was no, there is no clear shared vision, every person we talked to had a different idea of what the end goal was. And we all know that without a really clear shared vision for what we’re trying to accomplish, we’re going to be going in different directions. Even if we all have the same sort of, you know, good hearted intentions.

We also knew that our community needed to take a serious look at how we’re holding people accountable. And that was something that we knew was going to get us a little bit of pushback, because a lot of times in this space, people don’t want to associate crime and homelessness. And we weren’t trying to by any way, say that we’re trying to criminalize homelessness, but there is crime happening on our streets that people need to be held accountable for. We also talked about good data, about wraparound services and how individuals we might be getting them into shelter, but we’re not providing them this the services they need to actually get well. So those eight recommendations came out. And one of the biggest ones that we’ve been pushing all along is this crisis is bigger than our city and our county can handle on their own, it’s bigger than our nonprofit community can handle on its own. It is to the point where it is truly the entire community’s issue that we all have to come together around the table to try and solve. And we’ve honestly, I think, gotten a surprising amount of pushback from some of our local park or government partners in sort of letting go of of some of those pieces and allowing private sector to come to the table to say, What could we be doing to contribute positively to this conversation. So that idea of collective impact and a shared vision is one that we’ve really been trying to hone in on as a chamber and to try to convene enough voices to actually achieve that shared that shared vision, or identify and then achieve that shared vision. So all of this really like capacity building community building work, is exactly where I think chambers should be in their communities. And while it feels maybe like that’s not a space that we should operate in, I think it 100% is if you’re living up to being the convener, catalyst champion chamber for your community, right. And there is a bottom line impact on businesses. So I do think there’s an argument for the chamber being involved in that conversation. We’ve been able to catalyze some really cool projects out of this. We’ve had private sector folks who are now coming to the table who’ve never been engaged in this and they’re coming up with these really big visionary ideas that they have the resources to execute on, that no one else had even thought about, including that person in the conversation and now they’re adding to the pie instead of splitting it up amongst other nonprofits. So it’s been a year Ever since we really started digging into this, and we’ve already, you know, we’ve already seen about 200 temporary, but emergency shelters open up that private sector individuals gave their space to be used for that, that were not happening before the chamber got involved in this conversation, we have a couple of workforce pilots, where we have a local business owner who’s starting an entire different business line specifically, and only for hiring unhoused individuals and building a workforce pipeline for them to get trained into other industry jobs in the community. We have really great communications out to businesses about how to protect their properties, how to report issues, if they have them resources for if they do have crime, or an incident happen. So, you know, we’re some low hanging fruit, but then also some really cool. Like I said, visionary projects that wouldn’t have happened if the chamber hadn’t has said, Hey, let us bring all these businesses to the conversation as well.

Brandon Burton 20:59
Right now, as I think of this topic, I view it as an onion, right, it’s got all these layers to it. And I agree, I think the chamber is the perfect entity to peel back those layers and to convene, you kind of reorganize and put put things together and get those right, you know, example together and look at what the real problems are. Because it for whatever reason, and you know, various cities throughout the country. Homelessness tends to be attracted to certain cities, for whatever reason, you know, for a variety of reasons, we’ll say. So to be able to identify what those reasons are, and then why you go about trying to solve the problem, to not make it more attractive for you know, to drum. It’s it’s a, it’s a balance and multiple layers,

Brittany Quick-Warner 21:46
for sure. Yeah, yeah. And I think just setting the table, like I said, for more people to come and sit and contribute positive ideas, and that’s something we’ve been very intentional about is this is not a space for you to come in to complain or event, right. We’ve all done that. We all know what the issues are. This is a place for you to say, okay, given all this information, I have here some ideas that I want to bring to the conversation. And it’s we’ve been really successful in that. And I think that’s one thing that even if there’s skeptics out there about the chamber, really leading this conversation, what we’ve gotten is great feedback that they feel like, okay, this is definitely constructive. It’s, you know, it’s moving us in the right direction, and not just distracting us from the overall goal, which has been really rewarding,

Brandon Burton 22:31
right. And in the end, it makes a huge impact on the community as a whole. So I think that’s a great, great program, great area of focus, for sure. Let’s shift gears a little bit over to your freemium model. Curious, did you guys reach out and talk to like Tom Baldrige or any of these other chambers that have rolled out freemium models in the past? Yeah, so

Brittany Quick-Warner 22:55
we, there was a couple of chambers out there that we knew when we started doing this research. And so we did we sit down, we sat down Tiffany Esposito down in Florida. And I believe my staff might have talked to Tom as well. Just to say, like, you know, you’re a few few months ahead of us, like, how’s it going? And we got good feedback from them that, you know, so far, so good. And our board was definitely interested in, in just looking at membership structures overall differently and trying to say, like, are we being proactive in the way that we’re sort of selling ourselves to the community. And it helped, I had a tech CEO as my board chair, during the time that we were having this discussion and, and he’s, he was the first one to say, like, our business model is totally based on freemium, you know, applications and services that we then convert into paid customers. And so you know, he really encouraged us to look at that at that model as not a way to give away our membership. But to bring more people in who we maybe wouldn’t have had the hook for prior to offering an option that really does just expose them to all the things that they could be investing in, right.

Brandon Burton 24:08
And chambers often say they’re the voice of business. And to be able to say, we’re the voice of business, but not your business, because you’re not a dues paying member doesn’t really seem right either. So I like the idea of a freemium model and being there as a support for all the business in your community. It’s just a matter of making it work to where the revenue still works out and your chamber can still function, right? Yeah. And

Brittany Quick-Warner 24:31
the Yeah, honestly, the pandemic was a big motivator for us because what we did is a lot of our a lot of our programs and the training and the information resources that we were putting out to the community, we took down that paywall for all of it during a pandemic. We wanted anyone and everyone who has a business to be to hear about and to have access to these resources. We did a lot of web hours and trainings on all of the federal regulations and you know, grants and all all of these things that were coming out. And we were not restricted to just members in that space. And so what we saw was a lot of people that had never engaged with the chamber, and then also would have never heard about any of those resources, if it wasn’t for the chamber reaching out to them, even though they weren’t a member saying, hey, take a look at this thing. And so that is what really inspired us to say, like, Okay, we could do this, we could open it up, we could bring more people under the umbrella. And then it’s on us as chamber staff, and as you know, our board leadership to show the value of their investment. So they hopefully transition up to a paid member, we’re just coming up on a year of this program. Actually, July one is when we launched it last year. And so right now, our membership staff have a strategy for getting, you know, obviously, they’ve been coordinating or engaging with those members all year, but making sure to sit down and have those sales conversations about hey, come in at this other level. And here’s the benefits we can provide. And here’s what your investment is getting you. And so that was one of the other motivations is it’s a built in sales pipeline, right? How many Tony chambers have sat there and sort of like bang their heads against the wall saying, where’s my leads? How do I get more leads in my sales pipeline, and we have 150 new members that are in our premium membership that now are built in sales pipeline for selling paid memberships. So, so far, we’ve done good, and in some of those conversions, we’re still sort of waiting on the big kind of number of how many of those people transition in the first year. So preliminarily, the numbers look good as far as our ability to retain and to bring in new members. But you know, jury’s still out a little bit to see how it ends up after a year.

Brandon Burton 26:52
So as you rolled out this program, the premium model, how did you go about informing the businesses in your community? Did you get a business list from the county and just do a mass mailing? Or how did you go about the messaging to get that out?

Brittany Quick-Warner 27:07
Yeah, good question. So our community, I think, is disadvantaged in that we don’t have a business license program. And so there is no formal like registration here locally for businesses, which would be so fantastic. And I’m we’re trying to convince our city, that’s a good idea. So it’s been really word of mouth, we leaned heavily on our board and some of our other members to sort of say, hey, invite somebody that you know, who maybe wants to consider the chamber, we had a really strong sort of marketing strategy, that first three months of the program, we did radio, we did TV, we had commercials, I was kind of going around and speaking to rotary clubs and other entities that have business affiliates, or memberships. And we had, we saw a lot of folks start coming in, and that in that first three months with just that general promotion, and then we’ve kind of just left it open. And as we’ve engaged folks, we we didn’t set a strong sort of number. On the freemium side, if we want to hit X number of members, we have an overall membership goal. And so, you know, that freemium membership will help us get to those numbers that we’re trying to achieve that way. But, you know, we were pretty regimen in the whole process, you know, we did a lot of deep work with our board to help them, you know, make sure they were comfortable with it, talk to other chambers laid out what the program would look like, got very specific on the benefits for that free membership, it’s very scaled back from what are other benefits offer, obviously. And then we did a lot of kind of focus groups talking to folks and got their feedback on it and, and then ultimately launched it. And it has helped us save some members, too. That wasn’t the main goal. But we have some businesses that you all know, did not fare well during the pandemic, and they appreciate want to continue to support the chamber. But financially, they aren’t able to, we’re able to bump them down to that freemium level, and then flag their membership database to like, get them back up, hopefully the next year. So instead of losing them all together, we get to keep them in the chamber kind of channels and networks, and then hopefully come bring them back up to a paid member later.

Brandon Burton 29:19
Yeah. And as far as to sharing information with them, and keeping them in the loop of what you’re doing advocacy wise, and things like that doesn’t really cost anything, you know, timewise so why not just keep them involved?

Brittany Quick-Warner 29:31
Yeah, and the other thing that, you know, that we have, we’re monitoring as well is the non dues revenue that they bring in, right, so our freemium members, now we’re on our email list, they see all the events that we have, and they’re paying to attend those events that they wouldn’t have been before they are a member. So we are seeing a good amount of of non dues revenue coming from those free members who are now advertising and they have a higher cost for advertising because you’re not a paid member for attending events. So yeah, there’s a little bit of that happening too, which is good, because we’re at least capturing some sort of revenue from that additional base of membership.

Brandon Burton 30:07
Yeah, absolutely. That’s great. So I wanted to ask you, Brittany, if How do you see the role of the Eugene chamber there in your community?

Brittany Quick-Warner 30:20
How do I see the roll? So, for those of you who are not familiar with ACC II, came out with the Horizon Report a handful of years ago. And in that report, there are a handful of sort of realities that they were predicting that chambers and associations and just sort of the world in general were leaning towards. And one of the things that really stuck out for me in that Horizon Report in which I, you know, I’m constantly going back to with our staff, is this idea of being the sane center. And, and not being afraid to dive into issues, but really, truly trying to bring a non bias perspective to the conversation. We have done advocacy for a long time. But even more so in the last couple of years, have really leaned into this place of being able to, to pull people from all across the community together to say, Look, our overall goal is economic prosperity, and people living happy, healthy lives in this community. And to do that we can’t be, you know, politically, ideological in one way or the other as a chamber. And so we want to represent the st center, the place where I feel like we can find some alignment. And I really think that in our community, our chamber has been really respected for that. And it’s a place that I’m proud for us to be we’re very data driven, we want to see the the actual impacts not just this hyperbolic kind of fear mongering. And because of that, I think we’ve been really successful in our advocacy because people really do respect how much kind of deep research we do on issues before we come out with a position or try to advocate.

Brandon Burton 32:02
Yeah, and I think being the same Senator goes back to the chamber, just seeing a trusted resource to like you had mentioned through the pandemic, these small businesses not knowing where to turn for some of these answers. And you could look at a social media post, or you could look to the chamber who’s done the research. And and same thing with being the same Senator, you can watch these polarizing news channels, or you can look at the Chamber who’s looking at the data and looking out for your interest as a business in the community.

Brittany Quick-Warner 32:27
Yeah, absolutely. And I you know, not to downplay, it’s not easy, often hearing that voice, because it takes a lot more work to actually have done your homework and, and to seek out multiple sources and to really hear both sides out.

Brandon Burton 32:41
And to put aside prices, right? Yep,

Brittany Quick-Warner 32:44
exactly, exactly. However, I think it gets us further in the long run. So it’s worth the extra effort upfront.

Brandon Burton 32:51
Absolutely. So Brittany, what might be maybe a tip or an action item for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Brittany Quick-Warner 33:03
Oh, my goodness, I think one of the things that I did early on that really kind of opened my eyes to what’s possible, is I I sat down and like very methodically went through chambers and other communities that I felt like, I wanted to be right, who we aspire to be like, and almost every one of them was in a community that was bigger than us that had more resources than us that had more members. And they weren’t able to do bigger things. Because of that, that level. And I think often if we just kind of look at the folks who are our peers, or who have are similarly resourced, we kind of keep our minds kind of close to what we could be doing. We implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or Eos, which is explained in a book called traction. And Jane Clark at the Michigan West chamber was the speaker at an ACC conference about five and a half years ago that I heard talk about this. And I was absolutely, I just felt like, oh my gosh, someone just planted this in front of me the exact time that I needed it. We were in chaos art, my CEO had just passed away. We were trying to get our feet together under us. I was a new CEO. So I had never managed an organization before. And I desperately needed a tool to help us just like organize and set goals, and just get really strategic with our work. And that US process has helped us do that. But one of the things in that process is looking at 10 years out on a horizon and then backing up three years in one year, and actually visualizing what your organization will look like in 10 years and putting numbers to it. We put a revenue goal, we put a member size we put a retention rate, we put the number of staff that we wanted to see. So and then we backed up In three years, so 2022 was our three year or three year out picture for when we started this. We had envisioned 14 staff in our organization. And we were six people when we started doing this. Here we are in 2022. With 15 staff members, we envision a $2 million revenue. Here we are 1.9. I’m hoping we we beat our budget, and we get that 2 million we envisioned applying for and winning chamber of the year. So we’ll see, I think the honor of at least being a finalist, and you can look at it from three years ago, it was on our list of like, what is what do we imagine for ourselves? And it was remarkable to me how much just that sort of very specific visioning helped us actually get there, right, like putting an actual number to it. And then creating a roadmap to hit that number. And chambers of any size could do that. Right? It’s not it doesn’t have to be like, Oh, well, they’re a big chamber, or they, you know, have X number of members or whatever. Absolutely, you can do that as a one person, staff, volunteer staff member, you know, you can say, in 10 years, what I want to look like in three years, and then how do I get there? So to me, I feel like I we I owe a lot of credit to James Clark is with us process. And then just to our staff for being willing to dream big. We like to, I like to think about it as well, not how sometimes we we How the heck out of things, but we just need to sort of say what is our big vision, and let’s not tear it apart the first time it gets thrown out into the world, and then figure out how to get there. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:38
I love that creating that vision, it shows you what’s possible. And then as you create that roadmap, it aligns the resources to make it happen. Yeah. And as it comes together, it’s kind of like, holy smokes, how did this happen? Together, but we have a cup of

Brittany Quick-Warner 36:53
staff who are not with our chamber anymore. They’ve graduated out into the community, I like to say, who wrote me when they saw we post about the chamber of the year, nom, and they’re like, that was on our three year vision, like we actually did it. So it’s kind of fun to like, pull back in some folks who had been there. And they were a part of that. And they remember

Brandon Burton 37:11
that, too. It was impactful that they remember the timeline, and they know that it’s happening. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. Well, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Brittany Quick-Warner 37:27
Oh, gosh, I think a lot about this being on the WAC and ACC board. I feel, and we’ve heard this from leaders in the industry over the last couple years, I feel like chambers are more valuable and more needed than ever right now. And a lot of it is because of so much just polarization in our world. And I think if chambers can rise above the fray, and really play that same center role and take that problem solver role seriously, communities are going to be desperate for someone who they can look to who’s local, who understands their local issues. It’s not some, you know, outside of the community, who has the interest of everyone in the community at heart and who can who can convene, and do so in a way that people respect and they want to they want to be a part of it. So to me, chambers of the future are not, I think will always be interested in in businesses and representing businesses, because I think the private sector is one that desperately needs to be a part of the solution. But I think that we’re going to be challenged to with solving bigger community issues than just sort of taxes and opposing taxes or supporting taxes, right. It’s homelessness. It’s our housing crisis, its climate and energy. It’s, you know, some of these big hairy issues that our country is facing. If all our chambers got together and really pushed out an agenda around homelessness at the federal level, I think we could do an enormous amount of good at actually impacting this crisis. So that’s where I feel like the future of chambers are is solving those big community issues that are desperate for someone with with respect to step up and solve them.

Brandon Burton 39:11
Yeah, well, everybody heard it here, first Britney’s vision of the future. So we’ll see. What’s the timeframe on this year.

Brittany Quick-Warner 39:18
Three years, give me three years

Brandon Burton 39:21
will solve all the world’s issues, at least the country’s issues and three. So Brittany, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things here in Eugene, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with

Connect with Brittany Quick-Warner

Brittany Quick-Warner 39:39
you? Absolutely. So my email brittanyw@eugenechamber.com. And happy to also have folks give my cell phone or my office phone a call. If you go to the Eugene chamber website on our staff page, you can find those numbers as well. And I Absolutely love connecting with other chambers. I was very lucky to have other CEOs who said yes to me when I was new in this role, and still do for me to pick their brains. So I love returning the favor.

Brandon Burton 40:11
It’s so important. It really is. Well, Brittany, this has been a great discussion. I’ve had a lot of fun learning from you and and learning about these programs you guys are implementing and really making a difference there. And Eugene, so thank you for spending time with us today. And I wish you and your staff Best of luck as chamber the year.

Brittany Quick-Warner 40:31
Yes, thank you so much for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 40:34
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