Inclusivity & Community Outreach with Jenna Armstrong

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 18 — Inclusivity & Community Outreach with Jenna Armstrong
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Jenna Armstrong
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.214 Jenna Armstrong
I feel very strongly that Chambers have a a reputation as an exclusive, maybe good old boy, old fashioned type of club. And we are really focused on trying to dispel that and make everyone feel welcome and a part of our organization because we do things that affect the community, not just the businesses.
00:26.462 Brandon Burton
Our guest today is Jenna Armstrong, and she will be discussing her ideas about inclusivity and community outreach here on Chamber Chat Podcast. Let's cue the intro. 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.
00:54.744 Brandon Burton
Thank you for joining us for episode eighteen of the Chamber Chat Podcast. I'm Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. Now, along these lines of my mission to of this podcast, of helping you better serve your members and community, let's take a quick moment to hear from the sponsor for this episode so you can better serve the your audience.
01:25.376 Brandon Burton
Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipeit for all of your credit card processing needs. Swypit has a unique affinity program that 1. Helps your chamber members be more profitable, and three, provides recurring nondues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit chamberchapodcast.com slash CC for credit card. Again, Chamberchappodcast dot com slash C C and get swiping with swipe it. And we're back. Our guest today is Jenna Armstrong. Jenna is the president and CEO of the Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce. Her 15-year chamber career began at the Lufkin Angelina County Chamber in 2003. She graduated from the U.S. Chamber's Midwest Institute of Organization Management in 2011. She currently serves on the Executive Board for the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives, the U.S. Chamber Foundation's Board of Regents for Midwest Institute, and the Umble ISD Education Foundation. In 2014, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives. In 2015 and 2018, the Lake Houston Area Chamber was one of three finalists. For the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, Chamber of the Year, North America. In 2019, she was named Woman of Achievement in the Area of Business from Family Time, Lake Houston. Most recently, she was named as a top 40 under 40 by the Houston Business Journal. Jenna holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Stephen F. Austin State University.
03:43.19 Brandon Burton
She lives in Atascaseda with her two children, an eight year old daughter named Drew and five year old son named Bo. Jenna, please say hello to the Chamber Chat podcast audience and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
03:59.946 Jenna Armstrong
Okay, hello everyone. when I was thinking about something interesting, the one thing that popped into my head is a lot of people don't know that I was extremely active in my high school with our FFA program. And I used to show heifers. I was actually on a a show team, and most people don't even know what a show team is, and that's where we would travel around. From county fair to county fair, showing our heifers and competing and we would do this during the fall of each year. And that's actually a thing. And they still do it.
04:37.646 Brandon Burton
It's actually a thing.
04:40.024 Jenna Armstrong
It is. And I loved it. It was great.
04:43.522 Brandon Burton
That is great. So I'm actually I'm in the North Dallas area, but in a rural area. So believe the FFA is still very strong in my neck of the woods. And I actually know several people in the horse industry that go to these horse shows and it always just blows my mind the amount of money that's involved with horse shows. And I don't understand anything about how that business works. I just know that it works. Yes. That's funny. well, for anyone who may not be totally familiar with the Lake Houston area chamber, can you share with us a little bit about the size of the chamber, maybe membership, budget, just kind of where you sit in the Houston area so we can all get to know kind of where you're at.
05:31.074 Jenna Armstrong
Sure, absolutely. So our chamber is a regional chamber. We're suburban northeast Houston. We have several communities that comprise our organization. We have the city of Umble, we have Kingwood, which is actually the city of Houston, and then we have a large unincorporated area of Harris County. And the communities there are Atascasita and Summerwood Fall Creek, which everyone here calls Summer Creek. and we have a little portion of Montgomery County as well. So we have two counties, two cities, and then four county commissioners between those two counties. our population is about 280,000, about 7,500 businesses are in the area, 1,100 members of our organization. And our annual budget is 900,000 if you're looking at strictly chamber. But we do have an economic development partnership that is under our chamber umbrella and it's privately funded. So it's not funded through half-sit and sales tax or any tax dollars. that money is also raised for that program. So if you add that in, we're over a million with our our annual budget. So our area being a suburban area. We it's it's largely a bedroom community with 82% of our tax base being residential. So that's pretty common with you know suburban areas. and and that's you know one of the challenges that we have is trying to increase the commercial tax base.
07:14.488 Brandon Burton
That's right. so in preparation to this interview, I know we talked a couple of days ago about kind of what direction we wanted to go with this, but you had a lot on your mind as far as different things that you could talk about or things that you're passionate about there at your chamber. But as we address the topic of today of inclusivity and community outreach being our topic, can you let us all know why? This topic is so important to you. you mentioned having the the multiple municipalities that are all kind of in your territory as a chamber, but with where you're located, why is that important to you and how can this topic be relevant for other chambers as well?
08:01.428 Jenna Armstrong
So for our area, it is really hard to get communication out. So our community, we don't have like a daily newspaper. You know, there's the Houston Chronicle, but it serves such a large area, you know, to fight to try to get information in there is a challenge. you know, the radio stations are all greater Houston area. So Coming from Lefkin and working at the Lefkin chamber, we had a daily newspaper. We could always get articles in. We had two or three radio stations. We could pop in the radio station and get on air and spread our news. But here it is a challenge to get out the word of the work that we're doing and solicit feedback and just tell people what the chamber is and what our purpose is. And so we've really tried to focus on different ways to reach out to the community to spread our message. I also think it's important because I think I don't think I feel very strongly that Chambers have a a reputation as an exclusive, maybe good old boy, old fashioned type of club. And we're really focused on trying to dispel that and make everyone feel welcome and a part of our organization because we do things that affect The community, not just the businesses.
09:23.864 Brandon Burton
That's right. So from that I I'm getting the the two things is the the communication challenges and the messaging that you're trying to get across with the chamber. what are you finding is working with the communication since you don't have those maybe traditional ways of communication with the newspapers and radio. What what are you finding that does work?
09:49.292 Jenna Armstrong
But for us, social media is extremely important and that's how we reach out. But we also have different programs within the community that's open and free and provides really good information. and those have have been working well. and I'll I'll talk a little bit about that. We have a program and it it's called BizCom. So we have four main communities, Kingwood, Umbolitask Seed of Summer Creek. At each of those high schools, we have what we call a VISCOM meeting, and that's kind of a town hall. It's free, it's open to anyone to come to. There's a free lunch that's served, and there's five to seven speakers that come and talk about issues happening in that community and with a with a business focus. So we talk about transportation, the new businesses or new developments or new expansions. We have somebody from local government come and talk about what's going on with local government. So it's It's a chance for people to ask a lot of times developers questions about the development, text dot or whoever's doing the road projects questions about the road projects. And as we've developed it over time, our weekly newspapers and sometimes even the Houston Chronicle comes and you'll see the stories are based off of the information they get from those VizCom meetings. By having it open and free to the public to come. We also are able to spread our message of, you know, what we do as an organization, but it also gives leads for our membership. We meet a lot of people that are not members that come. and once they start coming and understanding what our purpose is as an organization, it's such an easier sell. They invest and buy into our organization.
11:40.374 Brandon Burton
That's great. you know, just a a couple weeks ago I had Frank Kenny on the show and we kind of talked about this specifically, about the communication at the chamber, because it used to be that you know chambers had their relationship with the newspapers and maybe cable TV networks in their town and radio stations and they're able to broadcast their message. And now either those aren't the resources people are going to. for information anymore, or in your situation, you don't have those resources necessarily to even have as an option. And he was really talking about social media and the importance, how that needs to be kind of a primary focus for every chamber, especially for getting the communication out there, but also the engagement with the community.
12:31.118 Jenna Armstrong
I think there's a lot of information that is relevant for all parties. And for example, transportation. When there's with their issues that are going on with transportation, if we push that out on because we know and we're in good contact with everyone involved, we may create a map. That shows spots where the transportation is going to be with information about how long, what the road closures are going to be like, and we push it out. We get such engagement from that, not just from businesses, but from the community and the people that live here because they want to know what's going on. And so it's valuable for the whole community, not just the businesses. We do it because we want our businesses to know. I mean, that's our primary focus, but this is valuable information the whole community needs to know. And then it positions us as being information central in our community, that we're the place to go when we need to know what's going on or what's happening, or you have a question. And by positioning ourselves as information central, we meet a lot more people and engage with a lot more people and have that opportunity to grow our membership.
13:50.114 Brandon Burton
I love that idea of being that information central. There's a a need in your community where there's not that media outlet that everybody can just go to to find about find out about road closures or school information or whatever is going on in the community. And you're able to find that that void and be able to fill that and be that go to trusted resource to get that information out. that's going to help build the relevancy with the the chamber throughout the community. So great, great move there. so I'm curious, in your situation there, you'd mentioned is it four municipalities or four you've got multiple municipalities there that you're dealing with. So in terms of public affairs or even advocacy, how are you able to manage that across I mean, it I'm sure it's a daily thing that you're trying to ask yourself that and trying to find out the answer, but what does that look like for you?
14:49.678 Jenna Armstrong
Absolutely. It it took I mean it's evolved over the years and it just took a lot of of work and groundwork to develop the relationships that we we get calls from them telling us what's going on and we get calls from them asking us how does the business community feel. So it's it's it's evolved over time into a good situation. as an organization, we are business focused, business solutions focused. And that helps. I guess what I'm trying to say here is I know that there's a lot of chambers that do other things as such as parades or events or you know, pancake breakfasts and things like that. We choose not to do those types of things. We choose to only do things that have a business focus. By doing that, it has given us a lot of credibility and respect and It makes the elected officials want to engage to us and to come to us because we are information central and because they want to know what the the businesses are are thinking and feeling what's the pulse of business. So at this point we have a lot of elected officials that come to us and it's not as hard to manage. a couple of things that we do though is through our BizComs, we always ask them and invite them to speak at those community meetings. But we have a quarterly regional planning meeting for our area and they are all it's a it is an invite only because we have elected officials come in and they may talk about projects but are not public knowledge yet and it's a time for us to look at what's going on what's happening and people can plan around it so like if Text Dot's putting a road in and it goes through or intersects with a county road and they were planning to do some type of county road improvement to it, they may hold off until Text got done because they don't want them tearing up the work that they just did and the millions of dollars they just met. So we have come to have that place where we convene them so that they can talk and help plan and be more efficient.
17:03.436 Jenna Armstrong
And then I think it's just being good stewards of any time our public officials have information that they post, we reshare it. And they like that we do that because that enhances their reach and we are supportive of the information that they put out.
17:17.889 Brandon Burton
That goes back to being the information central, right? If you're helping to reshare what they're posting, that's perfect. So I wanted to ask you, you mentioned the the focus being business solutions focused. how does that play in with the messaging of the chambers not just a good old boys club? Does that support that? Does it challenge that? How does have you looked at that as far as
17:47.566 Jenna Armstrong
Well, I think whenever you focus on being business, focus on business solutions, that is not excluding anyone. We do a lot of programs, and I think a lot of chambers do things where they're being inclusive and they may not think of it in those terms. So you think about public affairs, your public affairs work. When you work on an issue at the local, state, or federal level, that issue impacts your entire community. So, regardless of whether they're a member of your organization, they get the benefit of your work. So you're engaging, that's your opportunity to engage with all the businesses. They are included in the outcome of that legislation. same goes for transportation. Those are two very easy topics where you can be inclusive is transportation and mobility, and as well as public affairs. We are doing it. We we take on the business issues. We want to make sure transportation, the businesses are aware of what transportations are projects are happening that might affect them. By doing that, like we have we've had a town hall, or not a town hall really, but a preview before a text dot community meeting where for two weeks we had Text Dot's huge, massive maps wrap around our boardroom and invited our businesses to come take a look any time of day. Because a lot of them couldn't make it to that community meeting. And we provided a way for them to give us feedback of what they thought. We ex we were very well aware of the project. We were able to answer their questions. We were able to email and get clarification on those questions. So we do that and open it up to all the businesses and contact all the businesses along that thoroughfare that it was affecting so that we could get their feedback and really represent them when we're at the table with TechTy.
19:40.182 Brandon Burton
I think that's very well said. Both public affairs and transportation, the business community at large is gonna either benefit from or suffer together, depending on what's going on.
19:51.576 Jenna Armstrong
Well right. So one of our main themes here that we look at is that the best thing that we can do for our members as an organization is create a healthy economic climate. And a lot of times that means working with businesses that aren't members yet. I always say yet, they're not members yet. But a big mantra that we have in our office is seek to provide help first and Seek to provide value first, I should say. That's what we say here. Seek to provide value first. So we don't do the chamber handshake, is what we say, where we our hand is outreached and our palm is up asking for money when we meet people. We try to provide them with information. We try to see where we can help them before we have any conversation with them about coming on as a member. do some people Take advantage and not join. Yeah. I say I still like to say they they're not joining yet. But most people, when they see that we're providing information and we're providing value, it's such an easy sell. So we wanna help our all of our businesses be successful. We wanna help stimulate the economy and make it healthy and viable because that's how our businesses are gonna succeed.
21:11.766 Brandon Burton
That's right. Those those businesses that don't join that aren't they're not taking advantage, they just wanted to make sure you're not a one hit wonder. That's all. Right. So just make sure you you can deliver again. So
21:23.682 Jenna Armstrong
to focus too much on that. I know the work that we're doing is valuable. Our members know the work that we're doing is valuable. They'll I think they're gonna come around eventually. And if not, that's okay. We're still doing the right thing. So it's just about doing the right thing.
21:39.438 Brandon Burton
That's right. So you had mentioned in kind of at the beginning of the the interview here, the eighty-two percent of the tax tax revenue is coming from residential. And you're trying to that's one of the challenges that you're seeing is not having as much of a a business tax base. do you wanna speak to that a little bit, kind of how you're working through that?
22:02.722 Jenna Armstrong
Sure. that is why we actually created our economic development partnership back in two thousand and twelve. That of course, school funding in Texas, that's all tied to the tax base. And everybody knows about Robin Hood. Some people pay in, some people don't, and that whole situation. But we our our school is a fast growth school district. It has a ton of kids. I mean, it's a massive school district. It's a large school district. But We rely on the state to give us money. So what happens is people live here, but they may have jobs in other places. The company that they work for is not here. so a company may establish a little bit further south from us, but all the people decide to live here because it's a desirable place to live in a good school district. Well, our school district doesn't give that. taxes the tax value from that business that's up the road because it's not in our district. So it it's it's a you know it's a very complex thing. But that's what we want to focus on is growing that commercial tax base for education, but for other reasons too. You need that healthy commercial tax base to support projects that go on in your area. So that's that was a big emphasis of why we created our partnership.
23:23.614 Brandon Burton
That's right. So in with that economic partnership, is that where you're able to maybe help leverage the voice of the businesses, or do you keep that more on the the chamber side of things when there's different things on a ballot and things like that where these businesses don't necessarily have a vote, but they're paying taxes into it? where does that advocacy come for the businesses? Is that on your chamber side or is that on the economic development side?
23:52.578 Jenna Armstrong
That's on our chamber side. So the chamber handles all advocacy. We since our setup is with the partnership under the chamber umbrella, we work so closely together on all projects. So if we have something that's going on and we have investors and businesses, economic developments working with, they send an email out to those that may not be reached from our chamber communication so that everybody is informed. The economic development president Mark Mitchell and I, we issue out joint letters and joint emails all the time. just so people know that we work together and have such a good relationship because we are trying to reach as many people as possible. We definitely work with them on all our communications.
24:39.852 Brandon Burton
That that sounds like the right way to do it. so with as far as community outreach goes, you'd mentioned some of these town halls and social media and what are are there other things that you're doing for that community outreach to make sure the community knows what's going on and just keep people involved?
24:59.596 Jenna Armstrong
We're always constantly trying to engage through social media by by putting out information, like I said. we have different types of round tables that we get people to participate in so that we can get information. We have a nonprofit round table. and that's our nonprofits coming together, and they work to make sure that there's no duplicate duplicate I'm sorry, duplication of efforts among the nonprofits. making sure they're not scheduling their fundraising events on top of each other. We have a really healthy nonprofit network here. And I'm gonna go off just a little bit, but I I've talked to a lot of chambers and I hear a lot of chambers that see nonprofits as competition. I don't n that's not the right approach for our community. we want our nonprofits to be healthy and successful because they're tackling issues such as homelessness, such as Hunger, such as domestic violence, domestic abuse. And they're doing a very good job at tackling those issues. If they weren't here, we would be in a much worse situation as a community. So we do what we can to support them and to create a way for them to work with each other. And by work, all the nonprofits, they do work with each other and communicate with each other well. And having that healthy nonprofit network in our community is invaluable. Nonprofits are members of our chamber. We do not have a nonprofit membership. They do pay at a regular business rate. They go through our leadership programs. They participate in speaker panels for luncheons. I mean, we we try to be very inclusive of all the nonprofits and not see them this competition. When it
26:48.04 Brandon Burton
I'm sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.
26:51.162 Jenna Armstrong
another way that we seek to be inclusive through maybe, and this is uncomfortable. I can tell you, I've been very uncomfortable with some of it sometimes is getting the adversaries or people that may be seen as adversaries involved with a certain initiative. And that is hard to do. It's hard to swallow and move forward and try to be welcoming to people that don't hear your view. Or that maybe their work is counteractive to what you're doing. but we've had a really good leader that has been focused on that. And what comes to mind the biggest is our flood recovery task force since the Hurricane Harvey floods, and and working together. There's so many different entities that come to play. one of them was a river authority that released water that. when it came to our area and hit our already flooded area, just spread out and flooded so many more homes. And there was no communication between them and our community on when they were releasing water. So everybody here was so mad at them. And I mean it was like pitchforks and fire and they were so angry. But in order to come to a resolution and to solve it and to make sure it doesn't happen again, we had to work with them. So we did do it privately at first. I'm not gonna lie, because we've we thought and they thought if our community knew that we were meeting with them and creating a way to work together, that they would probably run us out on a rail too. So at first we did it very quietly, but now they are at all of our flood test meetings. They are participants in it. This recent flood event that we've had this week, we were in constant communication with them, they were holding water longer. Than their protocol say because they knew how much we were flooding from the flash flooding in our area. so it was very uncomfortable to work with them at first and very com uncomfortable to let down your guard against these people that had done something that had devastated your area that we had to work with them if we were going to come up with a solution.
29:08.398 Brandon Burton
So I think that's an important factor to to look at is when there is maybe an opposition, you might look at it. how did you start those conversations with them to be able to get on the same page and sit at the same
29:23.576 Jenna Armstrong
You know, I am so glad you asked that question. You know how we got it done? We went to the Chamber of Commerce where their headquarters is located, and I said, Do you know XYZ? And it was JJ Holly in the Woodlands. He said, I do, and he's very engaged with us, and he's actually a personal friend of mine. Let me connect you. The very first meeting that we had with this organization was at the Woodlands Chamber. We came to Common Ground and they hosted us there so that we could talk. They trusted JJ in the Woodlands. We trusted JJ in the Woodlands. And isn't that a great I didn't think about isn't that a great story of using your chamber partners and your friends in the chamber community to bring these two very opposite sides together and now we're working together so good. And that's the power of chambers.
30:17.772 Brandon Burton
That's right. The the networking effect and also going back to the information central, being able to know when they're going to release water and being able to give them information of hey, this is our situation here. Please hold on to the water as long as you can. being able to have those open lines of communication is is so key. But being able to start that dialogue and build that relationship, none of it would happen without that. So I'm glad you're able to work through.
30:44.238 Jenna Armstrong
person that had mutual trust. Because if I just reached out to that organization on my own, they probably would be very hesitant to do anything with us because they were getting slammed and online here and in all of our, you know, media and communications, people were just slamming them. So they had no reason to engage with us when they're being just blasted left. That's right. And it was finding that mutual person. And it was, it was my
31:06.83 Brandon Burton
That's right.
31:12.194 Jenna Armstrong
My good friend J J in the woodlands at that chamber.
31:15.47 Brandon Burton
Right. Shout out to JJ. Yeah. so Jenna, as as we start wrapping up the interview, I wanted to ask you, what is one action item that you think listeners can do to improve their efforts in community outreach at their chamber?
31:34.926 Jenna Armstrong
I would say to build those partners that share your information on social media and getting people on board to your social media sites, whether it's Twitter or Facebook, and creating social ambassadors, as we kind of call it, and starting with you should have allies with the school district, if you have a college, your elected officials. And start asking them to reshare your important information. Don't, you know, they don't have to reshare things that are member focused. But when you have legislation, when you have transportation initiatives, those two easy topics I said that are very easy to be inclusive on, start getting those community partners to share it on their social media. And that just opens the door to start being more inclusive.
32:26.318 Brandon Burton
That's great advice. And so there's another question that I ask everybody that I have on the show is that as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you view chambers and their purpose?
32:41.238 Jenna Armstrong
I see that chambers are conveners. I think that's a huge purpose that they fill. They they don't I don't think we have to know all the answers. There's just too many topics to know everything about. I I think when I talked to you earlier this week, I may have said I learned more about hydrology and geology in the last 20 months than I ever thought. And I'm a journalism major, so that is a very foreign concept to me.
33:05.218 Brandon Burton
By more than he ever wanted to know, I'm sure.
33:07.064 Jenna Armstrong
Other than I yes, geomorphology, which I didn't even know was a term. so we don't have to know everything, we just have to be able to bring people to the table. And that goes back to being inclusive is creating those inclusive networks where you have the context to where you can bring people together, listen to their voices, and work together to solve issues. And you can't do that if you're exclusive and closed door. You have to focus and be mindful of being inclusive to make that happen.
33:42.754 Brandon Burton
That's right. Well, I w Jenna, I wanted to thank you so much for s taking time today to sp spend time with us here on the Chamber Chat podcast. I know things are kind of crazy there at home right now with with some more flooding happening. So I really do appreciate you taking the time to do this today. And I also wanted to thank everybody who's listening. I just grateful that you're here and and participating in this program. The show notes for this episode can be found at Chamberchat Podcast dot com slash episode eighteen. And Jenna, where can listeners connect with you if they have any questions about what we discussed today or about how you're doing things at the Lake Houston area chamber?
34:27.013 Jenna Armstrong
my email is J Armstrong at lakehouston.org. You can connect with us on social media. Our handle on Facebook and Twitter is at LHA Chamber.
34:37.57 Brandon Burton
That is perfect. And I'll get those in the show notes too. So if somebody's driving or out for a walk or something while they're listening, they don't need to scramble for that. Just go to the show notes. But Jenna, thanks again for being with us today. I really do appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the show today. I hope you enjoyed this episode and received some value from it. If you are enjoying the Chamber Chat podcast, I would invite you to share this podcast with your colleagues in the chamber industry. And if you've not done so already,
34:50.978 Jenna Armstrong
Thank you.
35:06.478 Brandon Burton
Please hop onto Apple Podcast to leave a five-star review for the show to help us be seen by more chamber professionals so we can continue to learn, inspire, and grow from each other. Of course, you can always find the link to the show notes for this episode in your podcast app or at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episodes. Again, thank you for being here. I look forward to chatting again next week.