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Brandon Burton (00:01.078)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my purpose and goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Bob Durkin. Bob is the president and CEO of the Greater Scranton Area Chamber of Commerce, a role that he’s held since 2013.
As CEO, Bob leads strategic planning, financial oversight, staffing, and programming for the chamber and its affiliated organizations. With decades of leadership experience across nonprofit economic development and regional government sectors, Bob previously served as president of the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute, a Northeastern Pennsylvania-wide nonprofit consortium.
supporting community and patient services, cancer research and healthcare collaboration. Prior to that, he was the founding executive director of the Lake Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority, advancing regional community development initiatives. Bob’s longstanding commitment to economic and community advancement includes serving as vice president of the chamber from 1988 to 1993 and holding leadership roles across numerous boards and organizations.
A graduate of Penn State University, he also completed advanced studies in public administration and organizational management, including programs at the US Chamber of Commerce and the University of Delaware. A dedicated community advocate and mentor, Bob remains actively involved in regional initiatives from youth sports, continuing to champion growth, collaboration, opportunity throughout the Northeastern Pennsylvania region. 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 all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself and correct any mispermissions that I shared in your bio.
Bob Durkin (02:07.684)
Well, being from Lackawanna County, where you we have a lot of different Native American names, including Lackawanna, where the where the rivers meet, by the way, is what Lackawanna means. Yeah, I’m a native of Scranton, the Scranton area, and remain and love Northeastern Pennsylvania. And of course we’re all chamber people, right? So, you know, even in the dead of winter where last week we were, you
Brandon Burton (02:22.062)
Okay.
Bob Durkin (02:37.664)
Arguably the thermometer said it was about zero degrees. Anybody that asked me about it, said, well, you know, no, it’s 75 and sunny in Scranton. My, my, my running joke about how grounded I am here is that the town I live in just outside of Scranton is called Oliphant. And it’s just about seven miles from Scranton and I, I’m on my fourth house in Scranton, in Oliphant. And I always say I’m the George Bailey.
Brandon Burton (02:46.958)
You
Bob Durkin (03:06.422)
of the of the area every time I think I’m getting out of this town. I buy another damn house so my my my personal the most important thing truly in my entire life that that stands out when people ask what’s you know what is unique about my world. Outside of the chamber world it’s that I’m I’m a proud parent of a special needs on my son Kevin who’s 33 has Down syndrome and so much of what.
Brandon Burton (03:11.694)
There you go.
Brandon Burton (03:24.034)
We need to focus on that. That was actually a good
Bob Durkin (03:36.26)
I and my family have done in those 33 years is wrapped around Kevin and our relationship, not just to him, but to the Down Syndrome community where we helped create a Parents of Down Syndrome organization. And I’ve been on the boards of several different special needs organizations in our region. So it’s that that’s a really if there’s a signature element to me outside of my business work, it’s it’s Kevin and it’s Down Syndrome. So here it is.
Brandon Burton (04:03.916)
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Well, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share a little bit about the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce. Give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work to some degree. I know we’ll spend more time on that budget just to kind of set the stage for our discussion.
Bob Durkin (04:22.948)
Sure. Well, as Brandon, as you and I have talked before this, and we’re going to be talking about in more detail coming up, the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce is a bit of an anomaly. You know, you’ve heard this before in the chamber world. If you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber. And we are certainly a signature aspect of that with multiple different divisions. We have actually eight different
Brandon Burton (04:41.067)
One chamber.
Brandon Burton (04:45.706)
I’m not going to go that.
Bob Durkin (04:51.527)
501s under the chamber umbrella. And again, we’ll dive into that a little bit later. This chamber, the chamber itself, we are 1400 members strong. We largely represent Lackawanna County, which is Scranton as the hub here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but we often refer to the third, a third, a third. We have a third of our members in the city of Scranton, a third in Lackawanna County proper and a third outside Lackawanna County.
Brandon Burton (05:14.286)
So, think that’s something that I’m not assuming that I’m going to say. So, I’m going to do a little bit of explaining the session, and then I’m going to try to explain it to you guys as well. So, I’m going to do a little bit explaining the session,
Bob Durkin (05:18.9)
in mostly in the surrounding counties and regions. Our sister city is Woodsboro, which is right, you know, just to the south of us in Luzerne County. We are in addition to the chamber and the other affiliates, we really are the largest economic development organization in the region. Our budget, chamber budget, I’ll use round numbers, is about $4 million.
Our overall budget is a little over 8 million. As I said, roughly 1,400 members and staff of 26, all of whom work from chamber but are farmed out through management agreements to the various affiliates.
Brandon Burton (05:57.199)
Okay, very good. That definitely helps to give perspective, especially as we get into this discussion today where we’ll dive into these affiliates and the approach and structure and when things make sense and all of that. But I did have one question that I think is important for listeners that are probably wondering.
is Dunder Mifflin Paper Company a member of your chamber?
Bob Durkin (06:32.866)
Well, that was actually a very interesting question. And it’s one that you ask everywhere across the country. Not only is the the company that inspired Dunder Mifflin, Pen Paper, Pennsylvania Paper, that does exist. But beyond that, during the entire original filming and the what, eight years or nine years of it, every single episode of that included a member of our staff.
listening in and working with the development directors and producers to make sure that there was an authenticity to all of their references to Scranton proper. So when you hear, you’re an office fan, all the references to poor Richard’s pub or Cooper’s restaurant or Lake Scranton, they’re all real. And in fact, M-Taper, the very company that when you see on the opening credits, you’ll see a tower.
Brandon Burton (07:02.604)
Do it.
Bob Durkin (07:29.622)
of an older building that says, you know, that’s pen paper. I can see that from my office. When I open my, roll out my window, I can see it right there. So yeah, it’s fun to have that. have people probably every single week we get calls from people all over the country. We’re traveling through Scranton, want to know where can I find this or that? So we have materials on this. In fact, the other part of that was almost all the things you see on the desks of the office people came from us.
Brandon Burton (07:43.662)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (07:51.245)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (07:58.413)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (08:00.088)
We literally in that time, our staff would reach out to our members and say, hey, give us some of your tchotchke or whatever materials. So when you look at that, next time you look at the office at the PAM behind our front desk, there’s the plaque of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce right behind it.
Brandon Burton (08:13.612)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (08:17.046)
That’s awesome. That is awesome. I want to rewatch the series now and look for all the Easter eggs that are hidden. And I’m sure Michael Scott got his world’s best boss mug from you, right?
Bob Durkin (08:18.776)
Yeah. Yeah.
And by the way, not to belabor this, but all of those folks have been here, including Steve Carell. They’ve all been in discranton many times.
Brandon Burton (08:32.002)
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Very cool. Well, we will dive into this discussion about affiliate structures as soon as we get back from this quick break.
All right, Bob, we’re back. As we mentioned before the break, we’re going to talk about the uniqueness of what makes the Greater Scranton Chamber what it is with the structure of these different affiliate organizations. You mentioned when you were talking about the chamber,
how you have eight 501Cs underneath the structure of the chamber itself. And I would be curious, I’m sure listeners are curious, so first of all, I think it makes sense to talk about what these different affiliates are. And when it makes sense to, whether it’s spin up an affiliate or bring in an affiliate under the chamber umbrella,
Bob Durkin (09:05.124)
.
Bob Durkin (09:16.974)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Burton (09:26.944)
Maybe that’ll come up naturally as we talk about how these affiliates came to be and their purpose behind them. as you share about them, I’m gonna pull up the screen for those that are watching this on YouTube, they can see kind of the structure as you talk through it.
Bob Durkin (09:34.02)
Thank you.
Okay, sure.
Bob Durkin (09:43.556)
So, think of the chamber as the umbrella in this structure. And our chamber is, if I have the numbers right, I think we’re 156 years old. We were called the Board of Trade for the first third of our existence, almost. But then when the U.S. Chamber was created, we were actually one of the founding members of the U.S. Chamber.
Brandon Burton (09:52.886)
It’s
with the US, that’s the way it is.
Bob Durkin (10:12.994)
And that’s a little over a hundred years. So that’s when we became a chamber of commerce. When you look at this structure from the bear with me as I put my glasses on here from the far. So look at the chamber at the top. So everything flows from the chamber. All employees work for the chamber of commerce. And several of the affiliates are actually legally owned by the chamber. Some are not.
Brandon Burton (10:30.781)
Thank you.
Bob Durkin (10:38.596)
So again, from your far left, you’ll see boxes Slipco that’s a Scranton-Lackawanna industrial building company. That is it. We’re a certified economic development organization in Pennsylvania. So in the roughly 80 year existence of Slipco, which came about just post World War II, do economic development. It’s pure sense. We build industrial parks and office parks. We’ve done 15 of them across Lackawanna County. Historically, we’ve created
Brandon Burton (10:58.882)
Thank
Brandon Burton (11:06.066)
I’m certainly a big, sort of, spiritual leader of the movement of present. So, thank you for listening. I’m going ahead and turn off. Yes, sir.
Bob Durkin (11:06.99)
tens of thousands of jobs in that context. So even today, with most of those parks being completely filled, we still own about 1500 acres of land. We have about 30 parcels that are prepared. If you turn that switch from chamber to economic development, you’ll understand what I mean by that. The Scranton plan is our economic development marketing division.
Brandon Burton (11:20.942)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (11:35.896)
So it supports Slipco. The team literally is scattered all over the East coast or travels all over the country and sometimes internationally to try to promote the Scranton area. It’s one of those things that I always find this interesting when people, when Chambers have either visitors bureaus or marketing divisions and the people in the community say, well, why don’t you go out and tell people about your area? We do that all the time, literally every day.
Brandon Burton (11:43.34)
I’m going to try to get little for it.
Brandon Burton (11:59.279)
Thank you.
Bob Durkin (12:05.048)
We’re either online or in some sort of media platform promoting the region or our staff are literally out selling the area to professionals, site selection professionals, commercial realtors and the like. Life, the Lackawanna Industrial Fund Enterprises has a kind of a cool history in Stratton and Lackawanna County in that like Slipco and the Stratton thing came about post World War II. And it actually was a funding school.
Brandon Burton (12:13.08)
So that’s the of talk.
Brandon Burton (12:25.528)
So was like, five times what I was getting for the change.
Bob Durkin (12:33.252)
for small scale industrial properties all over the valley. So that if you, for those who’ve, especially in the Northeast, that would recognize that their little towns used to have dress factories and shoe factories and almost all of them owned locally, life at one time was the funding source for most of those throughout our region. It has morphed in more recent years to be sort of a service, sort of an in-house endowment. We have, you know, substantial
Brandon Burton (12:37.806)
It’s the power of the natural energies.
Brandon Burton (12:47.084)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (13:02.382)
Thanks
Bob Durkin (13:03.298)
liquidity relative to Scranton. To put it in context, there’s about $7 million worth of liquidity in the fund. And so we use that internally now to support some of our activities. I’ll try to reference that later on as well. Skills in Scranton, the first blue box that you see there, that is our workforce development arm. And you can see I’ve attached on those the various 501 designations.
So that I’ll back up and say that this Scranton plan actually is simply a division of the chamber of commerce. Whereas a slip goes owned by the chamber life and then Scranton plan or separate 501 C four and C threes. So Scranton plan or I’m sorry, skills and Scranton rather is our workforce division. It’s a business education partnership where our team works with both secondary educational institutions and their end school districts in Lackawanna County.
And we also work with school districts in perimeter counties as well to do programs where we try to connect students with business and educators with business. Metro Action is our small business lending arm. For those who understand the small business lending world, at one point we were a CDFI, Community Development Finance Institute, which is a federal designation.
Brandon Burton (14:03.022)
to give you the opportunity to participate in this event. Thank you.
Brandon Burton (14:19.116)
Thank you.
Bob Durkin (14:27.364)
closed off that relationship that we do revolving loan funds for small businesses, partnering with our banks mainly. Leadership Lackawanna is a traditional community leadership program, multiple programs for emerging executives, new to the C-suite executives, high school students. We six different programs under the Leadership Lackawanna fund. Next is our trust fund. It’s the Neighborhood Development Trust. It’s a small endowment.
about a half a million dollars that we use for small scale partnerships with other business associations, for example. So while the chamber is a large player in the region, many of our smaller communities, including Scranton, has their own business association. when Scranton Tomorrow, as that’s referred to, when they do mural programs around downtown or they have festivals or things like that, we use that fund to support them with five, $10,000 grants.
Brandon Burton (15:11.886)
So we’re going to have a little bit a change in style, and we’ll to do a separate video.
Brandon Burton (15:22.99)
Yeah. Okay.
Bob Durkin (15:25.486)
When you go back down to the bottom and see the slip through utilities. So that’s how complicated we are. We, own the utility company. at one time we provided, we provided water to for 30 years, actually we provided water to one of our parks. we recently sold that to, the local water utility. it came to the point where there was a pipe, a major, mainline pipe burst in Scranton.
And we were at risk of having about 10 different businesses lose water for a week. And we were fortunate that was fixed. then as the next day, I called the head of the water company and said, Hey, you want to buy a water company? So we sold the water company, but we held on to the utility because as I referenced before, Slipco, our building company, we own properties throughout all these business parks. So it’s useful to have a small scale utility company in our back pocket in case we need that. Ignite, which
Brandon Burton (15:57.631)
Brandon Burton (16:20.574)
I’m to see what the sounds are going to
Bob Durkin (16:20.996)
is a part of Slipco. And just because it’s not a separate 501 doesn’t mean it’s not important. On the contrary, it’s very important. We own two different buildings that are business incubators, one in Scranton and Lackawanna County runs along the Lackawanna River. It’s a long stretch of maybe 50 miles, 40, 50 miles. And so we have a property in Scranton that serves as an incubator.
Brandon Burton (16:47.854)
I know that I’m going to be a star. It feels like a dream. I am one of the top eight on the world’s one of people who are going to be in the world’s top 10.
Bob Durkin (16:51.128)
We have another one in what we call the mid Valley, which is halfway up the Valley. And we’re about to purchase the assets of another, a third business incubator up in the upper part of our Valley in the city of Carbondale. so we’ll have three under ignite. We’ll have three different buildings. And right now we have roughly 50 startup businesses of all sorts. most, many of them are sort of back office technology based businesses.
that we’re nurturing in a three to five year period under the Unite program. So you apply to be part of Unite. You’ve got to have good financial standing. You’ve got to have a business plan. You stay with us for three to five years. staff, hands on staff daily meet with these people, take advantage of the core of talent we have in the chamber. And they connect these startup businesses with everything from legal, financial, marketing.
Brandon Burton (17:21.634)
night.
Bob Durkin (17:47.548)
you name it, all the different aspects, of course, for business startup. And the advantage there is that it’s a two-way street. It helps the business startups, but it also helps our own businesses because we’re connecting many of them to these fledgling businesses that are ultimately, sometimes they don’t have the money upfront to pay for the, you know, those services. But over time, you make those connections and when the businesses are successful, and many have been, many have grown by the, our greatest success at one point was
Brandon Burton (18:11.758)
Thank you.
Bob Durkin (18:17.372)
a company that went from 13 people to 1800. Then others, yeah, others we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of the kind of the classic one guy working part-time. Ultimately he gets to be 80 people and then he, you know, he sells the business to a larger enterprise and it cashes out. We have had a number of those. So it’s really exciting. So all of this comes under our mission of attract, sustain and grow business.
Brandon Burton (18:17.486)
Wow
Bob Durkin (18:46.39)
Attract is sort of, can see the splint and plane of trying to market the region. Sustain is sort of almost everything, which is sustain existing and legacy businesses. And grow is the Ignite program, which is our entrepreneurship program. There you go. We’ve run out of time,
Brandon Burton (18:52.302)
I love it. No, this is great. And having that structure to share, hopefully those that are listening have a chance to see it and I’ll put it in our show notes too, so you can see the layout of the structure. But I think you did a great job going through and explaining that.
Brandon Burton (00:00.942)
All right, so I’ve got a couple of questions as we look at the structure there. You had mentioned that Scranton plans support Slipco with the marketing for the economic development, which I think goes to the overall question of when does it make sense to stand up a separate affiliate versus having it be just a part of Slipco and being part of that affiliate itself.
Bob Durkin (00:10.974)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Durkin (00:25.312)
Yeah, that is a great question. And I’ve been asked that a number of times. And you probably know this, a lot of chambers have looked at that either to look to separate or they’ve talked to in the right size scale communities. Should we put all these under one umbrella? I will tell you that the pros and cons, there are about 100, but the things that kind of stand out are that sometimes, particularly when you’re dealing with public policy or relationships with
elected organizations, elected officials or structures. When you are an economic development organization, you almost always have to be playing the game with the state and federal officials, particularly, but also locally say, okay, we want some public dollars into the investments. So when we’re developing a park and we have the newest park, the most, I should say the youngest of our 15 different parks is really 25 years old.
Brandon Burton (01:03.054)
It’s always been with me. It’s always been with me. And it’s always been with me.
Bob Durkin (01:25.348)
And so when you want to develop the infrastructure for these things, you have to have public dollars in it. And it’s difficult if you’re trying to be the chamber speaking on behalf of the business community on a public policy issue. Let’s say you’re at odds with your elected officials on, you know, unemployment compensation bill or, you know, a childcare bill or something along those lines.
And then you say, well, we’re at odds with you. We’re taking a public position against that. And then the next day I say, hey, can you get us a million dollars to help us with the plumbing problem, you know, an infrastructure problem in one of our parks? So it’s, that, makes it hard. And we’ve been in that space. And to this day, I’m pleased to say we’ve never compromised in what our leadership has told us to do or asked us to do relative to standing up for the business community from a, from the chamber side.
so it hasn’t hurt us, but I can see how it could, if you didn’t play the game properly. So the way we do this, by the way, is that we maintain really strong ongoing regular relationships with all of the key elected officials so that they understand that there are going be times we’ll disagree with them and they say, fine, we’ll disagree on this point, but we’re not going to, it’s not going to hurt the overall investment of the, in the community. But if you don’t.
Brandon Burton (02:46.388)
I’ll you the next one.
Bob Durkin (02:50.057)
play that game very delicately, that can be a problem. The other part of that is from a staffing standpoint, and I think I may have mentioned that all of our employees work for the Chamber of Commerce and ultimately are farmed out in a sense to the various affiliates. Well, that sounds like a very simple thing on paper. But what you also have is I have people on the team, the economic development team, who they see themselves as Slipco employees. They’re doing economic development and that’s their space.
Brandon Burton (02:53.006)
Thanks.
Brandon Burton (03:00.621)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (03:18.892)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (03:19.775)
Then you have the chamber people who were doing all of the, you know, 50 different events and programs and educational efforts and blah, blah, and suddenly when it comes together and we try to keep it together, um, there are times where we butt heads. Um, communications, for example, is a very good example of that. So communications for our organization rests with the chamber, but, know, with all the activities of marketing and go with the development side, the development people are like, Hey,
Right? Like tomorrow, I need to do A, B, and C. I’ve got to get a flyer out. I’ve got to postings on, you know, different websites and social media platforms. And the chamber people are saying like, well, no, we’ve got the annual dinner coming up and we have this. So there’s a lot of head-butting there. And so we try to treat that in a very cavalier way, in a sense of saying like, hey, let’s folks, we know we’re going to run into this. So when we do, when that day happens,
Brandon Burton (04:06.135)
and
Bob Durkin (04:18.239)
Let it out and then we’ll, know, if need be, bring it to me, but I’m lucky enough to have some really talented people running the various divisions in our executive leadership team. Uh, and they seem to handle it pretty well, but there are plenty of times. In fact, I tell you when this is over, I have to deal with some emails that came across my, my screen this morning where I’m going to have to do just that. I’m going to have to sit down with a couple of people and say, I know your priority is here and so is yours. Let’s talk it out.
Brandon Burton (04:20.366)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (04:45.326)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (04:47.039)
So it’s no different really in a sense that whenever you have a complicated organization, there are always going to be different people. Your staff to their credit wants theirs to be the best. we are really lucky. I’m blessed, Brandon, with talented people across all these different divisions.
Brandon Burton (05:05.42)
Yeah, it sounds like you are to be able to keep it all working and coming together in a unified direction.
Bob Durkin (05:12.063)
Yeah, well, I started this job 13 years ago. had a head of hair like Geraldo Rivera. And now it’s here. You see what happens. Boy, is that a dated reference, huh? I might have said like what, know, somebody from the early 1900s for all that.
Brandon Burton (05:17.774)
For those that are watching, I love it.
Brandon Burton (05:31.983)
Right. The 1900s, man. So you had mentioned the Lackawanna Industrial Fund Enterprise, how there’s a significant amount of liquidity in there, but then you also have the Neighborhood Development Trust Fund. can you talk about the… I’m anticipating that there’s very different purposes for those funds and how they’re deployed. So yeah, share with us about that.
Bob Durkin (05:54.72)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure you know from talking to other chambers that they know the wave of creating foundations, supportive foundations for the chambers is really strong right now. And in essence, we are blessed to have several resources that sort of predate that even that movement on the local or the current chamber wave. So with life,
Brandon Burton (06:07.192)
Yes.
Bob Durkin (06:24.671)
Again, in its heyday, it was this source of capital for local manufacturers. But once that changed and really NAFTA really put an end to all of that, where we had once had literally a hundred different small manufacturing operations in the Valley, and literally all of them are gone now. And so basically, my predecessors started to look at the funds, the life funds as it were, and said, well, how can we use those in the greatest way?
Brandon Burton (06:30.894)
Who was that?
Bob Durkin (06:54.653)
most useful way and it really has come down to, well, let me back up for a second say this, the good and the bad of having all of these affiliates in the chamber world. So some of them, especially the three key 501C3s, and for us that would be MetroAction, our lending arm, Skills and Scranton, Workforce Development, and Leadership Lackawanna. Well, these are entities that could otherwise stand on their own.
Brandon Burton (07:06.478)
So, I’m just going to this progressive movement, and not only be a positive movement, but a positive movement.
Brandon Burton (07:19.758)
or if you have a group of people that are scared of trauma, you can put them in the front of your face and you’ll be fine.
Bob Durkin (07:24.671)
They’re second 501c3s. They have their own boards. They could otherwise be out in the world of a nonprofit world raising their own funds. But because they come under the Chamber of Derelo, then the community knows that. Let’s say some of our strongest supporters, banks or larger businesses, always look at it together.
Brandon Burton (07:36.846)
Right. that because these months have been too long, we can say at the cost of that the states will have rather more balanced response than they should have for businesses.
Bob Durkin (07:50.144)
And so when we go to them and say, you, you here’s your chamber membership and here’s the sponsorship we want for the annual dinner or for this event or that event. And then, then we say, Oh, by the way, leadership like Juana is going to come back to you and say, we want you to sponsor this. And they say, but you’re the chamber. You’re all part of the chamber. So the result is that some of the smaller 501 C3s that are under our umbrella have their hands tied. Um, I can’t, you know, if they came to me and then said, well, we’re having our workforce summit through under skills and Scranton.
going to go to the biggest supporter of the chamber, bank X or company X. And we say, no, don’t do that. We’ve already tapped them out on these other things that we’re working on. So because of that, those smaller ones need support. that’s where life often comes in. Every year, and again, it’s out of scale, unless you know all the budget stuff, it may not make sense, but life contributes about $200,000 a year to the chamber. Part of that is to pay for
Brandon Burton (08:23.182)
you
Bye!
Brandon Burton (08:32.056)
So, that was a good, not a bad, beautiful, so thank
Brandon Burton (08:44.259)
you
Bob Durkin (08:49.951)
the building that we are in because life owns our building. That’s just complicated side note. But about $100,000 from life then, think of it as a foundation, as an internal foundation. So $100,000 a year goes to our operating fund, not to support the chamber per se, but to support those nonprofit, small nonprofits under the chamber. Because we’re telling them, don’t ask for more money from somebody else, we’ll simply support it.
Brandon Burton (08:53.966)
Okay.
Brandon Burton (09:00.546)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (09:11.598)
We have a lot of people who are not interested in the internet. So if we can a lot of money from the internet, it would job for me.
Bob Durkin (09:17.471)
So we use life as our ballast, our financial foundation. say, if there’s a loss, we simply go to life and life will take care of the loss.
Brandon Burton (09:28.384)
I like that. That’s great. A great structure to have there and to be able to just keep things cohesive as an organization. I noticed that you have life set up as a 501C4 versus a trust fund as a C3. What’s the, lot of people listening, they’re going to be familiar with the C3 and the C6, but talk to us a little bit about the C4 and why that is categorized as C4.
Bob Durkin (09:46.176)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See, again, C4s are economic development organizations and that’s really just a legacy issue. So when life, the Spranton plan and Slipco were created post-World War II, the two of the three were set up as C4s because life was a lending enterprise at the time. It’s an interesting question to ask because we’re in the midst of a strategic plan right now.
Brandon Burton (09:58.466)
Okay.
Brandon Burton (10:02.99)
you
you
Bob Durkin (10:15.871)
And the question some of our board members are asking is exactly that. Should we switch that? Should we turn it into a C3, make it a pure foundation? And we may go down that road. I will tell you the reason that I like it in its current structure is our hands are not tied by some of the IRS rules that would apply to a foundation, depending on whether it’s a public trust or a private trust where the assets
Brandon Burton (10:37.23)
So the basic thing I want to put in place for the pilot test, we’re going to use the differential of two cases. That’s the big thing we need to do to the So you’re going send it from the main figure you offer, and you’re going to turn it into an axis. And that’s the most important part of the pilot part of process. And it’s going to be done in next couple And I’m doing the pilot test, and you’ll be able to have a better look.
Bob Durkin (10:44.061)
have to be maintained at a certain level. I happen to sit on a major foundation board and the challenge we have there is we have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the corpus and so you can only spend so much money. Well, by having it in our current state the way that we have it set up with life, hypothetically with, you know, $7 million or whatever we have there, if we wanted to spend $5 million, we could. We don’t have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the corpus.
in its current structure. But since we don’t foresee that need, we’re going to, for our strategic planning process, we’re going to review that and determine if it makes more sense to turn those assets into a foundation on a C3 at all. So it’s a good question. It’s a really good question because it fits what a lot of people are talking about in the chamber world right
Brandon Burton (11:27.381)
Yeah,
Right. With the foundation structures. so I feel like we’ve, we’ve touched on a lot of the, upside, the reasoning, why you have these different affiliates broken out and the way it’s organized, the way it is. I can see for those listening, they’re like, man, that’s a lot of, a lot of work to keep these different balls juggling. mean, if we’re being honest, chambers are juggling different balls or plates or whatever you want to say you’re juggling at any time, but what are.
maybe some of the downsides to having these different affiliates broken out like this. And you talked a little bit about the conflict that might arise and different goals kind of headbutt against each other, but what else might you see or warn against?
Bob Durkin (12:07.711)
Yes.
Bob Durkin (12:12.349)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there’s an inherent element of creating silos, you know, where people just feel like my program area is the best, mine’s the most important. And so from a management standpoint, I’m always sensitive to that. And it’s no different in a sense that when you’re managing multiple people and personalities, you always have to say, you know,
Brandon Burton (12:20.407)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (12:39.975)
By the way, if anybody says, it says, well, I treat everybody the same, you know, was it, I’m trying to think of things to talk about Vince Lombardi. And one of his players said, he treats us all the same. He treats us all like dogs. it’s just like, whether it’s an organizational relationship or a personal relationship with staff, have to recognize people’s strengths, weaknesses, and the nature of their personalities. So I’m from my, my seat, I’m always sort of balancing that.
Brandon Burton (12:51.692)
Hehehehehe
Bob Durkin (13:09.769)
who needs to be coddled, who needs to be yelled at, who needs to be hands held, who needs the freedom to do things on their own. it’s a challenge. I like to think that I, and really I’d say our management team does a good job of that, but on a regular basis, maybe a weekly basis, we run into some sort of challenges along those lines in terms of the balance. From the community standpoint, from the outside looking in,
Brandon Burton (13:09.965)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (13:38.592)
I do like that people recognize that this organization has so many tools that are in our tool chest. And that is both good and bad because you know the old rule, like if you’re, know, the reward for good work is more work. And so, for example, in the vernacular of the chamber world, our program of work,
Brandon Burton (13:54.319)
Remember, we’re here to help. There are always more people who need your help.
Bob Durkin (14:07.103)
Then we have the strategic plan and then we have our annual program of work. And, and I, I said this to the board and the executive committee, which really, you know, is our driving, you know, management component. I’ve said this over the last couple of years to them. said, know, we do the program of work and for us, that’s a July to June program year. So in like May or June, we approve next year’s program of work. By the time we are six months into that, I can tell you.
Brandon Burton (14:13.762)
This is some water that we have use as a dip through dry lay to make…
Brandon Burton (14:28.92)
So, we’ll try our best to see if we can do it.
Bob Durkin (14:35.923)
The work of the organization, there’s a third of the work that we do, sometimes more, that isn’t even on the program work. And it’s because the community recognizes the value of our team. And so when there’s an issue, and right now, for example, we have an issue with hospitals. I mean, a lot of our brethren across the country are dealing with this, particularly in communities of the size of Scranton. We have three hospitals and two of them were on the verge of being shut down.
Brandon Burton (14:43.266)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (15:03.165)
because the parent company was walking away. was a private enterprise. Well, so last year I probably spent easily a third of my time working on with a group of community leaders to keep those hospitals open, including a substantial financial contribution to make this work. That was never even on our program of work. You know? And so, so the good, again, the good and the bad, we’re proud of the fact that the people turned to us to be among the leaders to try to save the hospitals.
Brandon Burton (15:16.782)
Right.
Bob Durkin (15:33.272)
and, then again, what do you do with the rest of the work plan? And, you know, and there’s, could, I could point out probably every year in the last four or five years, particularly since COVID, well, COVID’s probably the best example. When COVID hit, we became the enterprise to coordinate. were part of the emergency management network for all of Northeastern Pennsylvania, not just our county or our chamber, but all the surrounding counties and their chambers. We became.
Brandon Burton (15:37.418)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (15:47.351)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (16:02.471)
the central source for, you know, holding up a lot of things like, know, when the SBA was coming on with the PPP and all the other, you know, both health and business elements that were being played out. We were central to that for about a six county area. I know, you know, in partnership with our local, our friends in the other chambers, but we’re still the biggest and, you know, we had greater capacity. so the good again,
Brandon Burton (16:11.064)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (16:31.807)
Sorry if I’m all over the map on this, but it’s a good and bad of being the big dog. Everybody wants you to do something, including every elected official. And we’re happy to do it where we can. We’re proud of it and we’re proud of our success. But there’s only so much we can do. Exactly. Yeah.
Brandon Burton (16:32.238)
there.
Brandon Burton (16:40.706)
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Brandon Burton (16:47.404)
And I get that and sometimes you have to say no because it doesn’t fit within the mission and whatever. But at the same time, if you say no to helping a major employer who’s about to walk away, that’s not a good look for the chamber either. So you got to adjust. Yeah.
Bob Durkin (16:56.969)
That’s right. No, no. You know, the local, air, the regional airport needs our help. The, we’re in the process of trying to get to reinstate the passenger transportation from Scranton to New York City, which for us, that’s about it. That’s about a two hour. It’s a, you know, two, we’re about two hours from New York, two hours from Philly in Northeastern Pennsylvania. And so who’s in the middle of the Amtrak proposal, but the chamber. And that wasn’t on our books three years ago, but it is now.
Brandon Burton (17:26.062)
Yeah, yeah. Well, in interest of your time, I think we need to start wrapping up, but it’s been a great discussion. I wanted to ask on behalf of listeners who want to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive towards that goal?
Bob Durkin (17:27.039)
So, yeah.
Bob Durkin (17:32.703)
Okay. Okay.
Bob Durkin (17:46.782)
Well, again, I mentioned before, and I’m proud of my professional association and personal association with the team at ACCE. I think that it’s among the best assets. When I came back into the chamber world, and as you read my bio, I was vice president of this chamber back 35 years ago, left for 20 years to do other things, and then came back 13 years ago. And that’s where I discovered ACCE.
I would say anybody who has any interest in figuring out, you want to expand your programs or do you want to contract them? The best asset, the best resource that I know of is ACC. And that’s, and it’s both, you know, their leadership in Sherry and Kelly and others, but also is equally important is the networking. You know, we’re part of the major cities council of ACC. I’m very active with that.
Brandon Burton (18:28.206)
Yeah
Brandon Burton (18:40.014)
think this now is in control. Have a nice day.
Bob Durkin (18:44.901)
and so whenever I have an issue on these types of things, I now have on my contact list, I used to say Rolodex because I’m an old man, but, you know, my contact list, I can pick up the phone or I can shoot an email or whatever for a handful of really smart, talented, and eager friends and colleagues, because there’s always someone out there who’s done what you’ve done. And, I’m happy to be that resource for anybody who may be listening and seeing our structure.
Brandon Burton (18:46.03)
you
Brandon Burton (18:51.182)
that’s right.
Bob Durkin (19:14.055)
and wanting to know if they should follow this course, I’ll, I’ll tell them the good and the bad. That’s, that’s what’s, you know, that’s what’s so great about chamber world, right? You know, people, people sometimes say, well, all you chamber people are all type A personalities and whatever else. Actually, no, we’re not. We are just like anything else. We’re a mix. You know, we’ve got both extroverts and introverts, and we’ve got people who are task people, and we people who are, you know, want to be talking, you know, a bag, the big
Brandon Burton (19:19.619)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (19:25.981)
So thank you.
Bob Durkin (19:42.91)
hairy audacious goals and some want to make sure that you’re blocking and tackling. I’m mixing my metaphors here, right? I’ll use the blocking and tackling because I see you’ve got a football in the 49ers helmet behind you. But that’s what’s great about the chamber world, right? If you really, I always say this, if you know if someone is meant to be in this world, because we all do act the same way, we can be the spokesperson, or we can be the worker bee, you know?
Brandon Burton (19:44.11)
That’s right.
Brandon Burton (19:53.9)
That’s right.
Brandon Burton (20:11.022)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (20:12.159)
We’re a hybrid that can do whatever you need for the moment.
Brandon Burton (20:16.918)
Yeah, exactly. So I’m sure you’ll bring ACC into this response as well. But I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future. So how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?
Bob Durkin (20:31.507)
Yeah, I think that both versions of the Horizons project, the original and the most recent one, I think have very, very strong elements that portend where we’re going. But then like everything else, as I referenced before, we do our annual work plan, we do our strategic plan, we do our annual work plan, and then okay, throw it out the window because something else happens. And AI, of course, stands out.
Brandon Burton (20:59.438)
See next time.
Bob Durkin (21:01.019)
And for us, the way, AI slash data centers have become, you know, the discussion of the day. and, and they, they threatened to change a lot of what we have thought about how we as a chamber operate and how we as community based organizations connect with the community and in what way we do. So, I think that using the data data center issue as an example, because right now we have.
Brandon Burton (21:21.454)
Thank you.
Bob Durkin (21:29.919)
Probably six different organizations and ourselves included as a developer talking about and dealing with the idea of creating data centers in the community. And, uh, there’s pros and cons to this thing and the community doesn’t know what to do. So we have to step in and we have, we have edu, we’ve, we’ve brought in people to educate elected officials. We have taken people from literally a bus ride from Scranton to Northern Virginia, which is data center alley to a Loudoun County, Virginia.
Brandon Burton (21:35.566)
I’m on it.
Bob Durkin (21:59.434)
to learn about this. So we have to play that center role in terms of the future and how AI is going to impact us and our communities. And I’d say the same thing applies on the political spectrum. have to, know, Mick Fleming, the late Mick Fleming always said, you know, we’re the same center in the political arena. And today that’s a tough place to find yourself, but we have to be that same center.
Brandon Burton (22:01.614)
So, think that’s the center of the whole thing, the state of the world, the universe, the universe. And it’s actually on the end of my life, where it’s the reaction, where it’s the reaction, it’s probably the reaction.
Brandon Burton (22:22.99)
So that’s the sense of the energy that we use.
Bob Durkin (22:28.051)
in the political arena, we have to say enough of these extreme positions and let’s recognize what’s best for the community. And that’s always, you know, compromise and moderate moderation.
Brandon Burton (22:41.091)
Yeah. Am I seeing a possible data center in the future as an affiliate for the Scranton Chamber?
Bob Durkin (22:49.247)
Well, not as, yeah, I mean, we hope as members, they darn well better be. Yeah, it’s this, this is really a, we are a test kitchen, as it were for for this right now, because we happen to be, we’re a valley. And the main power lines for the PJM grid that serves Northeastern United States comes and runs right across the top of our valley.
Brandon Burton (22:53.204)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (23:18.705)
And so we’re a very popular spot for data center development. But we’re also a settled residential area. In Northern Virginia, for example, it was agricultural space. so open space that they filled in with these big buildings, it doesn’t work quite as well when you’re trying to build these facilities next to neighborhoods or in areas that are not industrial.
Brandon Burton (23:43.49)
Yeah
Bob Durkin (23:44.786)
It’s it’s it’s it’s a lesson for the country. If anybody’s interested in I’m more than happy to share with our current experiences. But I’ll go back, Brandon, you asked the question earlier about how do you balance that chamber versus development side? Well, that’s that’s one of those nexus areas where we’re having a challenge because on the one side, on development side, we’re saying yeah, job creation for for the trades and revenue return to the communities. Not a lot of big jobs in the buildings themselves, but
Brandon Burton (24:00.739)
Yeah.
Bob Durkin (24:14.399)
you get it on the front end and the back end. And then the chamber side is saying, well, it’s all about our community. And the community is going crazy saying they don’t want data centers. So it’s balance.
Brandon Burton (24:23.586)
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, Bob, this has been great. I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who do want to reach out and learn more about your structure or anything you’ve covered today. Where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to connect with you?
Bob Durkin (24:39.155)
Sure. Well, the obvious starting point is our website, www.scrantonchamber.com. Our phone number is 570-342-7711. I’m extension 118. You can find me on our website and through those other contacts. We’ve got a great team. If I can’t talk to you directly, I’ll find someone on our team to be able to help you with any questions you have.
And you can also find me at any of the major ACC events. We’re always going to be at the national conference and I’m always also going to be at the major cities as well. So happy to be a resource for any of my friends and colleagues.
Brandon Burton (25:14.924)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (25:22.318)
Very good. Well, we’ll share that in our show notes for this episode. again, I appreciate you spending time with us and sharing the structure and how you guys are approaching things there in Scranton, the greater Scranton area. It’s a great example and something that we can learn a lot from and how we structure and look to the future as well. So I appreciate it.
Bob Durkin (25:31.614)
Okay.
Bob Durkin (25:48.52)
Right, so it’s been great to chat with you.
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