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Brandon Burton 0:00
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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist Series and our guests for this episode is Becky Bartoszek. Becky is the President and CEO of the Fox Cities Chamber in Wisconsin and having relocated to Wisconsin in 1998. And Becky’s previous experience included vice president of the Great Lakes for Alltel wireless market leader for the q ti group, and small business owner of a State Farm Agency. Becky currently serves on the ACCE board of directors. The new North board of directors, Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce executives is the current chair WMC board of directors and is currently appointed by Governor eavers to his Advisory Council on Workforce Investment, Becky and her husband Brian, or freedom residents, and they have the two of them together have two adult children as well. But Becky, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I need to start by saying a big congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a chamber to their chamber of the year finalists. This is exciting and, and reflective of the great work you guys are doing but wanted to give you a chance to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Becky Bartoszek 2:31
Well, thank you so much brand new appreciate being here today. And yeah, it is really, really exciting for our team to be able to celebrate being nominated as a finalist on our 100 and 50th year anniversary or ever chamber. So we’ve been able to do some really cool things bringing in past board members and you know, doing time capsules and everything this year, it’s been just a blast. So thank you for the you know, the background information. It’s I think people are always interested or find it interesting that my I actually grew up living in a convention center. So the chamber, our local Chamber of Commerce, would have events almost weekly at my house. So that was quite the preparation for getting into the chamber industry. Ultimately, when it was just kind of a normal everyday thing, the way that I had grown up. It’s quite
Brandon Burton 3:26
the training ground. I mean, most people enter the chamber world and they didn’t even know what a chamber was. And they started but you grew up with literally it all around it. So that’s absolutely, yeah, that’s cool. I think that’s a first for us on the shows having somebody that grew up in the in chamber. Yeah.
Becky Bartoszek 3:43
So next time when somebody’s clearing your plates at the dinner. I think that could be a future chamber.
Brandon Burton 3:49
Exactly. That’s right. That’s right. Well, and tell us a little bit about the Fox Cities Chamber just to kind of give us some perspective, the size here chamber staff budget scope of work, just to set the table for our discussion before we dive into the meat of this topic.
Becky Bartoszek 4:06
Oh, sure. Absolutely. The Fox Cities Chamber is hard to find on a map because the largest community in our in our region is Appleton, Wisconsin. So think of it this way. We are south of Green Bay and north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We serve two and a half counties. So we’re pretty good size, footprint. And we are not only the chamber, but we are the regional eto as well. We are current even though we’re the fourth largest community in the chamber, we are the second largest chamber as far as member count. We are over 1400 On our way to 1500 members currently, and we have a staff of 12 that most times 13 right now because I’m an intern, right revenues a little under 2 million about 1.8. And we just continue to grow and grow. In addition to our our traditional Chamber members. yours. We also have about 700 young professionals that have membership with us as well.
Brandon Burton 5:04
That’s awesome. So that’s in addition to the 1400. Members, that’s a different type of membership within the organization. That’s great. I know there’s I’ve heard of other chambers out there that are trying to get young professionals or even high school students involved with the Chamber in some degree, and trying to figure out a model for that. So that’s that’s
Becky Bartoszek 5:25
worked well, for us. We went from 140 to 700 in a year.
Brandon Burton 5:29
Yeah, I would say something worked. Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, on these chamber the year finalist series, I like spending the bulk of our conversation really diving into and discussing the two programs synopsis that were included on your chamber, the year application, and we will, we’ll take a quick break and when we get back we’ll dive in deep on what those two programs are and how they’re moving the needle in your community.
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Alright, Becky, we’re back. So as I as I mentioned before the break, we’re gonna dive into the the two programs that were submitted on your chamber the your application, if you would just tell us what the what the first program is that you’d like to highlight. And we’ll we’ll dive into that one. So
Becky Bartoszek 7:55
everybody’s always intrigued by our Connect free model. And that is a program that we started exploring in February of 2022. Basically, we brought in Sherry And Kelly from ACCE to do some strategic planning with our board of directors. And there was a great discussion about how we could come together as a community and specifically a chamber and really move the needle with the resources that we have, in our community, our biggest challenges, we just don’t have enough people for the growth that we’re experiencing. So in the state of Wisconsin, in general, if you remove international immigration, we’ve been net negative population growth for a while now not specifically in our market, but overall is it state. So we were trying to find a way that we could attract more people to want to come and live work and play and the Fox Cities Wisconsin area. Now we know that people can get a job anywhere now. And it’s really people decide where they want to live. And then they find a job. So it’s truly quality of life driving it. And we know that is driven by the small business environment. Nobody’s saying, Boy, I want to find the biggest Best Buy. And that’s where I’m gonna move. They want that fun restaurant shopping, kitschy experience. So we came up with a program that we launched six months later, which is called Kinect free. And it is a completely free membership for small businesses that have five or less full time employees, nonprofits that have 10 or less full time employees and all freestanding restaurants. So for example, if you’re a restaurant in a casino, it’s not free. But if you’re a freestanding restaurant, we just have a great robust package that we can provide you to help you get to the next level and to help track people attract people to our community.
Brandon Burton 9:55
So yeah, tell us tell us more how that model works. Oh, obviously, we can’t all work for free as nice as that would be able to do that. How does it operate? A? Are they you see them and participate in different programs and events that do have a cost to it? Or do they move on to a different membership tier? Or what how do you how do you make it work.
Becky Bartoszek 10:19
So that was our biggest challenge. And of course, I was I was very nervous going into this. So we had the first discussion with the board. And the first thing they asked us is, model this financially model it and see if we can make it work. So we spent three months modeling it, and the way that the financials work on this free membership model, from a chamber perspective, now you’re getting more members, you’re touching more people, so your marketing is worth a lot more. So that helped us to be able to recoup revenue, because we were able to sell our marketing at a higher value. In addition to that, you have more people that are invited to your events. So your membership revenue goes down, but your event revenue makes it up. And the only thing that’s not included in our free membership model are things like we don’t do free ribbon cuttings for now for free members. So they have to pay us for that. If they want to use our building or our meeting rooms, they have to pay us if they want to have discounted health insurance through us, that’s an additional add on fee. So there a lot of little ala carte functions that they all want to receive or benefits they want to receive that are an additional fee. So there’s a lot of reasons why somebody would want to get up to the paid level. Now, when we modelled this, we did anticipate number 150 year old organization, we did anticipate a lot of net negative, you know, revenue from migration to a free model. We anticipated on the on the higher end, it can be 80 to $100,000, right away in the first year. And what we’ve actually experienced over a two year period, we’ve only had less than $12,000 in revenue from people dropping down to the free model. And we’ve also seen a lot of our larger investors come forward and say I’m going to give you a larger economic development contribution to help pay for those free members. So it’s worked out quite well.
Brandon Burton 12:28
Yeah. Have you guys made any asks to any of those larger corporations to like that for the economic development? donations? Absolutely.
Becky Bartoszek 12:37
So we did see those contributions go up. And we didn’t know how it was gonna go. First of all, when we when we launched it, we were we were concerned about that. So we did spend another three months, making sure that we can market it correctly. So during that time, we actually did a full rebrand, and launched a new website, because we really, the the biggest challenge with a free membership model is it can’t be a big lift on your team. It has to be something that’s mostly automated. So we did spend about three months, you know, we did probably three years worth of work in six months to launch this. And I can tell you, we had a huge splash for the launch of this event where we actually invited the press in, we invited the politicians in the board, community leaders major investors, and made this big announcement. And we were the lead story on all of the local TV channels that night. And we had boy, probably about 100 Plus applications within the first few days. So that
Brandon Burton 13:42
was my next question. So the business still has to fill out an application. They’re not just getting a membership because they have a business in the Fox Cities area. So so they fill it out is is there any kind of approval process? Or do they fill it out? And then the remember or what you like you mentioned that the automation process, it has to be there. So it’s not too much of a load on your staff? Where Where does the staff interaction take place? What parts are automated, just to kind of give us an idea of how this works? Well,
Becky Bartoszek 14:15
the one thing that we did learn pretty quickly. Yeah, they fill out the application, and then it has to be approved. And the first thing that we were worried about was we were worried about upsetting the chambers around us. And so we were really trying to monitor that you had to be in our footprint to qualify for that membership. That was a crazy lift on our team because you know, we cover half a county here and you know, cities are split in half. So it took us not too long to figure out. We’ll just go and meet with the Chamber’s and talk to them about how to sell around us. And so we we actually did move away from monitoring that everything was in our footprint because it wasn’t a huge to impact but it was taken a lot of time. And then, you know, we are currently transitioning software systems so that more of our marketing touches, as follow ups, you know, 3060 90 days outreach can just be automated. But you know, of course, our ambassadors and our team, you know, we’re reaching out to everybody as quick as they could, especially when the first big group came in, I can tell you, the program has been launched by I think, about 22 months right now. And we have 632 small businesses that we’re supporting today that we weren’t in the past. Wow.
Brandon Burton 15:39
And I love that approach. Instead of we have 632, free membership level, free members, it’s 632 businesses, you’re able to support that you weren’t prior to this model. And that’s huge, because those are often the businesses that need the most support. And they’re underserved and, and end up being the ones that kind of go by the wayside and, and maybe don’t stay in business as long as they would have hoped so. And the cool
Becky Bartoszek 16:07
part, too, is that we’re finding partners in our community that want to do more with us. So for example, the YMCA came to us and said, We love your small business program, we’re going to put together a discounted package for you, so that we can work on the health of our small business owners. And then we had an insurance company that came to us and said, We see this as a great opportunity, we’re gonna offer discounted insurance for your members. So there’s, there’s been a lot of the community that stepped forward and says, We love what you’re doing. How can we help? Yeah,
Brandon Burton 16:41
yeah, I love that. So let’s shift gears a little bit into the second program, if you want to introduce that and tell us what it’s all about. Sure.
Becky Bartoszek 16:52
Our largest program that we hold each event that we have each year is a huge Oktoberfest event. So it’s actually two days. So on Friday night, we have a huge car show. And that car show is completely dry event. But it brings in about 100,000 people on Friday night. Wow. And then on Saturday is really the big event that we have. And that is a full blown Oktoberfest. But it’s not a lot of Oktoberfest bands. It’s not your traditional Oktoberfest with the German bands. We actually have really popular kind of pop pop bands fans
Brandon Burton 17:33
that people want to listen to. I’ll say it Yeah. And
Becky Bartoszek 17:39
we bring in it’s, it’s estimated between 200,200 20,000 People that day. And we started, the event actually starts at nine in the morning, with a big craft vendor business expo at one end. Then we have a ton of food trucks throughout the event. And then 13 hours of live music forum Friday night through Saturday. So
Brandon Burton 18:09
how long have you guys been doing the search? I guess first of all, is there a name branding it? Or is it just is it October fest is that just it’s
Becky Bartoszek 18:18
Appletons Oktoberfest so what we’ve actually talked about in our in our application for the award is focused on the past two years, because that program has Appletons Oktoberfest has been going on for 42 years now. And we were always involved, but it was always run by a community steering committee. And when ochman COVID hit, and you know the world shut down. Obviously, we didn’t want to be known as the super spreader events of the Midwest. So we didn’t have it the first year. And at the end of that first year, we lost most of our steering committee. And we also lost a lot of our volunteers. And to pull this event off the way that we have been doing it. It took about 1200 volunteers each year to make it happen. So come second year of the event, the world is starting to open up again. But our community was really scared about a surge. And we really didn’t want to put people in harm’s way. And some of our largest investors in our organization are our health care systems. And based on their input, there was a second year that we cancelled Oktoberfest. I mean, we planned it right down to the last minute. And we just could not make it happen because we didn’t have the volunteer population come out to do it well, and it would have been the 40th anniversary. So at that point, we took a step back and basically had to revamp the entire program. Now what’s is all about our Oktoberfest is it’s a gigantic give back to our community. So think of this as a street long or a mile long venue that’s just jam packed with people. And, you know, it’s free free admission, nobody pays to get in. But every food vendor that’s there has to have a sign in front of their location, saying which nonprofit they are sharing their revenues with. And then all of the money that is raised by beer sales, which we don’t tell people how much beer we sell that the proceeds from that go into a large grant fund, and those dollars go back into our community to support our nonprofits. And for many of our nonprofits, that’s their biggest fundraiser of the year. That
Brandon Burton 20:52
is huge. I love seeing chamber being able to sit to partner and support other nonprofits and their missions, and what a great way a big community driven event, and you’re gonna get the foot traffic, people are gonna buy food, they’re gonna buy beer, they’re going to do all the things, right. So being able to tie that in. And I imagine each vendor has the choice of which nonprofit they want to support. Do you provide a list to say, here’s our local nonprofits to choose from? Or can they go outside of a certain list of parameters? Or how is that structured?
Becky Bartoszek 21:28
No, it’s completely up to them. And if they come to us and say, Do you have somebody we can make a connection for them, but it’s really up to them to decide which nonprofit they want to support. So you know, we do we see everything from wrestling teams to the police department, you know, the police and fire departments are they’re, you know, challenging each other and, you know, chili cook offs, and everything else. But for us to be able to make this happen. And that’s really what our focus on the application was, we had to change some things, we had to bring really the bulk of the lift into the chamber directly to make this happened. And we bought a new software program where we were able to really get get our hands around the complete management of the of the process. In addition to that most of the food vendors historically that had been there were the nonprofits themselves setting up food booths. Well, we changed it so that it was food trucks and restaurants coming in to support those nonprofits and do revenue sharing. So our need for volunteers went from 1200, every year, to closer to 800. To have the same impact.
Brandon Burton 22:44
Oh, wow, that that helps. I mean, 800 is still a big number. But that’s that means 400 less, so that’s good. So you mentioned the software that you purchase, is that an event specific software? Or?
Becky Bartoszek 22:57
It is it is it helps us map out just about everything you can need on the mile that we’re putting together it, you know, historically, you know, the steering committee would have a spreadsheet and the first time we went through it afterwards, it said, you know, ice for Oktoberfest, okay, there’s ice for 200,000 200,000 people, you know, six bags or six trucks? It really, you know, helped us how was all of the information that we needed to know, to make sure no, no matter who we had on the team at the Chamber, that there was a footprint to follow. Yeah, and for years to come. So those are just a couple of the changes that we just really did a deep dive to help increase the efficiencies. Ya know, we even started doing surveys of people that were our food vendors, and getting net promoter scores on whether they would recommend that their peers and other people join the event. And that helped helped us fine tune a lot of the things that we were doing as well. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 24:00
that’s huge. Go get that feedback and be able to make those adjustments for year to year and really improve the overall program that the the event, that’s great. So each of the vendors who they register with you imagine they have to to be able to get everything in order and be able to have their spot and be able to, you know, tie it into whatever nonprofit and all that stuff. Exactly. It’s
Becky Bartoszek 24:26
quite a process. Because think about it this way it’s taking over our main street. So we have food vendors that we need to very carefully map this treat, so that we’re not putting a pizza vendor in front of a pizza restaurant, you know, and we do work with those local restaurants to give them the first opportunity to be on the street and to be able to capitalize on making the most revenue that day.
Brandon Burton 24:51
Yeah, so and I imagined whoever’s in front of, you know, whatever booth is in front of their business or restaurant, it’s still going to drive people in door ers into their shops, hopefully beyond to use the restroom. Right? Exactly. Spend some money, hopefully. So, exactly. Well, that sounds like an amazing event and being able to fine tune it and make improvements on it like you have that’s, it sounds like a fun one to to attend. So
Becky Bartoszek 25:21
well. And to tell you a little bit more about the economic impact. Now with the new software and partnerships that we’ve created, we’re finally able to figure out a little bit more about what the event is doing for our community. And working with our tourism, convention Bureau and state analytics, we’re able to get a better idea, but not completely. So this is a cash only event. So when we can track the actual dollars that are spent on credit cards, and the dollars that are spent on overnight stays, we’ve been able to find out how many people are coming to our community, where they’re coming from, and they’re coming from all over the Midwest for this. And we know before we even look at the cash input implications that this event is having, on average of $43.2 million impact on our economy.
Brandon Burton 26:14
Whoa, that is huge. That’s way more than I would have guessed it would have come nowhere close to that. Wow. So as we, as we start to wrap things up here, you guys are obviously moving the needle and making an impact in your community. And being a chamber the year finalist, you guys are kind of at the top of your game at this moment. And I wanted to ask for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item or piece of advice you might share with them to try to accomplish that goal.
Becky Bartoszek 26:51
Well, you know, it’s funny, I was new to the chamber industry about five years ago. And I can tell you what, what worked for me and what worked for us. I actually did a deep dive into all the information I could find a both chambers of the year. So for example, when Ocala was the chamber of the year in our category, I stocked their website, I looked at everything they had. And I found that videos were really working well for them. And I thought, well, I don’t really have the resources to do that. And we talked about it as a team. And we actually went to the local TV station and said, Now, come on, your tagline is we are Green Bay, but you’re covering our market work with us. And it resulted in us for the past two years, having the opportunity to bring a guest onto a local show, and spotlights something going on in our community and having beautifully professionally done videos for zero cost. Yeah, yeah. None of that would have would have happened, had we not been looking at what the chamber of the years were doing. And it’s just given us great ideas to make them our own. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 28:03
but those news agencies are always looking for stories. They’re looking for content. And if you can provide bring a guest on and provide some valuable content to their viewership. Yeah. They cover your market, why wouldn’t they do that? So that’s great partnership and very budget friendly. So I like that I like Yeah. And Ocala is a great chamber, obviously being a chamber the like, they’re, they’re great. Kevin and his team, there are amazing. 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?
Becky Bartoszek 28:41
You know, it’s funny, because it’d be in our 100 and 50th anniversary this year, we always talk about our mission today. This is the same as it was 150 years ago. And it’s bringing our business community together to help those businesses thrive, but to create a better place in our community for people to want to live work and play, obviously. But you know, realistically, I think that that mission is going to continue, but we just need to continue to evolve. You know, when we’re looking at 2025. You know, we’re looking at cutting back awards programs, and launching AI opportunities for, you know, a summit and things like that. And it’s just constantly evolving, and really keeping an understanding of what’s impacting our businesses and our lives and making sure that we remain relevant. And I think as long as we can do that, now, we’re hopeful our chambers got at least another 150 years.
Brandon Burton 29:38
That’s right. That’s right. That’s great. Becky, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in the Fox Cities Chamber and more about the programs. You talked about what would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect with you?
Becky Bartoszek 29:59
Absolutely. So Obviously all of our information is on our website FoxCitiesChamber.com. My contact information is on there as well. And you can always reach me at bbartoszek@foxcc.net.
Brandon Burton 30:12
Very good, and we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode as well. But, again, just big congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a finalist this year for chamber the year and I wish you guys the best of luck in Dallas.
Becky Bartoszek 30:27
Thank you so much, Brandon.
Brandon Burton 30:30
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