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Category: Podcast Episode

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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Raquel Borges 21:24
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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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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.

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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 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
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Chamber Industry Research with Bob Rohrlack

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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 the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m 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.

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Becki Womble 1:03
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Brandon Burton 1:45
Our guest for this episode is Bob Rohrlack. Bob serves as the President and CEO of the Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce. The Tampa Bay chamber is the Florida Association of Chamber of Commerce Professionals 2020 chamber of the year for the large chamber category. Bob earned his doctorate in business administration degree from the University of South Florida. His dissertation research research the factors that influence Chamber of Commerce effectiveness. His award winning research has been published in scholarly peer reviewed journals with over 30 years experience in the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development profession. He’s led programs at the local, regional and state level. He is a certified chamber executive and past chairman of the Florida Association of chamber professionals, where he was also named the 2017 Florida Association of chamber professionals Executive of the Year since joining the Tampa Bay Chamber. They became the first chamber nationwide to be invited to the White House for an economic briefing discussing issues important to the region. The Tampa Bay Chamber has been awarded the three star chamber of Valor award from the US Chamber of Commerce for their work with the military community. Bob was appointed by Speaker The Florida House of Representatives Dean Cannon to the government Efficiency Task Force, their goal is to recommend $3 billion in savings over four years. He chairs the Subcommittee on Health and Human Services. He’s an honorary commander at MacDill Air Force Base, a board member of visit Tampa Bay, Tampa Downtown Partnership, the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and the West Shore Alliance. He is past board member of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Rohrlack graduated from the Economic Development Institute and the University of Oklahoma and the US chambers IOM program at the University of Georgia, where he also teaches several classes in their program. He’s also an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida. But Bob, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

Bob Rohrlack 4:20
Sure. Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate you hosting me and it’s good to be here to talk about the industry that I’ve been in my entire career. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of great things going on. The Tampa Bay Chamber has right about 1400 members. We’re staff at 22 and we’re focused on our 10 year vision plan. Vision 2026 That is our guideposts for everything we do with the organization and keeps our board focus keeps the team focused on priorities with programs. One of the cool things I got to do with the Chamber for our military initiation event last year, we had it at the Florida aquarium here in Tampa. And part of the event to get to civilians mixing with the military folks, well was a scavenger hunt. And I don’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. But the chamber team had the idea of me being in the tank with the sharks as part of this scavenger hunt to find me, but I had to get scuba diving certified to be able to do that. So now I’m a certified scuba diver, which is great to open up a whole new hobby, an adventure, but just one of those other duties as assigned, I think in the chamber industry.

Brandon Burton 5:33
That’s awesome. And it’s a great excuse to scuba service. My wife and I, we, you know, we love going on cruises, because we’re scuba certified. So we get to go on a cruise and have three or four different ports where we could dive and sea creatures, and it’s just a fantastic opportunity. So hopefully you’re taking full advantage and being there. Absolutely. Yes. A lot of fun water. Yeah, yep. Yep. So you know, you touched a little bit on the Tampa Bay chamber as far as the membership size staff working on your tenure mission plan. Didn’t tell us a little bit more of the scope of work you guys are involved with? Are you standard chamber to tourism? What what are what type of work are you involved with,

Bob Rohrlack 6:17
you know, the Tampa Bay Chamber, originally the Tampa Board of Trade, Tampa Chamber, Greater Tampa Chamber now Tampa Bay, because our influence has really become much more regional, and what we do both from our membership perspective, the issues we work on, and our team is located throughout the region. So we really focus regionally on what we do.

But with the 10 year vision plan, our mission is to serve our members and enhance our community by building business success. And we do that with our vision plan that has a foundation of organizational excellence, that our members can have confidence that we are running the chamber to the best business practices we can we just presented to our executive committee, our 14th year in a row, clean audit, showing them that we are managing things well, and being responsible with their investment. But that on that foundation stand our three pillars, one that we are the hub for business where businesses come to learn best practices, and skills from each other and build their network. To that we are catalysts for change in our community, that we are advocating for the important issues to make this great region even better. Transportation being our number one priority on improving the choices for transportation throughout the Tampa Bay region. And our center pillar is that we’re an inclusive organization. And this has been our plan since 2017. So we kind of joke that we were inclusive before being inclusive was cool. And our goal is that our membership reflects the demographics of Hillsborough County, which is the most diverse county in the Tampa Bay region. So we’re measuring through ethnicity, male female ownership of business, veteran ownership of business, the industry type industry size. So when we go to talk to our elected officials, and we say we represent the business community, we can say we truly do represent. So that’s been our goal. We’ve been making great progress towards some of those diversity measurements. on the industry side, we’re matching right on to Hillsborough County, which is great. So it’s how do we keep growing that and making the organization stronger because of the diversity inclusivity in our organization? Absolutely. Know that, that helps a lot to just, you know, let us know the type of work that you guys are involved with. And I love that you were able to state your mission statement without looking down and reading it. You know it it’s part of your being.

Exactly.

Brandon Burton 8:51
So as we transition over to our topic for discussion today. Just for those listening, I’ve had several people say you need to have Bob on the podcast. Yeah, he did. His whole Dr. program, about Chambers of Commerce wrote is his dissertation about the effectiveness of chambers of commerce and he just would really have an a neat perspective that we can all learn from so taking everyone’s advice here we are today. We’ve got Bob on the show, and we will dive in much deeper into the chamber industry research that he did, as he went about, you know, writing his dissertation and going to read a soccer program since we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 11:14
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 12:11
All right, Bob, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re going to be covering more of the chamber industry research that you uncovered and maybe some of those eye opening indicators or facts that maybe stood out to you. But for those listening, maybe just give us a little bit bit of background, what made you decide to go down this avenue as he went about your Doctorate in Business Administration?

Bob Rohrlack 12:40
Yeah, that’s a great question. As I mentioned, our vision plan, vision 2026. I looked at it and I knew I was the guy to put that first plan together and help help the volunteers working with staff and membership the week got that plan started. And as chamber Folks are always you know, we’re never thinking about the day we’re in, we’re thinking about the next month next year and down the cycle of okay, I want to be in the best position to lead the organization on the second 10 Year Vision Plan as we transition to that, which now is four years away. So it’s okay, I need to be investing in my education. So I talked to leadership at the chamber at the time said I really want to work on this program, the director of the dean of the business school at University of South Florida was a board member. So obviously, he was very encouraging. But I really want to focus on researching on how to make this organization even better than we believe we are. And I got the support from our board to do that. So that’s when I started diving in. When you take the classes in a doctoral program, every class is teaching you. Here’s how to do this part of research when you start to work on the dissertation, whether it’s statistics, which everybody groans, taking those classes, or how to do a proper literature review, how to do an interview properly, all those things you need the skills you need to know. And in one of the classes, I was having a tremendous and I knew everything I needed to do focus on chambers of commerce, because eventually I was going to pick some type of topic related to chambers, and you have your your dissertation is a question that cannot be a yes or no question. So I was really struggling trying to find scholarly peer reviewed literature on Chambers of Commerce. So during a break I spoke to the professor said I’m really struggling here and can’t find things. And without missing a beat. He said, Well, you can’t find anything because chambers aren’t worthy of doing research on Oh, and that was my reaction. I was like, Wait a minute. And the light went off and I realize I’m not a 19 year old student anymore. I don’t have to take the professor. So well you know This profession has put food on my family’s table for 30 years, it’s put a roof over our head. For 30 years, I’m going to be doing research on chambers of commerce. And I walked away, and I was not happy. And I thought, I’m now motivated, this is what we’re going to work on. So I kept digging, realize there is not much scholarly research on chambers of commerce in the United States. There are on some chambers in Europe, but they have different business models on how they’re running chambers. So really had to focus on that. So I took the universe, of chambers of commerce of associations to get to the Galaxy, of chambers of commerce, then to the planet chambers of commerce in the United States. And my research question was, how are Chambers of Commerce leaders align for greater effectiveness? And that became just the research I just kept narrowing down on, I interviewed chambers of commerce, CEOs, and the Chamber of Commerce, volunteer leader for the same chamber, all different sized chambers throughout the United States, asking them, how did they define effectiveness for their organization? Shockingly, everyone got stuck on that question 100%. They didn’t know how to define it. Some would say their budget, some would say members. And I said that’s not effective. That’s not measuring effectiveness that’s measuring your marketability on what you’re doing. So just keep digging into that effectiveness. issue. And it was really interesting. Going through it. As I went through those interviews, identified 72 different characteristics. loaded all the interviews into tremendous software application that helped me filter through the topics, I was able to combine that down to 32. The top five were significantly greater than the remaining topics. So I wrote my dissertation on those top five issues, and what they were

Brandon Burton 17:13
so everybody listening, but tell us what are those five effective.

Bob Rohrlack 17:21
In order of being identified, it was leadership, advocacy, convening, competition, and self promotion. Now on leadership, the CEOs thought their volunteer leader was most important to their effectiveness, the volunteer leader thought the staff leader was the most important to their effectiveness, which is a good issue on supporting each other and realizing the importance of working together as a team. And that would be my best advice to any leader of a Chamber of Commerce. If you’re not working in a team relationship with your chair, you need to focus on that. And if you read the line of succession doesn’t show people that are going to be working with you as as a team member, bringing their skill set to match with your skill set. You need to look at how you’re aligning your leadership. So leadership, very important. Advocacy being the voice for business. When I arrived at the Chamber back in 2009, which this is my third time working at the Tampa Bay chamber. But when I came back as CEO, the decision had been made to spin off the Economic Development Department, which we have a history of spinning off organizations to go be successful tourism, regional development, the economic development, the Downtown Development Group, all were born within our chamber and spun out to be standalone strong organizations. But the view was spin out economic development that contracted public sector dollars with the city and the county would go with them. We now are fully funded privately. And it allowed us to grow our advocacy voice to become much stronger, not in a bully way. But in a hey, what we say matters. We need to be working together that wound up developing relationship with our elected officials that they’re coming to us saying, are you all going to take a position on this? Can we present to your policy and advocacy committees on this issue we’d like to work with you on furthering this topic. So it’s created a better partnership. So advocacy is very important. The convening, bringing our members together, we all learned the value of our chambers during the COVID time when we couldn’t come together. We immediately became a virtual chamber as everybody else did. And we kept telling our members now more than ever, you need your town square. We are your virtual town square, you can’t go to the town square. And we saw our retention rates go up because we just kept reaching out and contacting our members and being that virtual connecting point for them. So convening is critically important. A lot of times chambers get criticized on oh they just have events. That’s all they do. Being that place where they business people can come together and the business community can gather is important to the community. So don’t let that criticism slow you down. Competition was the fourth factor, competition, not those that are against you. But for those good volunteers that you want, and those budget dollars that you need to succeed, there’s a lot of competition for their time and their financial resources. So you have to prove your worth, in that loud, crowded arena, that they want to focus on you. And they want to be part of who you are and what you’re doing. So competition for their time, and competition for their scarce valuable resources. critically important. And the fifth item was self promotion. Everything we do in the chamber world staff does all the work we give our volunteers all the credit, we know that a majority of the work, I should say in case any volunteer ceases. But we don’t tell our story well enough on volunteer, Jane Doe did this at the Chamber of Commerce, they worked with us at the chamber to get this done. So telling our story on why it matters. And the impact of what we do matters to our members is critically important. So that self promotion through storytelling is really what can make your organization strong, impactful humanizes a big organization, and gets people to say I want to be a part of that. So those five factors are the ones that I wrote about in more detail in the dissertation.

Brandon Burton 21:33
Absolutely, those are, I can see why those five factors kind of rose to the top. And I can see as you as you gave attention to competition in the community for for resources and volunteers and time that the competition factor is going to point to those other factors as well right to be able to show your value, and why they should be you know, giving money and time and effort towards your organization. So I’m also a big fan of the self promotion, the storytelling, I tried to get chambers, you know, across the country to do podcast and especially coming through the pandemic when you couldn’t convene together and traditional ways. There’s ways of telling stories, telling the stories, your members telling the success that your chamber had and helping other businesses be successful. So there’s a lot of different avenues of doing that with the self promotion. Are there other other I don’t wanna say factors? Because that might, you know, muddy the definitions here, these five key factors, but are there other elements that stood out to you in your research that you found eye opening? Or maybe he hadn’t given a lot of thought to before that that just stood out that are worth mentioning?

Bob Rohrlack 22:48
Well, you know, I’m gonna flip the question upside down. Because there was, there were two things that stood out that I was really surprised with, in a not so great way. Okay. Those five factors didn’t really surprise me. But I was surprised at the alignment between the volunteer leader and the paid staff leader. The they all lined up except convening and competition were flipped from the staff to the volunteer. But what gave me great concern, and you actually picked up on it when you commented that I’ve memorized and I know our mission statement, not one interview, when asked about how do they define effectiveness? How do they measure their effectiveness? mentioned their mission statement? A strategic plan, a mission plan? Any kind of plan? Not one? Oh, wow. Why do you have your plan? If it’s not how you, you know, measure, figure your your effectiveness? And how do you know you’re being effective if you don’t even mention your plan. So that taught me that we really need to make sure we are aligning to our vision plan and that it matters. And we’re putting it in front of the members all the time and helping them to focus on here’s how to engage and be a part of who we are. So if there’s one takeaway, besides, people can download the dissertation, know your mission statement, not just that you can recite it, but that you know it and you’re thinking how to apply it and live in your organization. And if you have a strategic plan and vision plan and operation plan, some type of plan, know your plan, not memorize a big plan, but know how to apply and how to how to plug it into what you’re doing. Our entire team at our chamber knows, if you have an idea, don’t even come to present it if you can’t align it to at least one of the pillars that I mentioned previously. The more pillars you can align it to the better your chance of getting support both financial and time. But that vision plan matters. We report every year how we are aligning to that vision plan. The day after the annual meeting. I tell the team we start writing the story for next year today. a CIO, you have, you’ve got to know that and that was the big surprise takeaway that people didn’t talk about their vision plan, their mission statement or any kind of strategic plan.

Brandon Burton 25:12
Yeah, that is that is I mean, it’s not surprising just for the experience that I’ve seen, but at the same time, it is kind of shocking that that’s not more central in decision making, and, and being able to measure success and effectiveness. And our our chamber

Bob Rohrlack 25:29
years ago, was known as chamber does your whatever the issue or the idea of that your chairman was, that’s what everybody got rallied around. When they pass the gavel, they dropped the issue, we picked up the next issue. It’s hard to align people and keep moving progressively as an organization to impact the issues you want to impact if you’re turning all the time. So we our vision plan serves, these are the bumpers, here’s how we’re going to work towards these issues. And it really was impactful during the COVID years, when we were trying to be impactful to the members, but kept working on that vision and relaying that to the members. And what we were doing is we reached out to every member and touched them as much as we could let them know we cared about them, and how are they doing through the process,

Brandon Burton 26:17
right. And when you’re constantly changing direction each year, every other year, it makes it really hard for your community to understand what the chamber does, right. And when you talk about, you know, the keys and measuring effectiveness of the chamber I think of with ACC does a good job. I think when it comes down to the chamber the year you know, each year they select these finalists after doing the the chamber benchmarking surveys and everything. And being able to measure effectiveness in their community with the impact that these chambers. So they’re measuring effectiveness by impact in their community, which you should be able to look to your community and they see these things that you’re doing to to further a positive cause throughout the community. And of course, it is intentionally left vague as I say that because it should go back to your mission and your vision statement. And every chamber is going to be slightly different with that. But for the most part, it’s promoting business and promoting good community environment.

Bob Rohrlack 27:21
Right. And as we were looking at starting to vision plan, and so we want to be a diverse organization, we realize our diversity of our members wasn’t matching the county, what are we going to do? So we started researching that and looking at who’s doing what to support minority businesses. We kept digging kept looking. It was a three year study period for us. We couldn’t find quantifiable research and data on the status of the minority business community. In our county, again, our county being the most diverse county in the region. So I got support from the board. We hired an economist, and we studied the minority business community here in the county. And what we found out and this is several years ago was about 48% of the privately owned businesses are black are Hispanic owned, that’s a great stat to have our community. But at the time, their impact was only 5% of the GDP. That is a problem. So that we kept researching what how can we plug into this not stepping on somebody’s toes without replicating another program, what we could do. ACCE helped us we looked at other programs around the country. But we wound up developing our minority business accelerator program. It’s a two year cohort program. Companies have to apply to be in they have a small amount of skin in the game. And it’s a deep dive helping them work to make their business stronger so they can grow. As then we track them for three years after they finished the two year cohort program. It’s it’s proven to be very successful slow start is folks, does the chamber mean it and they really want to do this. But now we’re we have companies coming to saying I want to get in I want to get in, I want to be part of this program. And we’re seeing the diversity of our membership as an organization change in the right direction as well, which is one of the big benefits we were aiming for. So the process of studying the issue, being knowledgeable on the issue before we acted on the issue helped us have a stronger impact that we’re still having in that area today.

Brandon Burton 29:32
Yeah, and I think it’s so important to look at key aspects like that to be able to see where, you know, these column, the key indicator where you you see a percentage of minority owned businesses in the community, but then the impact on the economy in the community and seeing that disparity and being able to make a difference there. And I see. Oftentimes when you see minority focused chambers that pop up, whether it’s a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce or African American Chamber of Commerce, they tend to sprout up in their origins because they don’t feel like they’re being represented well in the business community. And if there’s a seat at the table, if they really are being looked at as any other business and really trying to have that, that positive impact in the economy and and building one community, instead of fragments, here and there, it really gives everybody a place to call home and really that convening power of businesses in general,

Bob Rohrlack 30:30
right, and we talk to the diversity chambers, from the point of we get it, it makes sense for you all to want to get together with your common bond. But don’t forget to make sure we’re all working together as well. So we don’t create islands, because islands will just feed what we’re identifying as the problem not getting us to the solution. And so, we’ve worked very hard to show that we are in this together with every other chamber in our region. And you know, we all succeed better together than trying to go along, just working from that philosophy.

Brandon Burton 31:04
Absolutely. So important having that that synergy, even amongst the chambers in a community or in a region to be able to align those, those purposes. So Right. So Bob, I wanted to ask, if for a chamber listening, who is interested in taking their organization up to the next level, what tip or action item might you share with them to to help accomplish that goal?

Bob Rohrlack 31:32
To do that, you got to know where you are, you got to know what’s working and what’s not working. But the why and try to stay away from anything anecdotal. The data driven, was when we were asking our members for diversity information. Some would give it some what not. So we made a stronger push to get that information. And we got a little bit of pushback, why are you asking Is it because you measure what matters, we want our organization to be more diverse. And then a great unintended consequence, as we focused on that. And we were more open about it, other organizations in the region. So you know, we need to be thinking about that, too. We need to be focusing on that. There’s another organization that when our when companies graduate, from our minority business accelerator, they give them a year membership in their organization to help introduce them to what they’re doing. So we’re seeing that we’re all going to succeed better together this way. But know the data of your organization? How did you get to where you are? What’s been your economic trend? What’s been your, your membership trend? on whatever issue you’re working on? How was it trajectory? What’s the trajectory for it and the market and go to your leadership, with data, and nothing deals with an issue better than just being able to put data in fact, in front of them? Not anecdotal? That was one of the problems when we were researching the minority program, I met with a lot of different groups. I got a lot of anecdotal suggestions. And you ought to you should do this, do that, where I came from that that and the other. And I said, that’s wonderful. Can you get the program information? Can you what data do you have, that you can share with me? No one had it. I said, Well, how can you advise where to go if you don’t know where you are? So you really need to know what the situation is, whatever your topic is, and how you’re working on it.

Brandon Burton 33:26
Yeah. And in today’s world, it’s easier than ever to collect data. That’s right, and to be able to reference it and digest it in a way that makes sense to chart a path forward.

Bob Rohrlack 33:35
And some folks may know this, I didn’t until I started the DBA program. We all know Google and searching on Google. But in the academic community, there’s a whole nother lane of Google called Google scholars. And it’s the peer reviewed academic research angle. And if you don’t have access to it, talk to your university about helping you to be able to get access to it. But that will get you the the research papers that have been done on the topic you’re looking for. And there’s a ton out there. I know everything about chambers, that I’ve tried to start in Africa, and other areas that didn’t really fit in apply to what we’re doing United States. But as I was trying to find United States research, I saw how much is out there for other areas. So definitely tap into Google scholars.

Brandon Burton 34:28
It’s a great tip. So, Rob, I like asking everyone to have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Bob Rohrlack 34:42
Another good question. When I first got into the chamber world, a long time ago, it was we’re the business organization we help businesses succeed and grow about so they can hire more people and that’s our focus. There are other groups focusing on the social issues in the community. That’s great. They’re good they need to focus on that as well. But this is the lane we have. And it was a pretty hard and fast lane. If anything we’ve seen over the last several years, it’s not that way anymore. We need to be more concerned about how those issues are impacted. Everything that goes on, for example, we did an event late last year on human trafficking, and the impact that it has to the region, for the reasons of human trafficking, and the sex exploitation industry, but there’s also normal jobs that you would see regular jobs, where people are being trafficked to work in jobs that form well below minimum wage that you may not even know. So how do we help elevate from that, and the human trafficking connection to incarceration, to the foster care system, to unemployment, it connects throughout the whole economy. So we wanted our members to be more aware of it. And we have people who work within the industries in organizations to combat that Industry Council will help people as they’re exiting, and just trying to work on that. So that’s just an example of chambers, I think, really, in the future have got to figure away, and it’s unique to each community. What are some of the social service issues they could partner with and get their members to help and be involved in the economy is not as rigid as it was, it’s impacting everything. And we’ve got to have a more caring approach. Beyond just business success.

Brandon Burton 36:42
Like that, it’s going to show more of what that impact is that effectiveness of the chambers to get involved with the social service issues this year, right as he called them. But Bob, this has been a fun conversation. It’s been it’s been fun to to learn more of the research that you found and, and the work you had to do to to get down to this research, since it wasn’t just available to research on your own. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you learn more about the research your dissertation, what would be the best way to reach out and connect.

Bob Rohrlack 37:21
Yeah, the best way, you go to our website, TampaBayChamber.com. And see the different things we’re doing our vision plan is there and in the measurables, how we’re tracking for the vision plan. And I can be reached through email, first initial last name, so brohrlack@tampabaychamber.com. But if you go to TampaBayChamber.com, you can find me there. And then it’s googling the dissertation that will come up. And then the other articles that I’ve had published because I’ve made that a goal to get more research on chambers of commerce in the United States, in scholarly publications. So I’ve had a couple things published already. So just just, they can all be found. But I’m happy to help anybody anyway, I can.

Brandon Burton 38:11
Good deal. And we can try to do too. And our show notes will have your contact information, but we can try to link directly to your dissertation. So people want to go there and find that and maybe save some Google searching and poking around. And I can just go straight to the show notes for this episode. But Bob, this has been a good conversation, you’ve shined a lot of light on the work that Chambers of Commerce do and in particular with how they go about being effective in servicing their communities. So thank you for sharing this with us. It’s been an insightful conversation from a very unique perspective. So I do appreciate that.

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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 the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m 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.

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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Jeremy Arthur. Jeremy currently serves as the executive director of the government and Economic Development Institute at Auburn University. He serves as the chief administrative executive responsible for the total operations of the organization that provides guidance training, professional development, leadership, community development, research and Civic Engagement endeavors across the state of Alabama. Jeremy began his career at the Economic Development Institute at Auburn University and then went on to serve as president of the Pratt Ville Area Chamber of Commerce in Alabama, where he led community development initiatives economic development efforts, tourism plans, and many other programs. Most recently, he served as the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce association of Alabama, and represented all the local chambers of commerce across the state providing guidance training, professional development and leadership and advocacy. He serves on several boards and organizations on the national level state and regional levels, both it within communities and in the chamber industry as well. But Jeremy is a two time Auburn University graduate and is currently a PhD candidate in public administration and public policy. He also holds the CCE designation, which is held by less than 4% of chamber executives nationally. Jeremy, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I know you’ve been on my radars, as we talked about before we got on the recording for some time. And it’s great to finally have you on the show. So love for you to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Jeremy Arthur 3:43
Hey, Brandon, thanks for having me. Absolutely. I love the term chamber champion, because that’s exactly what Chamber of Commerce executives, professionals and leadership are they are champions to me. I lived in that world for a long time, I still get to play in that world now. Even though I have moved back into higher education, but, uh, thank you for what you do and the service that you provide, just to connect chambers and really celebrate them. It’s been great. I have loved my chamber career, again, ran up to about 1000 member chamber for about 10 years, the largest suburb right outside our State Capitol in Alabama, in Brattleboro and then went on for another eight, nine years to run our State Chamber association 120 chambers in the state. So I’ve done a little bit of everything from lobbying to leading to training to serving to you name it, so put those hats on, so many of your listeners do every day. And I will know that so it’s fun. It’s great to be with you. And thanks for having me.

Brandon Burton 4:47
Absolutely. So yeah, you’ve got you’ve got a little bit of experience over your career of doing you know, touching on all these different areas of work. So currently me So tell us a little bit more. I mean, you touched on the panel chamber and, you know, leading the chamber association there in Alabama. Tell us a little bit more about your current work, the University of Auburn and your current position as Executive Director of Government Economic Development Institute, what what does that entail? What does your work look like these days? Right.

Jeremy Arthur 5:21
So really, it expanded my scope and scale of work to add the government piece. So I would say essentially, we’re a training institute. So we do whether in the government arena, whether you’re an elected official, whether you’re an appointed official, whether you’re a merit employee, or when a bureaucrat, and I don’t use that term negatively, that just means someone who works for the government who has a career in the government. We do all sorts of certifications, accreditations career trajectory, basically, professional development, continuing education, all of those things, county commissioners, probate judges, and then whether you work at the DMV, or that you’re a tax assessor, we run all them on the government side of the house. And then our economic development side of the house still keeps me connected to the local Chambers of Commerce. We have certification programs, for chambers for chamber execs, for economic developers all in that arena. So I’ll lump that in and call that community development. And then that even touches on tourism that touches on hospitality. So all those quality of life issues, but then also the professional execution of those duties. That’s what we do at our office as the Training Institute, we have a research arm, because obviously, we’re an institute of higher education. And so we do some publications, looking at issues facing Alabama, that really transcend from one end of the state to the other that a lot of our chambers in the state are trying to tackle that really are issues across the country, whether we’re looking at inflation, whether we’re looking at Medicaid, expansion, Medicare, whether we’re looking at prison, population, education, etc. So that’s a little bit about what we do. And then we offer some community assistance projects partner with a lot of folks to just try to increase wealth and increase training, we do some entrepreneurship, training for businesses, very involved in Main Street. So again, all that is going to bring very clear with chambers steel.

Brandon Burton 7:16
Absolutely. And I appreciate you given that background and in the work that you’re involved with now, because I know, I know, when you announced that you were leaving the chamber to go back to the universe out there. I know there’s a little bit of heartache amongst the chamber professionals, like Jeremy’s leaving, but he’s not right. He’s just he’s not employed at a chamber directly. But he’s still very involved with with chamber work and community development, as he just explained. So the he’s still here, he’s still connected, and he’s on the show today to provide some of that knowledge for us. So thank you, you are too

Jeremy Arthur 7:49
kind. I appreciate that. Some of my literally my best friends I have made through this profession, all over the country. And so I’m very blessed and appreciative of

Brandon Burton 8:00
them. Absolutely. So as we get into our discussion, our topic or area of focus for our discussion today is going to be around governance. And I know you know, people across the country chamber professionals, they may have heard you talk and present on governance at different conferences and so forth. But there’s a lot that haven’t yet. And even for those that have this may be a good you know, good thing to be able to earmark and their podcast player and go back and listen to it again and and reference it often. So I’m excited to get into this conversation with you as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:23
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Brandon Burton 11:18
Alright, Jeremy, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, I know you’ve you’ve presented on governance a lot. So as far as the topic matter goes, I would definitely default to you as far as what what to cover here. But I’d like to just hand the mic over to you and maybe talk about what are some of those key things as the chamber looks at governance and how they work, you know, in connection with the board, and where are those areas of responsibility lie? What are some of those key factors that chambers need to be mindful of, and in running a successful organization?

Jeremy Arthur 11:58
Brandon, I know we laugh. And we started this, I said, it’s hard to make this topic sexy. As much as you said, you know, the evidence is just not that flashy, you know, set the world on fire. But to me, it is critical because you’ve got to get your internal house in order before you can build your external house. And really the sound governance structure is necessary at all levels of the organization, we certainly apply it to the boards or the council’s or our governing authorities that we serve, typically elected about our membership, but really it stretches out to our volunteers what they should know, and how they can support and help with our own governance issues. And then certainly there are key documents that people don’t even think about or related to governments, to governance as a whole. You know, I would start by saying there’s some some board basics and and you’re right, I’ve been blessed. I’ve worked in 14 states. And I just finished one in Virginia two weeks ago, doing board retreats and board orientations and working on government’s governance strategies, I was very fortunate to teach and still also chair, the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute for organization management board of trustees. And so I finished that year before last as chair and so taught at all the institute sites and, you know, I work with ACCA, and, and all of our partners and so I’ve done about 300, I think plus of these, and really, it’s if you start fundamentally, it’s it’s with duties. And so when you’re looking at governance, it’s the duty of care. That means as a volunteer leader of an organization, as a board member, let’s say that you are going to make all the decisions you can based on the material that’s available to you and the information that you have, so that you can make a decision in good faith, using the best judgment, you have to reach a reasonable conclusion. So that’s the fundamental definition I think that we’re dealing with. And then subsequent things duty of loyalty, you know, you want to protect the interests of the chamber that you’re serving, don’t do any harm or injury to it. And then I would say you’ve got to review and approve function. So that’s a primary function of a board or a governance entity, where you’re looking at all things relating to the organization to the chamber, the mission, the vision, the strategic plan, the budget, you know, policies and procedures, all of those internal workings. And we’ll talk about bylaws, I’m sure later one of the key governance documents, but then just overseeing those and making sure you’re compliant. And then I guess, kind of maybe two or three more, you’re going to select the board really hires and fires or evaluates the chief staff person. So whether that’s an executive director or President CEO, and then that chief staff person hires and fires evaluates the rest of the staff and

So that’s a key component for them. And then I guess the last piece, I would just say, in basics is that they’re just monitoring the organization and the performance of the board themselves. It’s self governance, it’s peer accountability. So again, being ethical, being fair, being transparent, avoiding conflicts of interest, working for the best interest of the organization, setting that strategic direction, that’s all fundamentally, what a board should be doing. Now, how do you do that? Well, you know, there’s, I would say, there’s,

Brandon Burton 15:38
that’s what we have here for today. So

Jeremy Arthur 15:41
first and foremost, you always hear me talk about the mission statement. And so that is really who you are. It’s usually brief. And it really does guide the actions of the chamber, it states your overall purpose, why you exist, it’s supposed to give you a sense of direction and help guide your decision making. Most of maybe you don’t know it is required by the IRS to have a mission statement. It can be changed, but it’s submitted annually. Certainly, you know, most people are probably familiar with the form 990, but form 1023, or 1024. And again, it really does guide you and that’s what I was gonna say, if you’re doing things that are outside of your mission statement, to me, that’s a red flag, you’ve kind of got that mission drift or that mission creep. You know, fundamentally, I guess, just to organize, you got to have articles of incorporation in most states, and whether that’s done with the Secretary of State’s office, or whether that’s done with the Department of Commerce or whatever. It’s just a legal document that allows you to organize, state your purpose, usually register as a nonprofit, in most cases, a C six above a one C six, which again, is just a tax designation. It really just kind of defines your purpose related to kind of state government. And then I think the key document is your bylaws. There’s a reason if you look at that word, it is by law, though it is your set of rules that you agree, the good thing about it is, most states give you some sort of nonprofit statute to follow. But you’ve set your own rules. It’s how you’re in relation, how you work with your members, how you work with your investors, your partners, and it governs and relates, and regulates your internal structure. So it’s how you do business there. It’s kind of typically broad and very general. But it’s your procedures for your meetings, it’s your boards, it’s how you select your board. It’s how you amend the bylaws, and you know, those kinds of things, all those steps that kind of govern you internally. But please make sure you do what are in it, what’s in that document. And we’ll talk about that, because that is the surefire way. In theory, well, really, in practice, if you violate those bylaws, and it’s pointed out, you can lose your nonprofit status. And so that’s a downer in an overall upbeat Chamber Chat Podcast. But that’s how serious this is. And so, you know, I’ve seen bylaws that, that haven’t been updated in 30 years, you know, that were the original set of bylaws when the chamber was organized. And it still says, you know, we’re going to notify our members of our annual meeting 10 days prior to the meeting via the United States Postal Service, and you know, all those kinds of things and just sort of outdated and it really needs to be updated, refreshed. In fact, our best practice I would say with your bylaws is we instituted an operations committee that meets every third year, because that’s how our board rotation was that theoretically, we could have a third of our board members new every three years. And so this just took an operations operational approach to say we’re just gonna look at all of our operating documents and make sure we’re following them, make sure they’re up to date, make sure they’re current and making helping us meet our mission. And then that leads you know, your policies and procedures, make sure you know policies are not procedures. For example, the policy may be any check over $2,000 has to have two signatures Okay, that’s the policy. The procedure is then the CEO signs it the treasurer signs it you know, it’s been processed through this account, etc. So make sure you know, those are really consistent, but that they also mesh with the bylaws and that none of these documents conflict. You’ve probably got a strategic plan and outlines your your goals and your objectives what you’re trying to do. If you think about it, your budget is even a governance document, because it is your income and expenses. It’s approved by the board. It’s documented oftentimes with line items. And then if you’ve got sort of an annual work plan, I guess that’s kind of the final document in my mind. Just how you can track your progress. Are we meeting our goals? are we implementing the strategic plan? And here’s how we’re doing that? Are we including those performance measures and responsibilities? And are we are the goals in place to help us accomplish that? So all those things are kind of in a solid governance structure model? I guess.

Brandon Burton 20:40
So as you went through a lot of these different documents, these as pieces of the structure, is he talking about budget, and to me that that seems like a commonplace thing to you know, you review your budget on a regular basis, call it a monthly basis, make sure your income expenses are what you expect, and there’s not any surprises coming up. And I know a lot of chambers, they look at their strategic plan, maybe on a three or five year basis, but then review it annually to make sure they’re staying on track. Any guidance as far as how often to be reviewing a mission plan or a mission statement? Or you mentioned the bylaws? You know, maybe the suggestion was every three years, maybe depending on the structure of your, your board and your organization? But correct, what are some of these maybe good practices for keeping these things up to date and making sure that you’re staying on course,

Jeremy Arthur 21:37
that’s why we codified it in our bylaws, you know, if you put a committee in your bylaws, and that committee has to meet. And so that’s why we said, Okay, we’re gonna make sure that this committee meets and ours happens to meet every third year it could meet annually. to really look at it, I mean, I wouldn’t envision that the total direction of a chamber would change that often. I mean, you can get some broad language and a mission statement. But I put the mission statement at the top of every single one of our board agendas, because it gives us focus. And really, I would challenge our board, the boards that I’ve worked for, to say before you make a motion, read that mission statement, and is the action that you’re proposing to obligate the chamber to fulfill, can you find a place for it in that mission statement. And to me, that’s the ultimate way to prevent mission drift or mission creep, and keep you focused on what the task is at hand. Again, the mission statement is your very purpose for being I’m a big fan of moving things into consent agendas, if they don’t require action of the board. But there are board reports that the board needs to be aware of, you know, being a board member is an active process. And it requires an obligation on both parts. And not only the professional staff, of which I was and your listeners probably are. But if you’re a board member, it also requires you to participate and read the things that are sent to you because again, you’re the governing authority. And so if there’s no action item, but it’s important, so that you know the work of the chamber, put it in the consent agenda that requires one motion, again, and it can be voted on that way. And it really streamlines your board meetings, you know, right. And I’ve always said, serving on the chamber board should be a positive experience. And I know when I facilitate a lot of these, I will oftentimes in fact, I think I’ve said it in probably everyone. If the serving on the chamber board is not a positive experience for you, there is no harm, no foul, in bowing out. And for whatever reason, you may have personal circumstances that have changed professional circumstances that have changed, or you’ve just lost the passion. That’s okay. Our lives are constantly changing. And I promise you, you’re not doing that chamber of favor, by hanging on to that board position, just step back for a little bit, we’ll replace you and let’s reconsider you in the future. That’s a hard decision, sometimes a hard discussion, but it shouldn’t be. Because again, you want what’s best for the organization. The leadership wants what’s best for the organization. And so I think we need to really take a look at that. But going back to that mission statement, and those really, if a Motion is made, that’s going to obligate the chamber into an action, make sure it lines up and doesn’t violate your bylaws is within your scope and your scale and really follows your mission statement. So I think that’s some actionable takeaways. Hopefully.

Brandon Burton 24:39
Absolutely. And as you talk about board members and being actively engaged with the board, I think for any any chamber listening to be mindful of that too, as you recruit board members to think is this somebody who has that bandwidth to be actively engaged or is it a status symbol, you know, for them to be on the board?

Jeremy Arthur 25:02
Are they checking a box right? In front of I’m a huge proponent of written job responsibilities and roles for a board member. Give that perspective board member a job description, I’ll send you a sample reach out to me. I mean, there are tons of samples you can Google on, ACCE has tons of samples. Again, to me, it’s the highest compliment and utmost show of respect. Because I’m asking you, here’s what I need from you, potential prospective board member. Here’s the time commitment I’m asking for. Here’s the potential financial commitment I’m asking for. Here’s the attendance requirement that I’m asking for, here’s what I need you to do. Can you objectively look at that, and say, I can do it. Now also, in that job description, is what the chamber Exec is going to provide to you. I’m going to be respectful of your time, I’m going to make sure that our board meetings only last an hour, I’m going to make sure that I’m really seeking your input and your guidance, and I’m not just providing a report to you, I need your I need your expertise, I need you to lead for me. So it is you know, it’s a two way street. But to me, it’s the ultimate show of professionalism and respect so that a prospective board member could determine whether they can say yes or no. And then also during their term, they can continue to evaluate if they’re able to meet that job, responsibility, write it down. It’s not meant to be overly legalistic or, you know, you didn’t do this or you didn’t do that. It’s just again, an agreement of how we need to move forward together.

Brandon Burton 26:42
Right. And like you said, it goes both ways. And I can picture you know, most board members are busy people, there’s some of the busiest people in the community. Right, right, right, you don’t want the person who’s just looking for time to fill, right? Correct. So it says you have busy people on your board, and you’re recruiting busy people, you need to be able to give them some kind of an outline. Otherwise, you’re just saying, hey, we want you on your on our board. And then as you have things come up, you’re getting frustrated, because they’re not responding in a timely manner, or they’re not meeting your expectations. Because you’ve never shared what those expectations were to begin with to see if it was reasonable for them. So I think that is a key point to to apply in your recruiting of board members. Are there other I’m sure there are there are other things that we need to make sure listeners are considering when it comes to governance at their chamber and, and working well with their board and in. And specifically, I’m thinking towards the bylaws and making sure it’s not a fun thing, right to go back and read through your bylaws over? Absolutely. At the same time, you know, animals think of it as is a quite literally a religious practice, right? So that’s somebody in religion, you have your book a scripture, you have your Bible or whatever, you don’t just read a passage of scripture once and then forget about it, right? Someone who’s religious goes back to those scripture passages over and over to ingrain it and make it be part of them. And I see the bylaws kind of being something similar, where you need to go back to it often to become ingrained as part of you and your regular practice.

Jeremy Arthur 28:22
That’s the perfect analogy. And it is incumbent upon really staff more so than board, although it’s applicable to the board, because that’s the rules they follow. But it’s really on you as staff to make sure you’re doing that. And that’s why it’s just good to review them. Again, I think as a as an exec in a chamber, you got to know those bylaws like you said forward, backward, upward, downward, you need to know everything in there. And again, it’s not to be you know, I want to say this and put a disclaimer on there. They couldn’t really be quite vague. So as membership based organizations, while he’s specifically in the state of Alabama where I am, if you can’t tell by my accent, I’m sure you can, you knew it was somewhere in the south listener. But, and Alabama is a membership organization, we’re required to have an annual meeting, at least some event, some opportunity where the entire membership is invited. And typically it looks like when we have a change of officers or an awards banquet, you know, that’s typically where we incorporate that. But it has to have an opportunity and it is a business meeting for all members of the organization to be invited and also have a chance to address the assembly as the whole address the board. Most of the time it doesn’t happen but you understand that but to me if you put that in the bylaws, you can just simply say our organization, our chamber will have an annual meeting period. And I’ve seen so many bylaws that say our annual meeting will be on the third Thursday of September. It will start at six o’clock and it will be at the Civic Center. Well, you just set yourself up for failure if something happens on the third Thursday of September, and the Civic centers booked, I mean, you know, and that sounds trivial. But in theory, you are in violation of your bylaws, you have broken your own rules. And that sets you up for, you know, not good. And it can go as far as litigation, you know, those kinds of things if you have a disgruntled member, and again, I’ve seen things that were not malicious, they were just innocent, I’ve seen people focus on an end date, rather than our pre process, and kind of skirt some things. And again, not malicious at all, but violated the bylaws. And so automatically, you broke your own rules that govern your relationship between you and your members. And when that happens, you lose trust. And it just kind of spirals from there.

Brandon Burton 30:54
Yeah, I can see where we’re leaving a little bit of vagueness, because it’s helpful to be able to have that flexibility to stay within your bylaws, but also be able to adapt, you know, as times change, and if you’re set to be on the, you know, the third Tuesday of, you know, at the Civic Center, and then your your chamber size, you know, doubles in size, which hopefully you can’t fit in the civic center anymore, you know, so

Jeremy Arthur 31:19
and that’s why I said a periodic review of your bylaws is key, because then you can adapt to the changing circumstances you find your chamber in just the prime example you

Brandon Burton 31:30
just used. Right? Very good. Well, Jeremy, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, if you might have any tip or action item for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what might you suggest for them?

Jeremy Arthur 31:45
Well, I’m biased, I’m going to tell you the start to go to institute. First and foremost, the Institute for organization management with the US Chamber. Like I said, it just finished my term as Chair of the Board of Trustees, but multiple sites multiple times across the year is really a great foundational program. And then it led me to pursue my CCE, like you said, less than four or 5% of of execs in the country have a certified chamber executive designation. Same way with ACA II and their ca they’re certified Association Executive, all in this realm and arena. I mean, that’s your professional designation and your certification. And it also shows your continuing education. You know, I’m biased now I would say partner with your local University, if you’ve got a regional or a statewide, I happen to have a statewide footprint. And we are all the time they’re Institute’s like mine, whether it’s called a similar name, or something different office of public service, again, professional continuing education, at institutions of higher education, whether it’s a community college, whether it’s a technical college, whether it’s a four year institution, you name it, that can be a great resource. And that also has access to resources that can help you and be a great partner. And so that’s a shameless plug, given what I do now. But it also helps me and, again, keeps me connected to that. And so I think that’s great takeaways, review those documents, don’t let, it’s not a daunting task, reach out for help. We have a great network, your listener, base, your followers here, you can make connections. And then I would say continue to invest, listen to this podcast. I mean, I’ve just listened just recently, we were talking, I travel a lot. And so it’s great for me to be a podcast listener in a car, or on a plane as much as I travel. And so just continue to really benchmark those best practices. And don’t be afraid to ask this community across this country is so helpful, is willing to, I mean, literally counsel, you share best practices. And I’ll be the first to say you call me I’ll tell you where I messed up. And I’ll say, Hey, don’t do this. I did it. And it didn’t work. It might work for you. But let me help you avoid some pitfalls. So I hope that helps, too. But just again, make sure your internal house is in order. Because when it’s in order, the sky’s the limit what you can do externally.

Brandon Burton 34:21
Absolutely. I love those tips. So you can just keep going all day with these lessons you’ve learned. So Jeremy, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jeremy Arthur 34:37
I think they’re more relevant now than ever before. But I think their roles and their definitions are changing. We’re no longer just an entity that networks we should be an entity that convenes, facilitates and leads and we’re doing just that. When you look at the innovative things that can entities are doing across the state led by their Chamber of Commerce. Because the chamber is seen as that convener of bringing partners together, of making those connections to truly solve real world problems. obvious example here in Alabama for years, our business community and our education community tucked at each other, not with each other, and not to each other. They talked at each other. And we have broken down the silos to really say business community, how can the education community help you? How can they help you train your workers? What do you need to tackle these workforce development issues? What are programs we need to do and again, the Chamber’s across the state, led that charge and are leading that charge. And I will also say, you know, unfortunately, we do find ourselves sometimes in a divisive culture, where you know, that sensational bad news sales, and we have so much good news to sell. And to talk about that we need to, we need to be there, we need to be the front line, for every negative headline, generating for positive headlines because they’re there in your community. And also don’t shortchange yourself, and don’t undersell yourself, something that may you may consider trivial, and it’s just a part of your job, can really be life changing to a lot of people. Tell your story. Tell your story. It’s hard, we’re busy doing the work. So we don’t have time to tell our story. We’re doing the story. But don’t forget to tell your story. Because it’s important, and people should hear it.

Brandon Burton 36:48
Absolutely. I love that great, great vision of the future but also you know, chock full of more tips too. So well thank you Jeremy, for for sharing this, you know, great, great information with us. I hope this is a an episode that listeners go back to often as maybe as you know, a regular basis as they go back to look through bylaws, go back to this episode, I went to Jeremy Slater here, and just you know, jot down your notes and make it a regular practice. But Jeremy, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you learn more, and just maybe a dive in a little bit deeper. Where Where would you point them to reach out and connect with you?

Jeremy Arthur 37:31
Absolutely. Hey, you can follow me, I’m on all the social media platforms. So Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, our institute, the government and Economic Development Institute, if you just go to auburn.edu, you can find us there. It’s technically auburn.edu/outreach/ged. And you can find us there, we would love to, you know, I will help you if I can help you. Certainly we cover the state of Alabama, but my reach is much broader and much more in scope than that. And I’m willing to help you. And if you’ll reach out to me anyway, also my email just my first initial last name, jarthur@auburn.edu. And I think I’ve given my my employer and my alma mater plugs by saying that Auburn University, so but again, reach out to me if I can help you there are free resources on our website as well that anybody can use. Specifically, I’ll just put a plug, there’s a you’ll see a tab on our website, called know your community, free and open to anybody has great demographic research of literally every community in the country. You can be a comparative research. Again, look at that. And if we can help you, thank you. And then I would just encourage folks, continue to listen to this chamber chat. Even if you see a topic that you say, well, that doesn’t really apply to me listen to it, because I promise you, you will take away something from your guests and their experience. If you listen.

Brandon Burton 39:07
I appreciate that. Jeremy. We will. We’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, the website I encourage everybody to check out the Know Your Community tab. That sounds like great, great resource there for for anybody listening.

Jeremy Arthur 39:22
So it’s free. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 39:24
it’s free. You can’t beat that. I love that. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for being with us today provided a ton of value for listeners. And this is a the perfect type of programming that we’d like to have. You’re on the podcast. So thank you so much.

Thanks Brandon.

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Leadership Programs with Debra Orner

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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 the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m 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 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 Debra Orner. Debra is the Vice President the Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce in Pennsylvania. She began her career with the Cambria Regional Chamber in 1998. She’s responsible for the Chamber’s external operations including events and programs. And among these is her professional pride and joy the John V Gunter Community Leadership Initiative. Prior to coming to the chamber, Deborah worked in public relations at St. Francis University and on the staff of the late Congressman John P. Murtha. Debra is past chair of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce professionals, and has served on his board of directors since 2012. She was the first non CEO to be elected to this position. She has served as chair at the PACP professionals and leadership conference since 2013, and is also a member of the communications committee. Debra is also an IOM graduate. Locally, Debra is at the vice president of the Johnstown United neighbourhoods, which began as a community project of the leadership program. She also serves on the board of directors of several other local organizations. Debra, we’re excited to have you with us today here in timber tap podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Debra Orner 3:25
Thank you, Brandon. As mentioned in my bio, this is my 25th year in chamber work. Never thought I’d have a job that long. But once I started, it was just it was just Kismet. And I love doing it. I can’t imagine doing anything else. And my chamber friends actually like to joke that I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight years old because that in the summer of 1977, our city suffered the third devastating flood in our history. And one of the things that came out of that was an advertising campaign that was put together by some local businessman. And some of it was funny like they were they will put up billboards that say were wet but not washed out. But the one that stuck with me was one that says we will rebuild together. And I’m not saying that I knew that Chamber of Commerce was a job you could have when I was eight years old, but I knew I was I wanted to do what those men did. So it just made a huge impression on me. And the other thing that came out of that was our congressman at the time had only been in office probably about two or three years. And where I lived during the flood was across the street from an elementary school that had a very large playground. And that’s where National Guard helicopters would land and that sort of thing. And I was able to witness our congressman landing at our at that playground and getting out and kind of directing things and starting the process and helping to shovel mud and that sort of thing. And that was Congressman John Murtha. So at eight years old, I was looking at this man like he was some sort of John Wayne and he was just one of my first heroes and then I ended up working for him. So it was kind of that was a pivotal event in my I live to kind of had an effect on my later years that I never could have predicted at the time. But so that’s why they like to joke that I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight.

Brandon Burton 5:09
Wow. So I hear a lot of stories about how people get into chamber work. But that is a unique one. So I appreciate you sharing that. And not everybody has that kind of experience when they’re a young child and being able to have those impressions stick with them into adulthood. So thank you for sharing that. Well, tell us a little bit about the Cambria Regional Chamber just to kind of set the table for our discussion give us an idea of the size of chamber scope of work staff budget, that sort of thing, just to prepare us for our conversation.

Debra Orner 5:44
We’re located in Johnstown, which is in Cambria County in Pennsylvania. And that’s about as the crow flies 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. We have about 650 members at the moment and our budgets around $650,000. And we have four full time staff people. And we do a lot with those four people, we have probably 10 major events per year. And a lot of programs in between, like most chambers, we have a governmental action program, we have a women’s issues program. And of course, the thing that’s my favorite is our leadership program. But we also have branched out into kind of becoming a digital media company, we have a pretty strong social media program. We are we do a lot with promoting our members via social media. We do a lot with video. So that’s something that we’ve been getting into the last four years when our new president Amy Bradley came on with her background in news broadcasting. So that’s something that’s been kind of new for us. But we’ve been we’ve been doing pretty well with that, in addition to the other traditional things that the Chamber of Commerce does.

Brandon Burton 6:52
Yeah, that could be a whole conversation within itself right there under the digital media. And

Debra Orner 6:57
absolutely,

Brandon Burton 6:58
you guys are taking there. As we in thank you for sharing the background there on the chamber and what you guys are involved with in the staff. And as we move forward with our discussion today, we’ll be focusing on with what we’ve alluded to a couple of times already through your bio and what you shared with your pride and joy of being in the leadership program. You guys have there at the Canberra Regional Chamber. But we will dive deeper into discussion about that and how you guys approach your leadership program that says to get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:16
Hey, this is Donna. Yiftee community cards are free for you, free for your members and they bring lots of new sales and foot traffic into your local shops and restaurants. But don’t take it from me. Here’s Siobhan from Truckee, California to tell you about her program.

Siobhan Kenney 9:32
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Donna Novitsky 10:03
Thanks Siobhan. If you’d like to join Truckee in supporting the shop local movement, check us out yiftee.com or send an email to sales@yiftee.com. 

Brandon Burton 10:16
All right, Deborah, we’re back. So I’m curious to learn about the leadership program, it’s not often that you hear chamber professionals say that leadership programs are pride and joy. So I can tell this means a lot to you, it’s close to your heart. And I’m sure it’s because there’s been some big impact that’s come out of it. So share with us the approach you guys take and why it means so much to you.

Debra Orner 10:41
Well, I always joke with with my boss and my board of directors that I do leadership for free, and they have to, it’s everything else they have to pay me for, because I love the program that much. I actually took the program over, within two weeks of starting my job back in 1998. And back then, the program was only in its current format, about four years old. They had done a program in the early 80s. Back when corporate dollars for training were more easily had, they would bring in people like Lee Iacocca and Steven Covey, and it was more of an of a really higher level executive training. And it wasn’t a cohort group. The way it is now, back in about 1994 is when it when they started to form it into a cohort group where a group of about 18 to 24, people would go through a series of lectures throughout a nine month period. So then, when I took over in 1998, they also said, Well, a good way for you to learn how to run this program would be to go through it yourself. So my first year with the program, I was actually participating in the program, plus I was learning how to run it. And that was really unique. And I don’t recommend it to anybody because it was it was very confusing for everyone. For my classmates who didn’t understand that I was part of the class plus I was I was running the program and for me trying to be part of the class yet organizing everything. So that wasn’t probably the best way to go about it. But the following year, we instituted an overnight team bonding session. And that’s really where things took off. Because that really cemented the bonds the class would have with each other. And we had two amazing facilitators that I was lucky to have for almost my entire career here that really took the program to another level. And our program is a little different from other programs in that we meet twice a month. And we are skills based rather than the programs that typically have like a healthcare day or a Law Day where they go on basically like field trips to hospitals, and in court systems and that sort of thing. So our program is based around skills like project management, and we’ll do a session on soft skills, and we do emotional intelligence. And we do disk training, which a lot of other programs do as well, but we pair it with other sessions that basically benefit the person through professional development. So we’ll do honorable leadership and, and things like that. So we’re a little bit different from other programs. And we also do, the people that are in the program are required to work on a community project while they’re in the program. So we’ll we divide them up into groups of four, six people, they can choose to work on whatever they want to work on, we use a multi voting process for them to figure out what they want to work on. We give them some project management training at the end of the year. And from there, they run with it. And we’ve had some amazing projects over the years that have just touched 10s of 1000s of lives with the impact that they’ve had. And the the people that are in the program, sometimes the project means so much to them, we do a session at the end of the year where they have to do, they have to present their project to our board of directors. And they’ll do a session where they present to their classmates and their sponsors. And we’ve had grown men in the in the front of the class crying because the project meant so much to them. So it’s not just something we do to keep them busy. It’s something that really means a lot to them, and it ends up being something very meaningful to the community. This year, for instance, we have one group that’s working on building a pavilion at one of the trailheads here in town for one of our one of our hiking and biking trails. And we have another project that’s raising money for a project called the needy children’s shopping tour, which takes disadvantaged children and take they get to go shopping at Christmas time and they get to buy new things and it’s just it’s a really cool experience for everybody involved. And then we have another group that is raising money for an organization called wings for Warriors which is an organization that serves disabled veterans With all terrain wheelchair so they can still get out into the woods and do the activities that they enjoy before they were injured. And so that’s another project that’s that’s happening this year. And then we have a final project that is going to bring together some resources for first responders who we kind of tend to forget about them a little bit that they need some help, too, sometimes. So those are the just 404 examples of projects that our program does. And they will work on those throughout the nine months. And they don’t have to be finished with those by the end of the program. Usually they are. And sometimes the products are one and done. And sometimes the people continue to work on them past when they graduate from the program, which I think really says a lot for how much the project that they choose means to them. So that’s what I kind of think sets our program apart a little bit with some of the things that we do,

Brandon Burton 15:51
ya know, you you’ve covered a lot of things there is, as you talked about how the program’s laid out, but so if I understand, right, it’s a nine month program, you meet twice a month, so 18 times total throughout that that period.

Debra Orner 16:06
Yes, we meet we meet twice a month for half a day.

Brandon Burton 16:09
Okay. And tell us a little bit more about this overnight team building opportunity is that you guys set go somewhere off site, is it somewhere? Just how do you how do you come about that

Debra Orner 16:22
we did and actually the pandemic turned it from an overnight into just a two day session. But it’s still it’s still the same basic setup, it’s just, we don’t stay overnight anymore after after the pandemic happen. But we spend the first day basically with just team building activities and with them getting to know each other and kind of breaking down barriers, and really getting to know each other a lot more and what they what they have in common what they might want to work on for the next nine months. So it helps them to form their project teams. And then the second day is really when we spend putting the project teams together. So they’ll spend like the entire second day just discussing things like what does our area not have that if it did would make it a better place to live? Or, you know, what would you work on, if you knew you couldn’t fail those sorts of things. So we, we lead them through discussion like that, and then they they break down into areas of interest. And then from there, it’s all up to them, like what project they pick. So they might know that when they walk out on the second day, they might know for sure what they want to do. Some people come to the program with an idea that they want to do, and they just recruit people to help them. So and some people show up, and they have absolutely no idea what they want to do. And they’re they’re looking to be sold on something. So we have kind of all different methods happening there. But those two days are just so important because it really helps them bonded as a group. And a lot of times even sometimes we’ll have people from the same company that participate in the program in the same year. And people from the same company won’t know each other before they get to our program. So really, for the most part, these are 20 strangers who don’t know anything about each other. So we really take the time on those two days to help them get to know each other. And really, they walk out of those two days and their friends.

Brandon Burton 18:09
Very good. So that was my next question. So this is happening at the beginning of the leadership program to build those bonds, kind of build your teams select your products at a tone for the whole nine months.

Debra Orner 18:22
Yeah, we do that at the beginning. And then at the end of the year, we go back to the same site. And we do what we call a year on reflection. And that’s really their opportunity to kind of get their emotions out about what they’ve been through that year. And like the things that made an impact on them and just kind of talk it out and just really have a have a nice day, like a little Capstone session with with their classmates that they become so close to throughout the course of the program.

Brandon Burton 18:49
Nice. So you had mentioned that you’ve been blessed with a great facilitator, as you go about trying to figure out who facilitates a leadership program like this? What sort of traits are you looking for what what would make for a good facilitator for other chambers that are listening and considering building a similar program?

Debra Orner 19:10
Really, they just think it helps tremendously if they have a passion for the area, because that’s really what most leadership programs are trying to do is create something good for their community. And it also helps if if they like helping people develop, because that’s a huge part of what we do. So you really just have to have a passion for developing people and you have to really care about the community and the area and you have to want to see it get better. And we as Chambers of Commerce don’t often have large budgets and sometimes our facil facilitators most of our facilitators actually are volunteers with the exception of one person, everybody in my program is a volunteer. So we really have to be Find people and cultivate relationships with people who just genuinely just care. And that’s really, that’s really as simple as it is. Obviously, they need to have some proficiency in the thing you’re asking them to present on. But really, they just have to care. And they have to want to do it. And they have to have that volunteer capacity capacity themselves.

Brandon Burton 20:20
So I think that’s those are great things to consider. And like the passion for the community. And it made me wonder through this leadership program, it sounds like a lot of the skills like the skills based training, those sort of things that you’re going through, are I guess you can you can take it from one position to another, from one community to another, you’re developing leadership skills that are transferable. Are there other aspects, besides the project may be that are community based that are unique to your community? And maybe not, but I’m just I’m curious.

Debra Orner 21:02
Well, one thing that that I’m pretty proud of that we do with our program is we give them the opportunity to meet a lot of community leaders, because that’s who most of my facilitators are. They’re people who are business owners or leaders in some other way. And we also do a session on local government where they get to meet all of our county commissioners, and our city manager and our the community community and economic development director for the city will have the Director of Emergency Services for the county comm. So they get to meet people like that. And these are, again, community leaders who are giving back through this program by it. And that’s one of the sessions where I kind of call it the, it’s your opportunity to ask the why doesn’t someone or why don’t they questions, because a lot of times people just don’t understand why things are the way they are. And this is really just an opportunity for them to sit down and meet with oftentimes people who are elected leaders, and it just gives them a chance to form a relationship, and just to meet them and to see what their role can be in moving our region forward.

Brandon Burton 22:07
Yeah, I love that, like building those strong community ties. So the the year end reflection, that I can imagine that being kind of a high point, really to this whole program to be able to see the development to be able to look back at, especially going back to the same location that it all started right, then able to reflect back on that those beginnings, the relationships built the impact of their projects. You had mentioned grown men crying at the end, because they’re their program, what are some of those more impactful reflections that have kind of hit you over the years, as you’ve seen these people reflect on their their time in the program?

Debra Orner 22:53
Well, I always say that the people in the program, we’re going to learn more from each other than they will from almost any, any of us or any of the facilitators, because you get to meet the people who are doing the work in the community. And there’s just a lot of eye opening moments that you wouldn’t know about if you didn’t get to meet these people. And for me, just seeing the relationships that formed from people who didn’t, who wouldn’t know each other, except for this program, and who accomplish amazing things because they have met in this program. To me, that is just the most gratifying thing. And I think that’s what they get out of it as well is that people that they didn’t know, prior to be in the program, and they’ve accomplished these great things with. And a lot of times with the, with the, with the educational part, sometimes people will even tell me that it doesn’t apply to them right now. But years later, they went back to that training, and they used it. So it is something that stays with you forever. And that’s really why ours is more of a professional development kind of program. Because no matter who you work for, or where you go in your life, whatever community you’re a part of, this is yours forever. So it’s not just that it’s specific to our city or our county. We believe that you improve region by developing its people and by developing its leaders. And so that’s what we really try to do every single year in our program. Right?

Brandon Burton 24:21
I love that. So the question came to my mind is this is kind of your your baby your kind of pet project, right? There’s the leadership program. How do you I guess put the dividing line between what you do as an organizer and, and putting together this program versus the facilitator and their responsibilities and to where you’re not stepping on each other’s toes and identifying what your your respective roles are. How does that structure look with your organization?

Debra Orner 24:56
Really, I am just so fortunate with the people Will that are part of my program, honestly, we all just work so well together. And they know that I would do it for free. So that that helps to that they know what how much I love it, and how much how much of myself I put into it. But I basically recruit all of our all of our facilitators, which can be 18 per year, depending on on how many sessions we do. And, honestly, I just let them run with it, because they’re the experts in their field. So during the session, I don’t interfere with that, that’s up to them what they want to put it in their curriculum. Sometimes I helped facilitate that session in class, depending on on where the conversations going on try to help lead the conversation a little bit. But for the most part, our facilitators are just such professionals and they just care so much, there’s really no need for me to, to get involved in that part of it. And they let me handle all of the admin and that sort of thing and all of the communication and it just, it works really well together. And it’s just it’s it’s nothing but 25 years of cultivated relationships, that people know what we’re trying to do with this program, and they have just gone all in on it. And, you know, they have other things to do, they have other things they could be doing other than spending half a day with me. But they just, that’s just what great people they are. And so they take time away from their own businesses and at their own expense to come and share their expertise with our class every year. And I have facilitators that have been with me for really the entire 25 years. And I just think that’s a remarkable thing.

Brandon Burton 26:34
That’s fantastic. So as you go about recruiting facilitators, and I’m asking this for somebody who’s looking to build a leadership program at their organization, where are you looking in the community to everywhere from

Debra Orner 26:49
everywhere, and one of my favorite things to do is if there’s a graduate of the program that can teach something, I love to bring them back. And sometimes I have a list of people that I want to bring into the program, because I respect them as a person, and I want people to meet them and to learn from them. And sometimes I have a topic that I just really want somebody to teach, but I haven’t met that person yet. And really one of my favorite stories, I have one of money, one of my first friends that I ever made when I worked at the Chamber, he’s just a really good presenter. And you know, I’ve called on him in the past to present things. And the one year, I just had a really, things don’t always go smoothly. And I lost like three facilitators for you know, due to various reasons health and that sort of thing. And so I needed him to present a topic on or to present a session on public speaking for me, which was okay, and public speaking is kind of, that’s not really something that’s that unique, and you can get a lot of people, different people to do that. But the following year was the only the second year that we were going to present emotional intelligence. And back then that wasn’t something that was very common. And it wasn’t something that a lot of people, you know, were doing at the time. So I lost my facilitator for that session, probably 10 days before the session, and I just sat there, and I think I’m gonna have to cancel the session, because who am I going to get to present emotional intelligence is like, there’s like two people in the world that even know what it is, at this point.

Brandon Burton 28:18
tested your own emotional intelligence. Right?

Unknown Speaker 28:21
Exactly.

Debra Orner 28:22
So so this friend called me almost like 10 minutes later, and he said, Deborah was looking online at your at your syllabus for your leadership program. And I saw that you have emotional intelligence, and who teaches that for you? And I said, Oh, my God, why are you asking? He had just gotten certified in that like, I think two weeks prior. And I said, Oh, do I have an opportunity for you. So that was just somebody that I knew that it was just an existing relationship that I had that that I could peg into that slot. And another time I had, I had really wanted to include servant leadership in the program for some time, but just had not met somebody who could teach it. And so as you mentioned, I worked at St. Francis University, prior to coming to the chamber, and I still have some friends that work there. And so I was talking to one of them the one day, and I don’t know how the topic of servant leadership came up, but it did. And I had said how much I wanted to make that part of our program, but I just, I hadn’t found anybody to teach it yet. And she said, Well, you know, who could teach that for you? And I said, Who? And she mentioned, one of my alums, and I said, Oh, my God is so to see there, put them on the phone. And he wasn’t there at the time, but he did call me back. So he’s been teaching that session for me ever since. So it’s really just keeping your eyes open and seeing who’s around you and paying attention to what they do. If you’re friends with them on Facebook, or if you’re connected with them on LinkedIn, what do they post about? What do they seem to know about what do they seem to be an expert in? Or even just what are their interests because a lot of times people’s job isn’t necessarily their passion either. They can they can teach about something that’s not Not necessarily what they do for a living. So I’ve had that that happened as well. So it’s really it’s just a matter of using your own connections, and just just letting people know what you’re looking for what you want to do, what your goals are, and the people will help you get there.

Brandon Burton 30:16
That’s great advice. Deborah, is we start wrapping up here, you’ve, you’ve touched on some fantastic points as far as creating and building and nurturing a leadership program, it’s your chamber. What tip or action item might you have for listener who is interested in taking their chamber up to the next level?

Debra Orner 30:38
The best advice that I can give anyone is if you have a state association, and you probably do join it immediately and get involved if you’re not already, because nothing in my career has been more valuable to me than the Pennsylvania Association for chamber professionals. I learned more about this kind of work just sitting around with my colleagues over lunch and dinner, and possibly one or two late nights than I ever did in any classroom. Chamber professionals tend to be just the most generous giving people and they want you to succeed, and they will share with you and they will help you and they will cheer you on the whole time.

Brandon Burton 31:16
Absolutely. And, and that’s the only reason this podcast is a success is because the chamber professionals are so willing to share and, and share some of those best practices and tips and programs and things like you’re doing today. So thank you for that salutely. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Debra Orner 31:43
Well, I think one thing that the past few years has shown us is that and especially extremely epidemic, evident during the pandemic is despite their traditional nature, Chambers of Commerce adapt extremely well to serve our members. We have extensive extensive reach in our communities. And we tend to be extremely good listeners. And some of the hardest days we worked was when everything was shut down, because we were putting in so many hours trying to take care of our members. So we tend to be very good at adapting. And I think we will continue to do that to adapt to our members evolving needs. And the other thing that has been extremely evident the past few years is the importance of human connection. And that is something that chambers have always done exceptionally well. So I think as long as there are humans in business Chambers of Commerce will continue to be the conveners. And how we do that might change with the times, sometimes it might be virtual instead of in person. But I think that’s we’re going to continue to be the connectors.

Brandon Burton 32:44
Absolutely great points. And I would have to agree with the future chamber. So thank you for that. Deborah, I like to give you an opportunity, or really for the listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you learn more about the leadership program that you put on, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect and learn more? Sure,

Debra Orner 33:07
they can email me at debra@crchamber.com. And you can reach me directly through our website, which is crchamber.com. Or they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I love to talk to anybody about leadership. So if anybody out there is has a program that they want to maybe adapt or if you’re looking to start a program I would love to help. I’ve helped several of my colleagues start programs that are going extremely well right now. So

Brandon Burton 33:35
very good. We will, we’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode so people can can look you up and we’ll have your LinkedIn profile LinkedIn in there as well. But I really appreciate you sharing these insights and lessons learned and your approach to leadership program. They’re at the Canberra Regional Chamber. And thank you for being with us today. Really appreciate it.

Debra Orner 34:00
Thank you, Brandon. I really enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton 34:02

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Talent Attraction with Sarah Davasher-Wisdom

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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 the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m 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.

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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 guest for this episode is Sarah Davasher-Wisdom. Sarah has served as President and CEO of Greater Louisville Inc since January 2020. Sarah has been with goI since 2014. Rising from leading July’s government affairs activities as Vice President of Government Affairs, to now as president CEO. GeoEye was named National chamber of the year in 2019. Personally, Sarah’s also been the recipient of several notable awards at the local, regional and national levels. Sarah has held previous roles in government and public policy including manager of Government Affairs for Tennessee Valley Authority, Strategic Communications Officer for the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Community Development Coordinator for Congressman Lewis. She serves on the boards of several local organizations as well as on the US chambers committee of 100. Sarah is the first woman and youngest person to serve as president and CEO of GLA. Sarah, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 3:13
Oh, hello, Brandon. I’m excited to be on the chamber podcast as well. Then looking forward to this conversation. I think that that bio certainly said a lot about me. So thank you for reading that so eloquently. But the real story goes beyond that. And you know, a lot of people will say what’s something that people don’t know about you or what something that tells more about you personally, and I always like to share that my husband and I are serious ballroom dancers. Between the two of us. We have 50 years of dance experience. And it’s how we met. So we’ve been dancing together for 10 years of which will actually 11 years we’ve been married for 10. And that’s something that not a lot of people do. And not a lot of people know. And it’s something that we’ve continued. Despite any sort of changes in career or relocations, or anything else that we have done, we’ve always remained committed to our dancing.

Brandon Burton 4:09
Awesome. That is, it’s great that you guys have been able to keep that up and have that common bond together. And that that interests. So thank you. I like learning these tidbits about people as we have them on the show and learn those facts that so I had mentioned to you before we started recording, but this is a first for me to have. Three, you’re the third person from Greater Louisville Inc. to be on Chamber Chat Podcast. First time, I’ve had three of any organization on the podcast, which speaks volumes to the great work and impact you guys are having that you keep rising to the top to have different members of the organization on the on the show. But for those that are Thank you, yeah, yeah, for sure. So Those who’ve been listening to the podcast since the beginning. may remember at Kent Oyler on back in 2019. When you guys were Chamber the Year finalists and won Chamber the Year and more recently had Jordan Clemons on talking about using LinkedIn to grow membership and they both are fantastic episodes so encourage anybody to go back and listen but I just I mentioned that because those longtime listeners may be a little bit familiar with with GLI, but for those who may not be just give us a little synopsis, I guess about what GLI is all about, you know size, the Chamber staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing, just to set the table for our discussion.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 5:43
Sure, well, Greater Louisville Inc. We have a staff of about 30 people. And we serve about 1800 members. We are also the Regional Chamber and we are by state so we cover 15 counties, five in Indiana and 10 in Kentucky. We’ve got everything from Fortune 500 companies located here to small retailers and suppliers. We are the home of Humana, and UPS Airlines. And those are two of our biggest companies here. Our main goal was to grow the regional economy. And we do that in several ways through traditional economic development, talent attraction, advocacy and DNI. So our goal is to do all of those things in the best way possible to make our region the strongest for growth. So that’s a little bit about GLI we have a great team, our budget is 5.7 million.

Brandon Burton 6:38
Very good. So you touched on one of the things that we’ll focus our conversation on today. And as you mentioned, those focuses of your work, one being talent attraction. And I’m excited to dive in a little bit deeper and learn about how GLI goes about talent attraction. I know that’s a hot topic for chambers across the country. And you’re so kind to share some of the tips and strategies you guys are using there in Louisville. So we will dive into that conversation much deeper since we get back from this quick break.

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Howdy it’s me, Donna from Yiftee again. Today we get to hear from Christine in upstate New York about her Shop 716 Community card program. She was able to use sponsorship funds for a generous Buy One, Get One program that benefits her whole county.

Christine Langenfeld  9:21  

Hi this is Christine Langenfeld with the Amherst Chamber of Commerce located in Buffalo, New York. We have partnered with Yiftee on our Shop 716 e-gift card program that has been incredibly, incredibly impactful for our small businesses. So happy to have incorporated this program in our shop local initiative here in Western New York. I highly recommend them and give them a chance to show what they can do.

Donna Novitsky  9:50  

Thanks, Christine. So folks, check us out at yiftee.com and sign up for a demo or shoot us an email at sales@yiftee.com

Brandon Burton 10:01
All right, Sarah, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today about how you guys are focusing your work around talent attraction. And I know there’s different approaches, you know, chambers go about this work in different ways. But I’d like to learn a little bit more and have you share how how you guys are GLI are going about talent, attraction, and really making your economy there is something that’s really thriving. And I know you’ve mentioned the DE&I efforts as well. And it is a very diverse community as well. And I think that plays into talent attraction. So I anticipate that those two will overlap a little bit. But I don’t want to steal your thunder. So I’ll hand it over to you to to share how you guys are going about this work?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 10:47
Sure, well, I’m really excited about our talent attraction programming, because we’ve had a lot of cities come to learn more about it, because they want to replicate it. So it really has been one of those. One of those things that we are known for in Louisville, our program is called Live in Lou and we developed it in 2016, to really show what it was like to live work and play in the greater Louisville region. And the platform itself showcases all of the assets that really differentiate us as a community, we highlight the availability of good jobs and career opportunities, the quality of life and the sustainability, to raise a family and the suitability to raise a family I should say. And then the ability to make a difference. And the reason that we highlight those three things is because in 2016, we did a lot of data, a lot of research into why people want to live in our community. And those were the three reasons. So we target our marketing around those three reasons. And one of the places that people go to learn about a community is on social media. So we use our website and our social media channels to promote feel good stories about the community, new businesses, opening up favorite restaurants. Because we have a fantastic culinary scene here. It’s one of the things that people love to visit for. We also showcase restaurants and festivals. So those are some of the things we really try to highlight. We have also been doing private label campaigns for companies under our live in loop programming. And we basically will look at where there isn’t what jobs are needed for that company. And then where there is an area in the country or even internationally, where that skill set exists and may not be paid as well there as it is here in Louisville. And so then we can geofence and do some targeted marketing, highlighting those things I mentioned earlier, and really go out and connect the the job seeker or the potential low avillion to the job opportunity. And we can use the marketing from the company itself. So it’s a really innovative way for us to recruit individuals to move here to work for a specific company. So it helps our community because we’ve got residents moving in, and it also helps our companies. I love

Brandon Burton 13:10
that name that Lou avillion that just that flows. So well. I love it. Can you share with us some more about the geofencing? So how do you go about that and targeting the right people like the parameters you set on it? Certain radiuses maybe some people aren’t familiar with what geofencing is just give us a little bit of background on that.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 13:33
It’s really a technology that we pay for. So we identify what geography we would we would want to highlight usually by ZIP codes, and then the firm actually does the geofencing. But it’s basically a way that you can put information on phone like you’re capturing phone data so that then you can advertise. Because when people are moving in and out of that zip code, you’re capturing that data out that makes sense.

Brandon Burton 14:01
Yeah, it does. Are you guys identifying specifically people that don’t live in Louisville currently that based on the phone data, so when they come and visit or pass by or how does that? How does that

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 14:15
yes, we definitely are targeting out of town people so that we can get them to move here and and maybe because our goal was talent attraction, we don’t have enough people here in Louisville to fill the open jobs. And so that’s why we’re trying to really focus on talent attraction. We’ve grown the social media channels from 200 followers to 53,000 followers in five years. So there really is a lot of momentum to live in Lou. And then we also have a group of volunteers that we call city champs. It’s kind of a human Welcome Wagon to help people get connected to the interest that they have in the region. The volunteers are incredibly passionate. Excuse me, and If they really want to showcase the best parts of our community and make connections, so the new residents kind of have a friend immediately, when they when they move here. So we train the city champs on all of the things in the community, it’s about a four hour training. And then they identify what interests they have. So we can put on our website that this person is a trained city champ, and this person is interested in interested in parks or ballet, or whatever the situation may be, so that when we have prospective residents interested in those same, those same things, then we can make that connection. And there’s automatically an interest in sharing information so that the person is more likely to relocate to

Brandon Burton 15:42
a level like that it kind of creates a friend, right? They come into the community. And as they’re saying, this reminds me when I was in high school, I moved across the country. And it was a kind of a traumatic thing as a junior in high school, across the country. But the new high school I went to, they had a program at the school where they would match another student up with new students to kind of show you around, and it made all the difference. So I see these these community are the city champs, these volunteers, really being able to be that tour guide of the city, you know, sharing some common interests, really helping to help these new people feel at home, I see that as being a key attribute to being able to really attract and retain these these new people to the community. You had mentioned I mean, the social media following is great. I mean, 253,000 followers is in that short amount of time is amazing. You had mentioned a few examples of some of the things that you’re doing on social media to leverage that and tell the stories of the little bill. Are there some examples that have really taken off that you’re aware of that, you know, I guess you could say have gone viral that they got more traction than other things on your social media stories.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 17:03
I think the real life stories of people that have followed live in lieu and actually move to the city have been the most powerful. And that, you know, those are like, really kind of rare, but also that doesn’t negate the success of the platform, it’s just that we don’t always have somebody love it so much that they post about it, you know, I think people often will look at it. And I think, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. But they don’t necessarily write a big story about it, we actually had a couple write a big magazine article about it. And that was that was really a thing that went crazy on social media, particularly locally, people were talking about it. Another thing that has really gotten a lot of media interest on our live and live platform is our newly launched workforce ecosystem hub. And it’s a compilation of all of the workforce development resources. So we have our talent attraction, part of living, Lou, but we also are trying to get people that aren’t working now into the workforce, or people helping them to upskill. And since 2014, when I first moved here, I was hearing about all of these different workforce development programs in the community. And I kept saying, Where is the one stop shop, like work, and I read about all of these in one place, and that that resource just didn’t exist. So there were a lot of programs that were going on utilized and not not utilized to their maximum potential, I should say. So we, for two years, we work to compile all of those resources. And we launched this ecosystem hub on the live and lose site. It’s liveinlou.com/work. And it has 245 organizations and their programs listed. We’ve got a portal for job seekers and a portal for employers, the employers can go on the site and identify any sort of training programs, some of which are free, and funded by the state actually funding from the state available that you can apply for on the site. And that that funding and those training programs are for their employees. So we have a manufacturer, they may be able to get funding to do a certain certain upskilling initiative, and all of that is listed on the site. It also includes different organizations that are helping to remove barriers to work so the employer can help identify those for the employee. A lot of HR offices will use it if they have an employee that’s having difficulty with transportation and or childcare availability. I mean, it’s childcare, transportation, all sorts of barriers that exist out there. And we have all these organizations in our community that are working to overcome them. And now there is one place that you can go and access that on the job seeker platform, you can still you can still see the barriers to work resources and because a lot of job seekers are, you know, trying to figure out ways to manage that themselves, but they also can apply for jobs on there and see what financial assistance may be available to do certifications or apprenticeships or going back to to get a college degree even. So, we’ve really taken a collaborative approach to all of this and worked with the organizations to make sure that the right information is being shared. And we’ve had a lot of hits on it. And the media has been going crazy about it locally, they’re calling it Google’s version of LinkedIn. So we’re excited about it. That is

Brandon Burton 20:36
great. As you’re given that explanation about how live in lieu works, and the job seekers and employers portals, the thought hit me why why do communities, you know, outsource to these big job seeking websites, when they have a chamber of commerce, who’s connected with employers know the needs know that those barriers, they really can give a kind of a white glove service to help match future employees with employers. So I love that how you guys have set this up and strategically having those are calling out what some of those barriers are, and approaches of how you guys are working to overcome those things. And community partners to help overcome those things. As a going about the job seekers, the employers on there, I imagine that you have a wide range of different employment opportunities. It’s not any one type of industry, obviously, but what are what’s kind of the the range of employment opportunities that you see happening through the live in lieu website,

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 21:48
we’ve got everything from, you know, clerk position, to a nurse position, I mean, every sort of job imaginable is on there. We also with some of the jobs that we learn about some of the jobs that our employers post are also very skill specific, highly technical. And we do have a partnership where we can seek out those highly specific skills, because there are some jobs where you may only have a handful of people in the country that have the ability to do the job. And through a partnership with LinkedIn talent insights, we can seek out those individuals. And that’s more of a specific employer request. It’s not, I mean, they’re usually posted on live in lieu as well. But in those instances, it’s less likely that somebody with that skill set is going to be posting for a job, they probably they’re gonna wait for recruiters to call them. So we find them and call them.

Brandon Burton 22:45
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question. Because there’s those highly skilled labor that you need to kind of seek them out and, and maybe even try to take them from another company. And we won’t say that too loud. But that happens, right?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 23:02
Well, we don’t do that from local companies only when we’re trying to get people to move here.

Brandon Burton 23:07
That’s right. That’s right. Now just say this program, it seems like a real game changer, especially in the talent and workforce development space. Is there anything that we’re missing from the live in loop program that we haven’t touched on?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 23:23
Um, I would say that, you know, we do overcome objections to moving to Louisville sometimes. And this is where the DNI aspect of this comes in that you mentioned earlier. We in in 2020, we were the epicenter of the Breonna, Taylor, killing and the protests that followed that really showed us that we needed to expand our scope of work. So recruiting diverse talent has been a little bit more difficult. But since 2020, I have been saying all this time, this is also an opportunity for us to show that this time, it’s different and it should have been different every time before but we have to show that the business community is committed to creating an inclusive economy. So we have really expanded our work in the DNI space. And that helps our talent attraction initiatives. So some of the work that we do, and includes a minority business accelerator called power to prosper. We’re getting ready. We’re taking applications for our third cohort right now. And it provides small businesses with knowledge and resources and networks that will help their businesses scale. We also have during 2020 launch a racial equity pledge that identifies five different ways that companies can can make their business more inclusive. And that includes things like diversifying their vendor spend, creating a safe space for conversation ones that are about inclusion. It also includes hiring diverse talent. I mean, and we then with that pledge, we launched a toolkit. And I was, I was excited about the number of companies that signed the pledge, it was over 200 companies. But then I was also excited about the toolkit because the toolkit gave businesses, the tools, they needed to do that. So we didn’t just say, Hey, we’re signing this pledge, we also said, Now, here’s how you go and do these things that are in the pledge. And as our as an organization, we have diversified our own vendor spend in ways that we never thought possible, because we’ve been so intentional about it. And my hope is that every company that sign that pledge has been equally intentional, and that we’re seeing a lot more things have, or a lot of great things happen as a result. Another thing that we do, and then we started doing it 2020 is a procurement matchup event called power to prosper. I’m sorry, I’m forgetting the name of it. It’s not that’s the minority business accelerator. Progress through procurement is our procurement event. And we identify what needs companies have in our community. And then we bring in diverse vendors to and match them up. And then sometimes there’s still a contracting process involved, but it is helping both the employer that has this, this need for a vendor and then they they’ve been having trouble finding a diverse vendor. So then we’re connecting them to a diverse vendor, and hopefully good things come from that. So those are some of the things that we’ve done in the DNI space. And like I said, that also helps our talent attraction and helps our economy grow. And all of the things in a chamber seem to work together cohesively. And I like that about chamber work.

Brandon Burton 26:48
Absolutely. So one of the things that stood out to me is you mentioned that you guys are often involved with overcoming object objections. And occasionally certain objections will rise to prominence. But, and oftentimes, we don’t even hear about some of the objections. So how do you guys go about soliciting feedback of people that may be hesitant of moving to Louisville to understand what their objections might be? So you can address that and learn how to better maybe fine tune this program?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 27:18
Well, most of the time, the HR recruiters at our companies will tell us what the objections are. And that’s, that’s really our source of information. There are times that we’re talking with individuals directly, particularly when they’re those highly skilled individuals that we’re seeking out for employers. But most of the time, the HR managers will tell us what stories they’re hearing and a lot of it relates to Louisville, being in Kentucky, and people here, Kentucky and they think that we are not as sophisticated as a place they would like to live. And Louisville is actually very sophisticated. I mentioned earlier, we’ve got a great culinary scene. We’ve got all five types of art organizations. I mean, we really do have a fantastic city is a great place to live and not just a great place to raise a family. I mean, it certainly is that but I mean you can be single here and you can really have a fantastic life. It’s a fun place to be. So but Louisville often gets branded with Kentucky and the demographic and the psychographic of talent looking to relocate is looking for, you know, a city that’s fun and exciting. And Kentucky doesn’t have that brand nationally. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:33
Kentucky is a great state though. Okay, yeah. Is it beautiful? Yeah. Well, Sara, you’ve hit on some great points here. As far as talent attraction goes, and I’m sure people listening or are taking notes and seeing how they can make some tweaks to their own talent attraction programs. I’d like to ask if there maybe is any tip or action item that you’d like to share for listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 29:05
Well, I would suggest getting your CCE I’m a big believer in the certified chamber executive program for several reasons. Number one, there is an application process that requires you to really get out there and give speeches and also sometimes like IOM counts. So that’s a training program where you’re networking with other chamber professionals. And through IOM and through CCE which came later for me, I’ve met so many incredibly smart people. And being able to reach out to those individuals being able to hear about their programming as I went through IOM and CCE really, really helped me to know different ideas and different ways to navigate community issues and different ways I could take Our chamber to the next level. And so as a result of my experience being so positive, I have said, anybody that goes through IOM has to commit to doing CCE as well. The CCE process, what I liked about that was beyond the application process that I just described with you, you get to meet so many people, you learn about their programs. There are there’s a body of literature that one has to read that really focuses on governance and finance and making sure the chamber is in good operational order. And I believe that’s incredibly important, because all of the programs that we talk about that are exciting. We can’t do if our chamber isn’t in good operational order. If we don’t have the money, we don’t have the right money in reserves for a catastrophe. I mean, there are all of these things that seem boring to a lot of chamber people, but they’re incredibly important to enabling that programmatic aspect that can be very exciting, and fun to be part of. So that would be the thing I would say, to take your chamber to the next level, because you’ll learn so much as you go through that process.

Brandon Burton 31:06
Absolutely. Anybody who’s been sitting on the fence debating whether or not to get over that hurdle, go go do it, go after your CCE apply, go through the process. And like Sarah said, there’s so much development that comes out of that to benefit your chamber, but also you professionally as you move on through your career. So Sarah, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 31:37
Well, I see the purpose of Chambers as being incredibly important. And you know, I’ve heard speculation about this, but I believe in chambers very, very much. I think there is a role for chambers and the big community issues of the day. And we’re really starting to see that more and more. I mean, there is no other organization where you can go to and and say that they represent the voice of the business community chambers do that chambers, or that one stop shop you can go to and the people who enjoy being in the chamber world are just ready to help. And to say yes, attitude, and all of the big community issues that we’re so interested in. I mean, everybody wants to figure out how. And so I think that chambers are so so incredibly important. And I think that the people who work in chambers have a real passion for community growth. And it’s becoming a lifelong career for a lot of people. You see that more and more particularly at the CEO level of the chamber world. And I like to see that. I think that there are some incredibly smart chamber leaders out there and I enjoy talking to them frequently. I think chambers are really important to making sure community issues get solved.

Brandon Burton 32:55
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. And I I also agree with the scene, people who are making the chamber industry a profession, you know, it’s a career choice for people now, especially at the executive level. But we’re it’s not just a job in their community that gets filled because somebody needed a warm body, but it becomes something that they go after these trainings are IOM, they’re CCE and really develop and help take their community to the next level, which is what it’s all about. But Sarah wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about the living loop program and how you guys are doing things there at TLI. What would be the best way for people to reach out and connect with you?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 33:40
Sure, well, I’m happy to provide my email. It’s sdavasher@greaterlouisville.com. And my phone number is 502-625-0073 happy to talk with any chamber leaders about these programs or anything else bounce ideas off of each other. I’m always happy to connect.

Brandon Burton 34:02
Very good we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode as well so people can access that to connect with you. But Sarah, I want to thank you for spending time with us today here at chamber chat podcast provided a lot of value and some great things for listeners to think about and and see what how they can implement and take their chamber up to the next level and provide a new level of competition on the talent attraction front. I appreciate that.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 34:30
Happy to do it. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 34:32
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