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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 here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Brandon Burton 0:57
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Our guest for this episode is Kami Welch. Cami is the president of the Arvada Chamber of Commerce at a 12 year chamber veteran. Kami has earned a reputation for developing strategic innovative opportunities for businesses and community growth. Cami is a US Chamber of Commerce talent pipeline fellow and a board member for WAC and the Association of Colorado Chambers of Commerce where she is past Chair camming also sits on the community boards for nonprofit organizations that focus on children education, homelessness, and domestic violence including family tree where she is a chair. Kami loves living in Colorado with her husband of 14 years and two young children where they enjoy hiking, skiing and exploring. Kami, we’re excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you 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.
Kami Welch 2:02
Awesome. Thanks, Brandon. It’s an honor to be on with you. today. I’m excited to talk about a really important topic with everybody. I always struggle with this question about what’s interesting about me, I actually pulled my team to ask what is something that they thought was interesting about me. And we all agreed the the most interesting piece of my background is actually grew up ice skating, which doesn’t seem relevant to my current career, but it is because that was required early morning for a start time. After school. It was all about the conditioning, training and ballet and the cross training to be a good ice skater I actually had the same coach because I grew up in Oregon as Tonya Harding. So shared ice with her, which is interesting, but it’s hard. That was as a kiddo. I’ve appreciated the grit that that gave me that I’ve been able to carry through being a chamber leader.
Brandon Burton 2:51
Yeah, no, I liked that. I liked that you pulled your office suit, because it’s hard to come up with our own. Yeah, interesting facts about ourselves that that’s something they knew about you and it is unique. I don’t think we’ve had other ice skaters or do that have mentioned that on the podcast. So you’re one of a kind. So tell us about the Arvada Chamber of Commerce. Just to give us some perspective. Before we get into our discussion. Give us an idea of the size staff budget scope of work, that sort of thing, just to help set the table.
Kami Welch 3:21
Absolutely. So Arvada is located just west of Denver, so everybody knows where Denver is. We’re 10 minutes west of Denver, we actually share a border with Denver metro, our community size is about 120,000 people. We have about 3000 businesses in Arvada, we have about 500 Plus members of the chamber, which has been really exciting to see that our current team is six, but we’re growing to eight this year, we’ve had some awesome opportunities to increase revenue and grow our team alongside that which has been really an incredible opportunity to deliver on more work for our community. Our annual budget has doubled in the past year, which is crazy and exciting. So we historically were about a 500 to 550 $550,000 budget. This year, we’ll be coming in at about 1.2 million. And again, that’s because we’ve been able to identify ways to grow capital to do the work that’s so critical for our businesses.
Brandon Burton 4:17
Okay, so maybe we chose the wrong topic to focus on today. Let me just ask the question, what are you doing to increase revenue to double it like that?
Kami Welch 4:25
Yeah. So the reason that we did that is because our mission as an organization is to solve the most critical business challenges. And what we realized is that with a traditional business model, we didn’t have the capacity as an organization to take those challenges on. So our board looked at various options and decided to go forward with a five year strategic initiative capital campaign. So we actually worked with a company out of Atlanta called Power 10. And we did a feasibility study to really assess the need in our community, and if our businesses were willing to invest in solving their most critical challenges, so we ended up with a five year switch He took initiative that took on talents, housing, childcare, and to the business environment. And so we’re able to raise $2.5 million for the next five years to ensure that we can do the work that is required to actually have outcomes in these areas.
Brandon Burton 5:16
That is fantastic. Yeah. So that answers a question, at least on the surface level of everybody’s like, what are you doing to double your revenue? That’s awesome. So our our topic for conversation today is going to be around addressing childcare needs. As we look at the the economy in general, we see the workforce shortages and really just the economy in general has been rocked, you know, through the COVID pandemic and trying to come out of it. And one of those key questions to be able to help fix and stabilize the economy is addressing the childcare needs. So I’m excited to dive into that discussion with you and what you guys are doing there in about as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Kami, we’re back. So before the break, I had mentioned that the topic for today being around addressing childcare needs. What were some of those maybe key indicators or data that you guys saw that showed that this was a need to for you to chamber? It’s not typical chamber work? So how did how did that come to be that you guys saw? This is an area of focus?
Kami Welch 9:07
That’s a great question. And certainly one with a long history of feedback and engagement of our community and our businesses. But one of the things we do is on a quarterly basis, we run a business pulse survey and we asked similar questions. And then we sometimes throw in something or questions to make sure that we’re really understanding what’s happening with our businesses. And so every single time we’ve done that over the past seven years, talent is the number one issue always. And as we started to unpack our talent system and really understand all the moving parts and pieces, we understand that there’s not skill alignment, that there’s the lack of demand. But we had to dig deeper and ask why about 27 more times to really understand that there’s these other barriers that are happening in our community that are causing that talent shortage. What we uncovered and the reason why in our bold initiative that we mentioned earlier that we took on childcare and housing is because we recognize As as two of our biggest barriers to achieving the talent system that we really need, there is some crazy data that we’ve come across as we’ve dug into childcare. And to be honest, before we started taking this on in a meaningful way, I didn’t even realize what a huge issue this was. And I’ll rattle a little bit of data here, because I think it’s important. And I know you have listeners all over the country that are like, Oh, I wonder what that is for my state. So I’m gonna cite Colorado data. But it’s interesting to think about what other states are dealing with, and if it’s at the same degree, but one of the things that we thought was really interesting is that there was a Pew Research study, and they surveyed all sorts of people that were leaving jobs. And it was the number four reason in that study was childcare. So interesting, right? People are saying, I have to leave my job because I have nowhere for my kids to go. Colorado has the eighth highest cost of childcare in the country. So we know that that is a huge barrier for people that maybe aren’t making, you know, $100,000 a year, they can’t afford to put their kiddos in childcare. We know that in Colorado, 45,000, Colorado, parents are making career sacrifices due to child care. And 20% of our workforce needs childcare. So we’re starting to get a sense of Whoa, that’s a lot of people that are impacted by this issue in our community. What it really got alarming for us is when we started thinking about the supply of childcare facilities in that business model, which when you think through an economic development lens, that’s interesting, right? That’s like, Okay, this business model is struggling. So we know that we have what’s called the childcare desert. So in Colorado, we have one childcare spot for every three kids that need it. That’s wild. And there’s only one county in all of Colorado, where there’s enough spots for the kids that need it. And it’s not in the metro area, it’s probably very rural. Yeah, very, very rural. So really interesting data, my community alone needs well over 2000 additional spots to meet the demand. So taking a step back, and again, looking through that chamber economic development lens is saying, Okay, what’s going on here. So there’s some serious business model challenges, right, the cost of running a childcare facility is high, you think about the liability, the cost of real estate, the staffing that’s needed, there is a really difficult breakdown, these businesses are trying to achieve, they can’t pay their employees what they need to pay them. So they’re losing employees left and right, because they’re paying a minimum wage. But when you look at the business model, that’s all they can afford to pay them because they can’t have parents paying more than what they’re able to pay. So it’s a really interesting issue. And we’re recognizing more and more, that it’s going to take some really innovative solutions to overcome these challenges. But just looking at that data, it became crystal clear to us that there’s a huge issue. And there are ways we can influence making this system better.
Brandon Burton 12:59
Right? What really stands out to me is 45,000 career sacrifices are going on just in Colorado, because parents will look at you know, here’s the income that I would bring in, here’s what we would pay out and child care if you can get a spot, and they just see it as a wash are really just not worth you know, the extra headache of getting up early and doing everything for maybe to net, you know, a couple $1,000 It just doesn’t make sense.
Kami Welch 13:25
Yeah, I’ve countless examples in my personal and professional life of people that are making those choices every day, because of the cost. And as you said that sacrifice is just it’s horrible.
Brandon Burton 13:35
Right? So as you cite these different stats and the research that you’ve you’ve seen and and I like Like he said, looking through it through an economic development lens as this, you know, addressing the business models of childcare. It definitely is, I would say it’s a strong argument for Chamber of Commerce to be involved with this. So how do you see your role there about a chamber? Getting into the work? How does that look? How do you you can’t just go into business and say, Here’s your new business model. So how are you approaching this, this work of addressing childcare?
Kami Welch 14:10
Yeah, it’s a really, really great question. As an organization we’ve prescribed to the three C’s, many people know that it’s come out of the Western Association of chamber executives have been a convener, catalyst and champion. And so we often think through that lens, as we’re deciding how we support an issue. I think the biggest thing that we can do as organizations is really been that convener role. We have really strong partnerships across our region. And we often will say, we will join existing tables and we will lead where needed and so doing kind of that audit landscape of what great work is happening and joining in like, we don’t always have to start from ground zero. But there’s this moment of step back and say, who’s doing this work and doing it? Well. I will give a shout out to Epic Colorado, which is where much of that data I just shared came from there and incred have a partner in this work, but they’re doing amazing things and engage in industry and businesses in the Child Care conversation. So we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. But we need to get the right people in our community in our region around the same table. Because I often note that great work is happening. But so often, I think everybody can attest to this. It happens in silos, right? That people are like I’m doing the things, I’m solving the problems. But when you don’t tell anybody that you’re doing that, it can be really difficult. So I believe the key role of chambers is to bring together people to help them understand what work is happening, and how everybody can work more with more continuity as a group. And so we’ve launched what we call caps councils. And that stands for, I hope, this is okay to say if you can edit this out, kick ass problem solvers. So we have a tendency to want to make sure we’re driving actions. So we don’t have committees and councils and things like that we have action driven naming of what we do. So when people show up, they know they’re there to work. This is about rolling up your sleeves and getting towards solutions. We also like to set targets, right? Like, we know that our goal and taking on childcare is to increase the number of spots we have in our community. So who are the people that need to come around one table to help achieve that, but having a universal target that we’ve set at the Chamber helps to make sure there’s clarity and purpose when you get those people together. So that, to me is the biggest piece of this. The second thing that I think is really critical role of chambers, is to educate. So many people don’t understand all that data I just shared. And they’re making decisions based on their own personal experiences, which is fine, we are all creatures of our own perception is reality, right? But at the end of the day, there’s a lot to this. And so we have a unique role to certainly educate our businesses in our community, but also thinking about what role we play in educating the community at large about these issues that are impacting So playing a role, and really that awareness building, education, hosting forums. So people start to get that these are issues. It’s amazing to me when we’ve done that how quickly these issues start bubbling and becoming topics that everybody’s talking about the amount of organizations now that are telling me like I’m taking on childcare? And how do you know, I’m like, great, you know, like, we had to start those conversations, which has been really interesting
Brandon Burton 17:31
that so I guess the question that comes up for me, because you cited a lot of great data, and you mentioned epic Colorado that you were able to get that data from, for people in other states, where where would you point them to to try to find some of that data to be able to start that conversation about why their chambers should be involved with solving this problem as well?
Kami Welch 17:54
Yeah, that’s a really, really great question. And I know every state is going to be structured differently. One of the great sources of data we’ve had is actually our community college system. And so looking for a place where people that are going into this childcare profession are getting trained, typically, they understand kind of the lay of the land, they have really good data that they’re trying to utilize to get people into the program and help them think about where they open that childcare facility. So that’s a really good place to start. The other place would be school districts typically have a pretty solid sense of that early childhood education, and where it’s happening. And so talking with them about the landscape where there’s gaps, because we often talk about childcare, not just through the lens of quantity, but also quality. Like it’s not just about having somebody keeping eyes on your children during the day, but they need to be kindergarten ready, because all the data shows if you’re not kindergarten ready, then you lag all the way through school. And it’s hard to catch up on that. And so those quality metrics are important to our school district. And so they track a lot of the early childhood stuff as well. And then I will look at the state level and see what government departments exist that oversee child care, and really source out from there.
Brandon Burton 19:09
That’s good. Hopefully, people are jotting down some notes so they can do their research and see what the what the problem looks like. Because I’m going to assume it’s a problem in every state, and just see how big of a problem that is. And if it’s something that rises to the attention level that the domain deserve in some states, more so than others.
Kami Welch 19:28
I will also throw out on that the US Chamber Foundation has done a lot of work in this space and have an awesome toolkit on their website around childcare, that has many opportunities for businesses to get involved and resources that exist in that space. And so that’s a really good place to kind of dig in and start building knowledge around the childcare issue and opportunities.
Brandon Burton 19:49
Yeah. So about how long have you guys been involved with the child care work and had that be, you know, a big attention getter for you guys
Kami Welch 20:00
So about a year now. So not only that, I have to show great outcomes, which I’m excited in three or four years to be able to say we’ve added X amount of spots to childcare in our community, we’re still very much in the information gathering stage of this. But what has been exciting for us is how quickly we’ve been able to get to alignment of what is the goal? And what can we do about it. And so I talked a lot about the convenient and building community support, we also really worked in the policy space. And so recognizing that there’s like this whole advocacy play that comes along with moving child care system. So we have crafted a policy agenda. And that’s a big piece of our focus for this first part of the year is our legislators are down at the Capitol to really push on things like how do we expand cost effective preschool in early childhood? How do we give incentives to businesses that are willing to open childcare? So that we have the demand we need? So we’re really looking through initially that lens that what are those barriers of obstacle? And how do we remove some of them to be able to have better outcomes for our goals?
Brandon Burton 21:02
Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a sticky problem. I mean, all these different I start thinking of a solution. And then I see reasons why, you know, it may not work, but it conflicts with it. So it’s not a simple solution. I mean, it’s going to require rolling up your sleeves and doing some hard work. So the big question, I know everybody’s thinking is, how are you pulling it off? How are you funding this work? Because yeah, Kenny, this is a great idea. Every chamber should be involved at this. But how do you do it?
Kami Welch 21:35
Yeah, as I started on the front end of the podcast, obviously, we were lucky enough to pull together the resources to do that five year strategic initiative. I know not everybody is in that position to do that. But what I will take away is kind of key messages and learnings as childcare is something that people decide they want to take on, I’m always happy to talk to them about our journey. But messaging is a really big piece of that, getting clear on the data and what the issue is and the community and putting together on paper, a clear understanding of what you’re going to do to solve it. So that people understand that there’s neat to this, that this is work that needs to happen. Also talking about the economic impact, like we know, in Jefferson County alone, where I’m located, that there’s a $200 million annual economic impact because of childcare. So continuing to tie the messaging back to economic development, makes it a lot easier to go out and seek those funds. But there’s got to be strategy behind this. And so again, we did it through a five year strategic initiative, I highly recommend that I mean, I’m so glad to know that we set funding for the next five years, and I don’t constantly have to be working through that. And that’s could be a whole podcast on its own of how that campaign process, but really putting strategy behind your work for today, tomorrow and long term. So people see that I think you have to ask, you have to find those people that have the heart for community that want to make sure that their business community drives and ask them to invest, help them see that you are the organization that can do this work? Well, it has to happen in order to solve those big critical challenges. The other thing I’ll say is there’s a lot of federal and state money floating around right now. And so if you’re not plugged into grant opportunities, I would highly encourage you to look into how you access those at your state level, Colorado uses a bid that at every state is probably different in the systems that they use. But we’ve been able to apply for a variety of different grants that support this work. Some are still pending, and we’re crossing our fingers that we get. But we did get one to hire a person directly supporting talent, which as I’ve said many times talent in child care hand in hand, right? We cannot solve workforce if we don’t fix our childcare system. That’s it. So looking at grants, thinking strategically about how you ask for those dollars, is really, really critical. And I know there’s no like magic bullet situation, unfortunately. But there are ways to get dollars for sure.
Brandon Burton 24:05
Right. So how much did you say the economic impact 200
Kami Welch 24:10
million for just Jefferson County alone,
Brandon Burton 24:12
man. So I mean, when you figure the people that are making those career sacrifices, the the impact of if you had the additional childcare centers? I mean, that’s a big economic impact there. I mean, it I think there’s a number to it, you can’t even put, you know, at number two some of this, just because there’s a lot of unknowns that potentially could be much more than that 200 million. So when you talk about economic development, that is a huge factor right there. Is there anything that we’re missing from this, this conversation that we haven’t touched on yet?
Kami Welch 24:54
So I’ll add a fun thing to this kind of a lighter opportunity. So one of the things we saw over the pandemic was Women primarily we’re the ones leaving the workforce to move into a caregiver role. And so one of the things that we’ve loved doing as an organization that started a couple of years ago during the pandemic is every March during Women’s History Month, we highlight the badass women of Arvada, and celebrate women who are leading in our community and really crushing it. And it’s a really fun opportunity for us to talk about women in the workplace, and highlight how important and critical that is for our community. So we’ve worked to find certainly those very tactical and strategic things. But it’s also really fun to think about how you highlight and celebrate the people in your community. That’s the work of chambers is right to bring people together and lift and do the things that help people feel connected to their communities. So we’ve found that to be a really fun way to kind of bring our community together and educate around this issue without it feeling too starchy.
Brandon Burton 25:55
Like that, that is fun. And it draws some positive attention to these women who are who are really making a difference, right. I love that. So I like to see, you know, for chamber champions that are listening, if you might have any tips or action items that they might take, if they’re looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you suggest?
Kami Welch 26:18
Do you want a broad answer or to connect it to childcare?
Brandon Burton 26:22
Either way, whatever you feel is would be most relevant. Or if you want to do both, as a bonus, I’m open to whatever.
Kami Welch 26:31
Bye, far as the childcare conversation goes, I think the best thing to start and take action, if you haven’t already, is get the data, there is such a story behind that. And it will inspire you, it will inspire your leaders to take action. And so the first step related to child care, is that data piece of advice. As far as kind of industry and what that looks like, I will tell you that one of the best things I’ve done in my career is get involved, be involved at the state level, the local level, the national level, build those relationships so that you have a network of peers, of friends, sometimes we all need a little chamber therapy. I have my people that are in the speed dial that I call, I’m like, Have you ever dealt with this, this is wild, have you not network matters, it makes the career pathway of being in a chamber world so much more meaningful, and I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from my peers through this process. So get involved, join associations, make chamber friends, it matters and your chamber, you personally will be way better for it. So do it.
Brandon Burton 27:37
I love it. So 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?
Kami Welch 27:49
I love this question. Because I think it’s been such a journey for so many of us and Canada, kind of the historic role of chambers and be known for festivals and ribbon cutting than really that celebratory stuff in communities, which is still important, and it’s fun, and it brings people together. But I believe that chambers are more critical today than they’ve ever, ever, ever been. And the issues that our businesses are facing are getting bigger and more complicated. And I often will say if not us, then who we are uniquely positioned as chambers to solve really critical challenges. We have the resources, the leadership, and we can bring together government, nonprofit education, business, all to one table and solve issues. There aren’t many others who can do that with the same level of credibility. So I believe we have an opportunity right now, to optimize on that coming out of the pandemic, where many of us stepped into a new capacity. people’s trust in our ability is high. And we need to optimize that and take action today to ensure long term success.
Brandon Burton 28:53
I love that response. Love it. Well, Cami this has been a very insightful and productive conversation. I think it’s been provided a lot of value for chambers to kind of look at themselves, look at their community, get that data, see if you know if this rises to needing that that level of importance in your community to address childcare needs. I’m gonna guess it probably is up there and probably the top five needs that you need to address in your community. But if anyone listening wanted to reach out and connect with you maybe learn a little bit more more detail about how you guys are approaching this work. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?
Kami Welch 29:35
Yeah, absolutely. I would love to talk to anybody. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do is to connect with my peers so please don’t hesitate to reach out. Email is the easiest way to reach me which is kami@arvadachamber.org If you’re just looking for more information and want to r&d, rip off and duplicate our website at arvadachamber.org And feel free to take information from there. I am a huge proponent of supporting each other and so no need to tell me you’re taking it. It’s just if it’s helpful to you, and you can use some of it. Please do I believe a rising tide lifts all boats so happy to help anyone in the industry kind of figure out where they need to go next.
Brandon Burton 30:11
Awesome. Well get your email and the website in our show notes for this episode, so anyone can check that out and maybe just send you a thank you for that r&d. But thank you Kami for spending time with us today for sharing the work that you guys are doing around child care. This is a topic we have not covered on the podcast yet, so it’s an important one. And I have a feeling we’ll be talking about it even more coming into the future. So thank you for that.
Brandon Burton 38:24
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