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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.
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Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.
Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guests for this episode is Roy Nascimento. Roy has been President and CEO of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce since January 2015. Under his leadership, the North Central Massachusetts chamber has been recognized among the top chambers of commerce in the country for its impact and operations. Among many of its honors, the chamber was a 2017 and 2021 runner up for the prestigious National chamber the Year Award, the first chamber of Massachusetts and New England to have ever been recognized as a finalist. The chamber also achieved four star accreditation in 2018. As a 20 plus year veteran of the chamber profession Roy previously served as president and CEO of the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce from 2006 until December 2014. Roy also previously led the Attleboro Area Chamber of Commerce and served as vice president at the Metro South Chamber of Commerce in Brockton. Roy is a leader within the Chamber of Commerce Industry. He is the past president of the board of the Massachusetts Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and as past chair of the New England Association of Chamber of Commerce executives, and the MACCE council chambers. In recognition of his leadership and record of accomplishments, Roy was named New England chamber Executive of the Year in 2011. He’s an IOM graduate from Villanova and the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma and has been designated as a CCE by ACC some of you may remember ROI from previous episode 99 episodes ago on episode 134. But, Roy, I’m excited to have you back on Chamber Chat Podcast again as a Chamber the Year Finalist. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and go ahead and share something interesting about yourself so you can all get to know you even better.
Roy Nascimento 4:17
So thank you, Brandon. It’s really an honor to be to be back and especially under the circumstances being a finalist again for for this very prestigious honor. So we’re hoping this is our third time being a finalist we’re hoping Third time’s the charm and that we get it this year but I’m I’m I’m not that interesting. I leave a lead a pretty boring life. So there’s not much I guess I’m gonna lean back on what I mentioned the last time you interviewed me that that’s kind of neat about me is that that I’m most of your listeners probably wouldn’t be aware of this but I’m actually a child of immigrants. My parents were were were from Europe, from Portugal. emigrated here for a better life. And I was born here. So I’m a US citizen. But actually a few years back, I ended up applying to get my Portuguese citizenship. I had a friend who had, who was of Irish descent. And he applied his grandmother was from from Ireland, and he applied and was successful in getting dual citizenship. And I thought that was pretty cool. So I said, let me let me try that. And so I applied and was able to get dual citizenship. So I’m a citizen. And I’m also a Portuguese citizen. And that’s something that I can in turn pass down to my kids, because they can apply for Portuguese citizenship, if they choose down the road. So and it’s just a nice way to kind of connect back with my heritage. And so that’s kind of the different something that your listeners probably unaware.
Brandon Burton 5:53
Yeah, no, I think that is fascinating. And when you share that last time, I thought that was really interesting and fascinating. And I know a lot of people have dual citizenships, but usually with the US and Canada, you know, to be able to have us and Portugal that that’s, that’s pretty neat. Well, tell us a little bit more about the North Central Massachusetts chamber just to kind of set the stage for our discussion, help us understand the type of chamber you are is size, staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of know where you’re coming from before we get into our conversation.
Roy Nascimento 6:30
Sure. So our chamber is based in the city of Pittsburgh, Massachusetts, it’s a city of about 42,000 people. And we are a Regional Chamber. So we cover city of Pittsburgh, to other cities that are in North Central Massachusetts of similar size. And altogether, we cover about 27 communities. And we’re basically, you know, as the name suggests, we’re in North Central Massachusetts. So we’re, we’re about an hour west of Boston. And our region is it’s a obviously I’m a little biased, but it’s a beautiful and really wonderful dynamic region. Here in New England. We are we offer so much, we have a very diverse economy, very, very focused on manufacturing and the largest concentration of manufacturing in the state. But we’re also we also have a good mix of rural communities. So we have a lot of farms and agricultural businesses, we have about 800 farms, orchards and other agricultural businesses, here in North Central Massachusetts, and in you know, we’re our claim to fame, one of our claims to fame is that were the home of and the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed from American folklore, he was actually born here. And lemons stir Massachusetts, which is our largest city in North Central Massachusetts. And so and we still have a lot of or orchards, apple orchards here and and in the region. And we really market the heck out of that as part of our tourism marketing efforts, kind of our agricultural history and in our connection to Johnny Appleseed and American history. In terms of the chamber size, we’re our budget is about a million and a half now. And we have about about 1617 staff that on the professional staff. And we’ve grown over the last few years, particularly around our work around economic development.
Brandon Burton 8:32
Good deal. Yeah, the the whole Johnny Appleseed aspect is, that’s interesting. You definitely have something to kind of plant a flag in and everybody in the country is familiar with Johnny Appleseed, and can really capitalize on that. So I think every community has their thing, right? Your thing just happens to be one that more more people can resonate with?
Roy Nascimento 8:53
Absolutely. And I know, we’re not the only state that has ownership of Johnny Appleseed, you know, he certainly helped pioneer many parts of our country and but it all started here. He was born here. And we really tried to capitalize on that. And we use as part of our marketing that were Johnny Appleseed country. So it’s a great place to for people coming from the city and from other parts of the mainland to come out and connect with their agricultural roots and come out here to some of our origins that have reinvented themselves, you know, and become destinations, really catering to visitors and tourists.
Brandon Burton 9:29
That’s great. It’s got me wondering what his real last name is. So I’m gonna have to do some research. Chapman, John Chapman, all right, save me some some study. Well, I’d like to just have you maybe hit the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber through your application at a high level just to kind of give us an idea of what those two programs are about. And then we can circle back and dive in a little deeper on both I’m
Roy Nascimento 10:00
sure so so the first initiative that we had submitted as part of our application, as part of our synopsis, was around an initiative to engage with the Latin X population here in North Central Massachusetts. And this really was an outgrowth of the pandemic. We, we operate underneath the umbrella of the chamber A, A, our economic development arm, it’s called the North Central Massachusetts Development Corporation. And it’s a 501 C three nonprofit organization. And it is, it’s our economic was formed by the chamber and it’s our economic development arm. And this, under this entity, we are considered we were certified by the US Treasury as a community development financial institution. We’re also an SBA lender, and we’re a community advantage lender under the SBA and EDA lender. So all that means that we are able to provide micro loans to businesses in the region to support economic development. And with that, we’ve also grown our technical assistance, we do a lot of hand holding, providing a lot of counseling and technical assistance. And in recent years, we’ve started providing grants as well, to support startup businesses and existing small businesses that a variety of reasons can’t get through traditional financing. So we will be able to provide them some some capital to help them get that business going with, with the caveat that it creates jobs and investment in our communities. And we’ve been doing this since the 1990s. And we’ve been growing in recent years. And we found during the pandemic that that Latino businesses, and again, Latinos are the largest minority population in the region, and are one of our largest communities that represents about 30% of the population. And if you look at the data, Latinos are starting businesses at three times the rate of the general population. So this was obviously a population that we wanted to engage in support. And during the pandemic, when we were doing so much to support businesses and help help them get through the pandemic, we saw that a lot of a lot of Latino businesses were not taking advantage of some of the resources that were out there to support businesses, they weren’t taking advantage of the PPP loans, they weren’t taking advantage of different grants that were offered by the scheme by our local communities. And so really, this was really an outgrowth of that. And so we, we really decided to focus on the Latin X pot population engaging them, we’re really looking to engage them more, we decided to hire a full time individual on our team that was multilingual, Maribel Cruz, and she’s a great addition, she speaks Spanish, Portuguese and English fluently. And we also developed some strong partnerships with other groups within the community that focus on the Latino population. So as a result, we were able to connect Latino business owners to this to our network of businesses to chamber but also to these different resources, including resources that we haven’t anything relevant about incorporation. And we we saw a really strong impact. Over the last two years. We did about a million dollars of micro loans to Latino businesses that represents now a third of our loans that we made over the two year period, we also provided 1000s of hours of technical assistance to to businesses, and we help connect them to other resources as well. And as a result, these Latino businesses were able to secure loans to other other banks and credit unions and get grants from from from the state as well. So we were able to kind of remember that. And I should also mention, we also evolved. We’ve been evolving over the years. So we’ve started providing grants, as well. So we were able to provide some grants as well to Latino businesses to help them get started or to overcome some some challenges as they were starting so and all that helped create jobs and help create investment within our community. So we’re really, really pleased with the outcome and the impacts from this. You know, these are small loans are micro loans, but they can have a tremendous impact in our communities, helping to start local restaurants and coffee shops and hair salons. And they’re attractive jobs and they create jobs in our community and creates investment in our communities.
Brandon Burton 14:45
Yeah. So as you are reaching out to these these Latin owned businesses, are these strictly Chamber members who are reaching out to is it Latin businesses in general throughout the community, or are you making that approach?
Roy Nascimento 15:00
So we are engaging Latino businesses, they do not have to be a member of the chamber to get a loan from our economic development arm and so. So you know, we were engaging Latinos broadly within North Central Massachusetts. And obviously we’d love to get them more engaged in the chamber. And so that was also something that we wanted to let them know that there’s this network of businesses, and we want them involved, because we think that’s an important part of being successful is networking, and being involved in your local community and, and want them to feel comfortable. So that was an important part of the project, really engaging them, engaging them in the community through some of the partners in the community that they’re already working with, as well as bringing on that staff capacity, bringing someone on that could could reach out to them in their own language, and could provide culturally competent technical assistance and advice to them and engage them. So that was an important objective as part of this project.
Brandon Burton 16:05
Yeah. So with this program, a lot of this is providing micro loans and grants, like you had mentioned. And I know, typically, loans and grants come with some sort of stipulations, you know, an application process and things like that. But being that being a chamber, the year finalist is all about the impact in your community. Because you have these stipulations around loans and grants, what sort of impact are you seeing on the follow up, you know, over time, as these new businesses or especially these Latin businesses are taking advantage of these resources you’re helping give access to,
Roy Nascimento 16:45
so we track the loans and and you’re absolutely right, these are loans, so they have to be repaid. But they’re pretty competitive rates, these are not rates that are not, we’re not a predatory lender, we’re not charging enormous rates, these are same rates you get through a bank. And we do have an underwriting process. So we do have to evaluate each loan. And so a lot of time is often spent with the clients helping them get ready just to secure the loan, because they’re not always prepared and do not have a business plan. So there’s a lot of pre and post loan counseling, getting them prepared to just submit their application, collecting all those documents, and we still do the underwriting. So not everyone gets approved applies to us. So this isn’t free money, you still have to apply and show that they have a plan in place, and that they have, you know, they have a fundamental understanding of their business and what they plan on doing and, and have the ability to repay and be successful long term. And then once they get the loan, we’re still following up with them. So we follow up on a regular basis, our team is meeting with our clients, finding out what are the pain points, where were they struggling? Typically, we see that they’re struggling on things like accounting systems, or marketing, and that’s across the board. That’s not just Platino businesses. And then and then we track the impact, you know, we keep an eye on the loans, we want to make sure that they get paid, as if they get repaid, and we can lend that money out again. So that’s one of the things I love is we continue to have this this impact. But we fundamentally track jobs. And through over the last two years, just just the loans to our our Latin X population that were made, they were about 57 new jobs that were created from that, from those loans that we made an average size loan was just like 25,000. So these are typically very small loans, typically working capital or buy some equipment, we go as high as 250,000. But again, the average is typically about 20,000. That is huge.
Brandon Burton 19:01
That I can I can see the impact that makes individually on each of those businesses. It is a benefactor of those micro loans, and, but also the community in general to be able to have those jobs and the families that are being affected and community and it just it bleeds out throughout the community.
Roy Nascimento 19:18
Absolutely. And And anecdotally, you know, a lot of these loans, you know, really have an impact in the community, we’re seeing loans that a lot of a lot of them tend to be riskier businesses that that that can’t find traditional financing because the industry tends to be very risky. So a lot of food related businesses, coffee shops, restaurants that look at the statistics have a high failure rate. So And typically, we don’t compete with our banks and credit unions. They’re our number one referral source and we partner quite quite a bit with them. So typically, they’re a big referral source for us. So a bank will All Community Bank will will not be able to make a loan to start a business because it’s too risky because they are a startup business. And because they’re looking to open up a restaurant and higher failure rates and, and so that the bank may not want to take that risk. So they’ll pass them along to us. We’ll take a different we’ll take another look at it. We tend to be a little bit more flexible in our lending approach. Again, we still do underwriting but we try to be a little bit more flexible because we have this we’re looking at it through this economic development lens. And as I mentioned, anecdotally, you know, it’s great to see these lawns you know, see these these restaurants start up as coffee shops, startup hair salons in some of our communities. And in some of our downtown’s like we have one community where we got we had one Latino business owner who’s a restaurant tour, who is taking the risk of opening up a restaurant and one of our downtown’s and one of our cities in the downtown is is, is a priority for the municipality, they’re trying to revitalize their downtown. And a lot of empty storefronts there. And so they prioritize bringing in more kind of destination businesses, and they want to see more restaurants in the downtown. So we were able to help them with help this entrepreneur, open up this this Latin restaurant, and that’s, that’s becoming a destination. It’s bringing more people into the downtown. And that’s encouraging more revitalization of the downtown and more businesses opening up in downtown. So it has that kind of ripple effect, beyond just the jobs that we track and the lending dollars that we track, and the job saved, but it’s also that kind of helping to revitalize parts of the community.
Brandon Burton 21:48
Yeah. So the question that comes to my mind is where the initial funding came from, I know you guys have been doing this sort of program for a while, but with the focus on the the Latin population right now. So did that initial funding come through a foundation or, I mean, it’s great as the loans get repaid, and you get some interest collected to be able to get it back out in the community. But for a chamber listening, where where would one get started doing a program like this? So
Roy Nascimento 22:13
that’s a great question. So this goes back, our original lending started back in the late 1990s. So we had a military base here called port Devon’s that was was closing. And so the, the chamber was able to secure a grant from the Economic Development Administration, and utilize that to capitalize our first loan fund. So that’s where it all started, we got this grant, we had to match it. So we have to match it. Think about 25% of the grant medic matched with private sector dollars, which we did at the time. And that capitalized our first revolving fund, which is still providing loans to this day. And so And since then, we’ve expanded, we now have, I think, six loan funds. And one of the loan funds is an SBA loan fund, which we use SBA money, we get a loan from the SBA, at a very favorable rate, and we lend that those dollars in the form of micro loans. And we have to have certain requirements, we have to have a loan loss reserve account setup, and it is a loan, so we have to repay the SBA back, so we’re on the hook for that. But that was that was very useful. A few years back when we needed, we were running out of capital and needed more capital. And since then, we’ve gone out and we’ve been successful and raising other funds, we’ve been able to secure other grants, federal grants, state grants, we’ve also secured private dollars. So we’ve been lucky enough that we’ve been successful, and that our local stakeholders, and our members have been supportive of the work that we’ve been doing. So we’ve been able to secure contributions from some some companies and local local members that have enabled us to capitalize and continue to provide loans. So So yeah, we’ve been successful, especially over the last few years. With the work that we’ve been doing around lending and being able to grow our impact on providing these micro loans. It’s a really nice tool in our in our toolbox to help support community development and economic development here in North Central Massachusetts. And I think it’s something that makes us a little unique, so I know some chambers do it, but not a lot. And so most chambers are not in the lending space. So I’m always happy to talk to any listeners that might be interested in getting involved and, and in providing loans and supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem in their communities.
Brandon Burton 24:50
Yeah, and there could be a whole other deep dive on how to structure that and get set up so any listeners that would take Roy up on that offer to reach out and connect for them to learn more if that’s of interest and providing that resource at your chamber but right let’s say let’s shift gears we’ll we’ll change some focus on to the the other program that was submitted on your chamber the your application as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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Raquel Borges 27:38
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Brandon Burton 28:27
All right, right. We’re back. So tell us what was the second program that you guys submitted in your synopsis on your your chamber that your application?
Roy Nascimento 28:36
Yeah, so the second second project that we submitted was a project that we undertook last year to modernize and improve our visitor center. So we operate a visitor center, it’s called the Johnny Appleseed visitor center named Alfred. And we’ve we’ve operated the visitor center that the visitor center was a byproduct of our of our our regional economic development plan our original regional economic development plan back in the 90s. I mentioned the lending that we do that was also a product of that. So we underwent this kind of big regional economic development planning process when port Devins was closing had some major importers that were closing. So we kind of led this effort is before my time. But out of that came this whole kind of blueprint to really advance our economy here in the region. And and that included supporting startup businesses through micro loans and technical assistance growing our tourism economy because we we really didn’t have much of a tourism economy at the time. And but we’re a beautiful area that has a lot to offer visitors and groups. So out of that came our visitor center that was one of the recommendations so that chamber led this effort to get this visitor center opened in the operate the visitor center with operating successfully since the 1990s. This project really was to modernize and update it. So we operate the visitor center it’s on, it’s on our route to, which is a state highway. It’s actually owned by the state. But we operate it as a partnership with the state. And so we pay for all of expenses, we staff it, we cover all the expenses, I think they, they cover the electricity on the on the lights out in the parking lot, and they plow, but other than that, we cover most of the expenses. And so we really wanted to as part of our new economic development plan that launched in 2021, we wanted to grow our tourism economy. And uh, one of the recommendations was as an as a real action actionable step that we could take was modernizing the visitor center, and really trying to make it really trying to reimagine it and transform it from from a typical kind of visitor center and rest up to more of a unique and inclusive kind of anchor destination that really showcases North Central Massachusetts and really helps to advance our economy. So, so we took on this project, we were lucky enough to secure a small grant on the state of about 75,000 from our Office of Tourism, which we matched. And a total project was, I think, at the time about, but 170,000 altogether. And since then, we’ve made some additional improvements. So it’s probably over 200,000. But we were really looking at at improving Visitor Center and modernizing it adding some amenities that we knew visitors were looking for. Wanted to really tell the story of North Central Massachusetts there. So we wanted to include adding some new interpretive displays, or adding new signage for the collection of historical items that we have there. We have this really, over the years, we’ve built up this enormous collection of historical items that help tell the story of North Central Massachusetts, including a lot of Johnny Appleseed memorabilia, and so we wanted some, some better signage within a visitor center showcasing that collection to visitors. And then we had some added over the years some some interesting artwork, we have this, this, what we call the Big Apple at normal, and which is this big foot 10 foot Apple sculpture. That’s a nice, nice attraction there that people have take photos in front of and have this beautiful sculpture of them Johnny Appleseed there that’s also very popular. So we added some signage to those. And we included a lot a lot of local artwork. We also wanted to make the center safer. So we added more more video cameras on the grounds, we added one and make it more inclusive, so we added more. He added ADA compliant in cap doors, which we didn’t have there. He added shading over the over the picnic tables we added. We added a dog walking station there, which was something that visitors had requested. We added a water bottle bottle refilling station digital screens. And then we really improved the appearance there as well. So we added a new, a new sign. And inside we did a lot of cosmetic renovations to the visitor center, adding a lot of wood paneling to give it kind of that rustic look. And new floors and and we invested quite a bit in landscaping as well. The Visitor Center also has a lot of apple trees, including two apple trees that were from saplings that we received as a gift from Ohio, years back from the original from an original last remaining Johnny Appleseed tree. And planted it’s called a Rambo tree. That’s the variety of apples. And so we made some improvements to the apple trees in the landscaping and throughout the visitor center again, all of it with a goal of trying to improve the visitor experience and also to make it more inclusive. And to better tell the story of North Central Massachusetts. And again, this was so all aligned with our regional economic development plan that identified tourism as priority sector as a way we can grow that and as the as the visitor center as like a really key piece of that infrastructure in the supporting the tourism economy here in West Central Massachusetts that we could improve to help build up our economy here around tourism in the region.
Brandon Burton 34:46
And I like that you’d said the giant Apple, the photo op for tourism to come through there and take pictures and I think it’s a great idea to be able to provide something like that as a tour. Just attraction because it ends up getting shared out on social media, it gets amplified. Oftentimes they’ll tag where they are, you know, at the location they were at when they took the picture. Yeah,
Roy Nascimento 35:09
it’s great. Those types of those types of photo ops are really popular. And we take really great pride and Johnny Appleseed Visitor Center, it’s really a very unique, we like to say it’s not your typical highway rest stop, you know, there there. This started again, back in the 90s. And there were I think, 15, or 16, State Highway visitor centers that were operated on a similar model, there were partnerships with local chambers, or local tourism groups convention is bureaus that would operate the visitor centers in partnership with the state. And unfortunately, a lot of them have have gone out of business they closed. And there’s really no state funding per visitor center. So so the organization really has to operate it and funding, again, provide all the staffing, and most of the costs, most of the expenses are covered by our organization. And we’ve been able to, we’re successful on just being able to keep the doors open and run this visitors very successful Visitor Center, we’ve also again, been able to make it into a very new destination, we want to continue our vision is to be the best Visitor Center in Massachusetts and really tell that story. And it’s great that we’ve gotten some national attention. We were, we were there was a story in by the BBC, about our visitor center, there was a story on our local television is a Boston, Boston television station called WC TV, Channel Five. And they have this is very popular program called Chronicle, which is kind of a lifestyle and Tourism Program, they came out and did a story on the visitor center as a very unique destination. So so we’re not your typical restaurant up, we’re not your typical Visitor Center, we’re really trying to make it more of a destination. And by virtue of making a destination, we’re helping to showcase the region.
Brandon Burton 37:09
Yeah, I think you guys are on the right track with it for sure. I was curious, as far as the vision for the revitalization, and like the actual aesthetics in there, and the displays and the wood paneling, those sorts of things that you described. Did you have some consultant that offered suggestions on those those improvements? Or was it a committee within the chamber? Or how did that unfold? Yeah,
Roy Nascimento 37:35
a lot of it was, was it was combination. So a lot of it was staff driven. So we do have a full time visitor center manager, so she she knew what, you know, visitors were requesting, the amenities they were looking for. And she had a kind of a wish list of what you’d like to add there to help support, you know, give give these visitors great positive experience when they were coming to the visitor center. So but we also didn’t check in with with members over the years, we brought in some members of our board that specialize in retail, and we have a small gift shop there as well, that sells local items. And so we brought them in and had had some retail experts come in and how do we how do we improve this experience for visitors? And how do we how do we get them to to purchase more local products there, because that’s helping to tell the story of the region, and also, again, generate some income to help us support the visitor center. So a variety of different input from different stakeholders. We also had a member who is in, in in the construction and developing area. And so he volunteered his time and gave us a lot of pre pre work and kind of helping us figure out some initial costs and things of that nature. And then we do operate this again, we operate the visitor center, and it is on state property. And we have to get approval from our state highway department. And in our initial plans, we had to scale down because there were some things that they just weren’t comfortable with. And they didn’t want us wanted to expand, expand the visitor center, it’s opened down a wall give us more space. So we can have more displays, historical displays. They were very uncomfortable with any kind of construction. Or like if you start knocking down walls and we have this whole process you have to go through and we actually also wanted to add a small playground on the grounds and they were concerned about liability on kids using the playground. So we had a we had a kind of Nick’s that having a playground to the grounds of the visitor center. But you know, but they were still great partners. They were really they believed in our vision and were very supportive of the project and we were able to get it done and I’m really proud of the visitor center and the impact it’s having on region.
Brandon Burton 39:55
Yeah, sounds great. Well, Roy as we start to wrap things up Yuri, I wanted to ask you if, for listeners, if there was any tip or action items that you might suggest for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.
Roy Nascimento 40:10
So I think I think I’m gonna give the same advice I gave last time two years ago, and that’s to be entrepreneurial. And really, it was the advice I was given by my predecessor. And it’s really looking at your, your community, your region, what are the needs there? What are the challenges? Now? How can the chamber help with those challenges for us here, I talked about lending, you know, that was, and that was something that was missing here, you know, and, and the Chamber was really able to fill that void and become kind of that alternative lender helping to provide startup businesses with that capital and that technical assistance they needed. And that has evolved over the years and but it’s been able to, to help us provide have an impact here in the region, and, and the tourism stuff, you know, we that was was a gap, you know, that was an opportunity. And we saw that, that’s a way we could diversify our economy. And so we stepped in and have been able to provide great leadership there, and helping to drive our economy and transform our economy here and in North Central Massachusetts. So, you know, be entrepreneurial, find out how you can best help your members, I’m always amazed when I listen to your podcast, you’re about chambers to all kinds of impactful things. And what might work in one community might not work in my community, but I’m always able to learn about it. And I’m always amazed at the ability of these chambers to be able to adapt, flexible, and be nimble and be entrepreneurial, to serve their members and to have an impact in their communities. And so I think that’s important.
Brandon Burton 41:50
Very good. So I like asking everyone as I have him on the show about the future of chamber. So I know I asked him a couple of years ago, but how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Roy Nascimento 42:02
So I think it goes back to our roots, you know, I think we’re, if you look back at chambers, chambers, we’re always those those we are by our very nature, we’re a big network of businesses in the community that come together, to have an impact and community to advance the community. That’s our mission statement is to advance in one central Massachusetts and, and so I think it’s going back to your roots just looking at I think a lot of chambers have become transactional, they focus on the networking and networking is important, we do a lot of networking, but don’t lose sight of your mission. And that’s really to promote the community. And that whether it be through advocacy, or economic development, through through events, you know, whatever it is, it’s don’t lose sight of that mission. And I think it’s getting, it’s providing that that leadership in the community. And that’s, that’s the future we’re seeing chambers continue to evolve. And it’s kind of going back to, to our roots being those organizations that provide a leadership in the community. And that really helped to drive the economy and, and helping their communities think about, about change and leadership and the future.
Brandon Burton 43:12
That’s awesome. Yeah, the mission is important and keeping you know, those roots close by so you remember why you’re there and, and let that chart your course. Well, Roy, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you maybe take up your offer on learning how to provide loans and in access to grants like you guys are doing, what would be the best way for for someone to reach out and connect?
Roy Nascimento 43:41
Sure. So first off, our website is NorthCentralMass.com. So all my contact information is on the website. Again, that’s NorthCentralMass.com. And I can also be reached the email at rnascimento@northcentralmass.com. Or by by phone call me anytime 978-353-7600 extension 225, it’s 978-353-7600, extension 225. And what I love about our industry is that we’re always wanting to help each other. And I’ve had a lot of chamber execs that have friends and mentors that I’ve always been able to have always been willing to take my phone call and and provide advice and support. So feel free to reach out to me anytime.
Brandon Burton 44:34
Awesome. So I will get your contact information in our show notes for this episode as well. So listeners can look it up there and connect with you. But Roy, I’ve enjoyed having you back on chamber chat podcast and catching up with you and hearing more of the great things you guys are doing there in North Central Massachusetts. So thank you for for joining us and congratulations. Congratulations to you and your team again, being selected as chamber the year finalist, and I wish you guys the best of luck.
Roy Nascimento 45:03
Thank you, Brandon. It’s been it’s been great. And hopefully this was helpful and it’s really an honor thank you for the opportunity to be.
Brandon Burton 45:10
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