Diversifying Programming for Non-Dues Revenue with Sheila Thomas

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

Brandon Burton 00:00.638
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And here on Chamber Chat, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Sheila Thomas. Sheila has served as the president and CEO of the Table Rock Lake Chamber of Commerce since 2014. Before joining the Chamber, Sheila served as executive director of the Ozarks River Heritage Foundation.

where she partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to manage several Corps properties, including the Dewey Short Visitor Center and multiple campgrounds. While much of her career has been spent as a successful real estate broker in the Branson area, her professional roots are in journalism, public relations, and marketing, a foundation that continues to influence her strategic leadership style today. Under Sheila’s leadership, her chamber team has earned 20 awards from the

the Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri, an international award for digital marketing, and the marketing campaign award from the Missouri Division of Tourism. The organization has also been voted best in Southwest Missouri for three consecutive years. Sheila is a member of the Rotary Club of Table Rock Lake and currently serves as the Board of Directors for the Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri. She is a graduate of Leadership Missouri and has been

recognized as one of Springfield’s business journals, 20 Most Influential Women, and by Ingram’s Magazine as one of 50 Missourians to know. Sheila and her husband Gordon have three children and four grandchildren. And when she’s not championing for her community, you’ll find her boating on Table Rock Lake or spending time with her grandbabies. But Sheila, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to

Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you little better.

Sheila Thomas 02:01.751
Well, thanks, Brandon. It’s good to be here with you. Thank you for asking me. I’m not sure how much interesting I have to share about myself other than now I seem to be most excited about my grandkids. I have four now. And so that has been that they have all been born in the last three years. So, yeah, so that has been quite a life changing thing for us. We we tend to try to figure out how we can go.

Brandon Burton 02:21.972
wow.

Sheila Thomas 02:31.381
either north to Kansas City or south to Fayetteville, you know, every weekend just about. So that’s been an exciting thing. And I love living here at Table Rock Lake because I absolutely love being out on the lake and spending time there in the summertime.

Brandon Burton 02:37.3
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 02:53.364
Well, you’re doing something right. If the grandkids are pulling you in those directions, you got your priorities straight, right? Well, tell us a little bit about the Table Rock Lake Chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of your organization, staff, scope of work you’re involved with, budget, kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Sheila Thomas 02:57.118
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 03:13.567
Okay, so we have around 500 members, so we’re kind of a medium-sized chamber in Missouri anyway. We have a staff of six, and that’s a little bit unusual probably for that number of members, but we also handle tourism and economic development for our county, so we have some different programs of work than some chambers.

but we do traditional chamber things also. Membership, know, member services and education and advocacy and all those types of things. So we are here in on Table Rock Lake in Branson West, which is just as the name says, just west of Branson, Missouri, different county. But we are in a county that contains Silver Dollar City and

two thirds of the shoreline of Table Rock Lake. kind of a small, smaller area, but a big, tourism spot.

Brandon Burton 04:22.218
Yeah, and a beautiful part of the country. It really is beautiful there. So you guys got a great spot. Well, I think that that helps to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. So we’ll focus most of our discussion around diversifying programming and how it can help boost and sustain different areas of work within your chamber. So we’ll dive into that in much more detail as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Sheila Thomas 04:24.693
Yeah, yeah it is.

Brandon Burton 04:52.362
All right, Sheila, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break today, we’re talking about diversifying and programming. So as you mentioned in kind of the introduction of your chamber, you guys have the tourism responsibility as well as economic development on top of your chamber responsibilities. But that I think has a lot of strengths to it. Like it can spread you thin, but it has a lot of strengths to it to allow you to align.

your focus and your programming to really move things forward in your community. But I’d to learn more from your perspective as far as diversifying your programming. What does that look like? How have you implemented that as a practice versus a lot of maybe some of the, not to put anything down, but some of the stale programming that we see around Chambers. What could be a fresh look for us?

Sheila Thomas 05:49.292
Well, I mean, you know, as I said, we do the traditional chamber things, obviously, but and we’re a little bit different area. I understand as in a tourism based economy, it is a little different than just, you know, a town out in the middle of outstate Missouri. But we have we have made an attempt actually within the last

or three years to really diversify. The first thing we did was to become involved in economic development. We were already doing some tourism marketing through some grant opportunities and then we would raise money from our members to help support the things that the grant wouldn’t pay for. But about three years ago we decided that we wanted to embark on an economic development program. There’s no

In our county, there’s no city or county that has an economic development director. So we felt like we needed to fill that gap. And so we hired a company called Opportunity Funding. We created a five-year strategic plan. And then we set about raising money to fund our economic development program. And we got pledges over a five-year period of about a million and a quarter.

that funded the hiring of an economic development director and then the creation of our department and we’re working on some other initiatives there as well. And then tourism, like I said, we had been doing tourism marketing, utilizing a state grant and then some matching money from a tax district that is in part of our county.

But we decided that we needed to place a lodging tax on our on the ballot and so that passed this last year in April went into effect in October and the county contracted with us to manage those funds and do that marketing and so we receive an admin fee from that from that also and so

Sheila Thomas 08:14.829
that we’ll be able to expand staffing in that department. But we are a small team, we do a lot of big things. And so we really probably are understaffed based on what we do, but we do it pretty well. We’ve managed to do it pretty well.

Brandon Burton 08:35.272
Yeah, I love that you guys saw the opportunity and the need between economic development and finding solutions for driving the marketing and funding and really just making a charting your own path. You’re not asking for permission necessarily.

Sheila Thomas 08:50.177
Well, that’s kind of my belief about what chambers should be doing. You know, you find an opportunity in your community or a need and then you figure out how to fill that gap. Related to business and the economy, obviously not a social service type gap, but yeah, we just felt like we were the best equipped to do it. So if not us, then who? So we did it.

Brandon Burton 09:19.144
Right. Yeah. And great opportunities for you guys to be able to step into those those two areas with tourism and economic development. So I’m thinking for those listening, you know, maybe they’re in small town USA and and they don’t have the same kind of scale of needing the economic development or the tourism driver. Or you have the other end of the scale where maybe they are in a bigger

Sheila Thomas 09:26.72
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 09:47.691
community and there’s a separate destination marketing organization or economic development organization. What role can, I don’t want say should, but what role could a chamber have in those situations to still look at diversifying their programming to not just rely on membership and networking and things like that? What other revenue sources can they look

Sheila Thomas 09:51.136
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton 10:15.902
look towards or even lean into some of these things that you’ve already addressed.

Sheila Thomas 10:20.686
We tend to focus very heavily on what our mission is and those things include economic development, tourism, that kind of thing. And then we try to create programming around those activities. One of the things we did several years ago was create what we call Chamber University.

Brandon Burton 10:35.038
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 10:49.558
and we offer classes that our members can attend. And we charge for those because we believe people find value in things that they pay money for. And we often have experts that are providing, you know, a well-rounded curriculum that you wouldn’t get just anywhere. And so we charge $25 and it’s usually a three-hour, two to three-hour class.

and we poll our members to find out what types of topics they’re interested in, obviously. And then we do a lot of, we have what we call a community partner program, and these are basically folks who contribute above and beyond their membership dues, who just want to focus on mission-based things. You know, any chamber has those members who

join because they just want to network or they just want to they’re big on advocacy, legislative advocacy or those kinds of things. But you also have members who join because they believe in your mission and those folks contribute to us a little bit at a little bit higher level because we’re still on a fair share dues structure. But so it’s kind of a blended structure between tiered and fair share.

Brandon Burton 12:16.158
OK.

Sheila Thomas 12:17.164
they contribute above and beyond their membership dues. And then we highlight them in all kinds of ways throughout the year. But I think you just have to get creative for revenue generation. But if it’s tied to what your mission is and not just simply a fundraiser, you’re much better off.

Brandon Burton 12:42.206
Yeah. So I’m curious about Chamber University. said you’re members and seeing what they’re interested in learning. But what are some of the topics you guys have dove into with Chamber University, just for some examples?

Sheila Thomas 12:47.106
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas 12:54.478
Our members have indicated always a very strong interest in marketing. And so we have had a lot of marketing classes. And because we’re fortunate to have some larger businesses here who have marketing departments and sophisticated marketing departments, they have given us really great class topics.

Brandon Burton 13:13.876
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 13:23.99
We’ve taught, we just had one on search engine optimization and we’ve had them on search engine marketing and I think the last one we had was more social media based. We have one coming up that’s how to utilize market research in your marketing and where to go for information regarding market research. And so just, we’ve had

variety, a big variety of topics that members have really, we always ask them to rate the programming and we always get excellent reviews. it’s been a really popular thing for our members.

Brandon Burton 14:09.546
Yeah, that’s good. Is it typically like done over lunch or is it strictly come and learn or what’s the format? Okay.

Sheila Thomas 14:18.186
It’s usually like 9 to 11 or 9 to noon. And we have a sponsor. We have a sponsor for everything. We have a sponsor who is allowed to, they provide like a, you know, a continental breakfast. And then they are allowed to speak to the group. And we give them a specified amount of time.

Brandon Burton 14:24.606
There you go.

Brandon Burton 14:38.922
Yeah, that’s good. And then the community partner program. So I love that idea of having those members who contribute above and beyond that are mission based to be able to lean on them. like you said, every community has them. I think of the big manufacturers that they may not sell any more widgets by coming to a networking event, but they still they see a lot of value in the mission of the chamber.

Sheila Thomas 14:49.998
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas 14:55.971
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas 15:01.58
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 15:07.096
That’s right.

Brandon Burton 15:07.818
So they want to get behind that and whether it’s advocacy or different angles that the chamber’s involved with, they want to be a part of. So leaning into that. What are some of these other non dues revenue areas that you guys look to or have been able to spin up?

Sheila Thomas 15:15.854
That’s right.

Sheila Thomas 15:24.206
We do a couple of publications every year. Of course, again, we’re in a tourism-based economy, so we have a need for a vacation guide that we do every year. And every other year, we do either a community guide or an updated lake map, and we sell ads in those publications.

and then we distribute them through a variety of sources. But we make a good bit of income from all of those things. In a smaller community, a community guide would work, definitely. It’s basically a of a combination of relocation and economic development type publication. And so we utilize that.

Brandon Burton 16:02.675
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 16:22.862
We sell ads on our website. Again, we’re a tourism-based economy, so I get that our website probably has more visitation than some. Let’s see. We don’t do any major community events except a fireworks show that we have been doing for 40 plus years, and we are not going to be allowed to ever not do that event. However,

Brandon Burton 16:28.648
you.

Brandon Burton 16:48.234
Nobody will know what to do on the Fourth of July, right?

Sheila Thomas 16:52.876
That’s right. That’s right. However, we have managed to we have managed to do a really good job with that. And we we give our we have partnered with so we needed corporate donations to help pay for the show. And so we partnered with our local radio station and with a company in Springfield on me on media.

And the radio provides us commercials to highlight our sponsors. And On Media provides us also a commercial. And we get to highlight our biggest sponsors. And so they get something from their donation, if you will. So they’re not just giving to a fireworks show. And we try to do all of our

Brandon Burton 17:42.376
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 17:49.025
all of our programming that way to make sure that our sponsors really have value in what they get. We have a golf tournament, but we really focus on the networking part of it and the camaraderie part. And we have on-course sponsors that go out and they man booths and do things like that, but they love it. They just love it. And so,

We have partnered with a local golf course to do that and we just try to make sure that there is value there and they’re not just, we’re not just asking them for money as like a donation because we’re not a social service organization or a charity. We are a business organization and so we try to approach it that

Brandon Burton 18:44.852
Yeah, so that comment kind of leads into, I was going to circle back to your economic development front where you had partnered with Opportunity Funding to do the, we’ll say the funding round, to be able to approach the economic development work. For those listening who may not be familiar with that sort of…

Sheila Thomas 18:52.994
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas 19:00.844
The funny, yeah.

Brandon Burton 19:12.778
function or fundraising opportunity? Did you guys structure that within a foundation? Is it just within the chamber? How did you go about the asks? I’m assuming people committed to give X amount over a five-year period or something like that. But how was that structured? How did that work?

Sheila Thomas 19:22.819
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas 19:28.515
Right?

Sheila Thomas 19:33.263
So opportunity funding has a lot of experience in this realm. And so they were a very valuable partner because we created the strategic plan with the help of probably 100 to 100, about 150 probably people in our community had input into this plan and opportunity funding sort of led us through that process. Then once we had the plan completed, opportunity funding

Brandon Burton 19:53.898
Thanks.

Sheila Thomas 20:02.19
helped us with the asks. So we helped set up the appointments and then opportunity funding would provide us with information that we could provide the prospect. And so they really walked us through that whole process. And it was a very positive experience for us. It went very well. We had had people telling us for several years that they were really

They really wanted us to focus on economic development and we really hadn’t done anything in that strong in that regard. And so they were, I think, very excited when we stepped into this role. And so we just great response and opportunity funding basically from start to finish plans the process for you and walks you through it.

Brandon Burton 20:58.698
Okay, so is it all being held within the chamber or did you guys do a separate foundation?

Sheila Thomas 21:03.498
yes. So we have a foundation and some of the prospects wanted their money to go to the foundation, but we have a management agreement with the foundation and the chain between the management agreement between the chamber and the foundation. And so we are able to utilize both. Most of the money comes into the chamber.

Brandon Burton 21:25.898
So either way. Okay. Is there any strategic advantages of having it come into the chamber versus the foundation or vice versa that you can identify?

Sheila Thomas 21:37.294
really, it just depends on how the prospect, they want to donate it to a 501c3 or a 501c6. Yeah, tax write-off or business expense, of, you know, one or the other.

Brandon Burton 21:44.712
Yeah, get the tax right off or yeah.

Brandon Burton 21:51.275
Yeah. Okay. Very good. And then with the tourism marketing, I think that’s great that you guys took that on to get that on the ballot to be able to get the lodging tax. I’m kind of surprised it wasn’t there already. I thought that was a normal thing for anywhere. You stay at a hotel and you’re paying your hot funds and then it’s going to whoever’s driving tourism. But to see the need there and to be able to take it from idea to

Sheila Thomas 21:57.006
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas 22:11.279
I know.

Brandon Burton 22:21.2
execution. What was that like trying to get it on the ballot and what kind of challenges did you guys face with that?

Sheila Thomas 22:28.818
wow, that’s a loaded question. so, we, we met, with, several groups of people leading up to the decision. our County commission was favorable, in terms of putting a tax on the ballot. They, they believe that that is, was a good thing.

Brandon Burton 22:33.748
Yeah

Brandon Burton 22:48.51
which has green eyes to bright and green eyes to blue.

Sheila Thomas 22:55.182
We decided on a lodging tax rather than just like a retail type tax. so it went on the ballot and then we began trying to educate people because it is one of those things. A lodging tax, anywhere you go you pay a lodging tax. But people here are…

Brandon Burton 23:17.115
Right.

Sheila Thomas 23:22.542
in our area are very, very tax averse. And so we didn’t know how it was going to work, but it did pass. And it’s going to give us some money that we didn’t have to be able to promote our area. And so we’re in a county of about 32,000 people, but our largest city is 2,500 people.

And so and where my office is in Branson West, that’s about almost maybe 500 people. That’s it. And so there’s a lot of of nightly rentals here and not a lot of big hotels or anything like that, but a lot of nightly rentals. And so we just saw that as an opportunity to give us some money to promote us and our area versus so we’re you know, we’re nine miles, 10 miles from Branson and

Brandon Burton 23:58.185
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 24:20.748
They have a very large budget for tourism marketing, but we wanted to market our own little corner of the world. And so that gives us that opportunity.

Brandon Burton 24:27.679
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 24:33.364
Yeah, that’s great. And I think for anybody who’s considering that, I mean, as far as a revenue source, that’s coming from people outside of the community. So you’re not going to the business owners and the residents and saying, we want to impose this tax on you. But it’s those that come and enjoy our amenities, who use our roads, who come bring business to the restaurants and everything and the retail outlets. Let’s have them help fund the bill of

Sheila Thomas 24:44.801
Right.

Sheila Thomas 24:53.878
Right.

Sheila Thomas 24:58.37
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas 25:02.935
Right.

Brandon Burton 25:03.434
and making sure all of this is up and good for them. So I think it makes a whole lot of sense and I’m glad you guys were able to communicate that through the marketing or everything you had to do to be able to get that on the ballot and get it passed. So great job to you guys and congratulations on that victory. I wanted to ask on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.

Sheila Thomas 25:15.086
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas 25:20.43
Thanks.

Brandon Burton 25:31.016
What kind of tip or action item might you share with them, whether it’s related to what we’ve talked about today or something totally different that might help them in accomplishing that?

Sheila Thomas 25:37.345
You

Sheila Thomas 25:40.655
Well, first let me say, just so that they understand that I understand. When I came to this role in 2014, I started in April and I realized in May that I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to make payroll. And I had to go to our biggest contributor who normally

Brandon Burton 25:59.531
Thanks.

Hmm.

Sheila Thomas 26:09.998
would pay for her things like all like in June for the whole year. I had to go to her and say, would you consider doing this in May instead of June? Because I’m in a bad way and she did and fortunately, and so I understand what it’s like to be, you know, that that chamber that is like just trying to keep your head above water. I get it. I do get it.

Brandon Burton 26:13.768
Right.

Brandon Burton 26:34.889
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 26:38.658
What we really tried to do and what I have a different team now than I had then, but what we really tried to do is really focus on what we were supposed to be doing. And that is being advocating for business, representing business, helping business owners and not trying to do a bunch of other things. And so we really tried to hone in on that.

And I read a book, I have it here right by me, several years ago called Horseshoes versus Chess by Dave Anderson. Yeah, and you got it too? Yep, there it is. I recommend that book to new chamber execs all the time because you really have to understand the long game.

Brandon Burton 27:16.38
Yes, Dave Atkinson.

I’ve got mine right here. Yep.

Sheila Thomas 27:37.563
And I started, I became involved early on in our state organization, our Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri, and attended their conferences and that kind of thing. I had never run a chamber before when I started. so I just tried to get as much education as I could. And so I strongly recommend that for anybody that’s trying to

move up, either get your membership numbers up or get your revenue up or both. You just you really have to just don’t do just what you’ve always done. You have to look at it differently and you have to look at making sure that you’re doing the things that the businesses want you to do.

Brandon Burton 28:19.401
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:32.042
Absolutely. Great piece of advice. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers and how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Sheila Thomas 28:44.782
You know, ACCE talks about, know, they do a report on this every year and I think their research shows that, you know, chamber membership is not necessarily as important to current generations as it had been in the past.

Brandon Burton 28:52.776
Horizon, yeah.

Sheila Thomas 29:14.178
But I believe, you know, especially in communities, we kind of represent a county more so than a city, but particularly in cities, there’s a sense of belonging that people still want and connectiveness. And so I really, I don’t think we’re going away anytime soon. I think if we’re doing the things that the businesses need and want,

then we’re valuable and they want to keep us around and want to be part of it. So I’m not as, I’m not negative about the future of Chambers at all. I think there’s still a great place for the organization in a community.

Brandon Burton 30:04.884
Yeah, I think to your point, in a world where things are much more connected digitally, chambers will be around for that human connection because as humans, we still need that. We need that to thrive and chambers will be there to fill that space. So as well as a lot of other space, but that’s one key point that I see. Well, Sheila, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information.

Sheila Thomas 30:13.453
Yes.

Yes.

Sheila Thomas 30:24.064
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 30:30.932
listeners and they want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the table Rock Lake Chamber. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out?

Sheila Thomas 30:40.942
If they just want to find out information about our organization, we have our tourism website is visittablerocklake.com. And of course we invite everyone to come and see us vacation here. We have tablerocklakechamber.com is more information about the organization. And then we have

of links to our economic development sites and all those kinds of things in our tourism site. If someone wants to contact me, the best way to do that is email and my email address is sthomas at visittablerocklake.com.

Brandon Burton 31:26.708
It’s perfect. We’ll get all of that in our show notes to make it nice and easy and people can check out the different websites and see the sponsors you have on there and everything else you guys are doing.

Sheila Thomas 31:29.687
Okay.

Sheila Thomas 31:35.811
Yeah, we have, let me make mention. our, my membership development director was recognized by ACCE as one of the 40 under 40 in the, you know, in the country. And she also won the top business development award in our chamber category this last year. And so she’s a great resource for people that are interested in.

Brandon Burton 31:48.788
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 32:04.78
learning a little bit more about membership pitches or sales, anything like that. And then I have a couple other great resources too, tourism marketing and economic development. So if we can help, we’d be happy to.

Brandon Burton 32:17.716
Yeah.

Awesome, I appreciate that. Well, Sheila, thank you for setting aside some time and being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. This has been a great conversation and hopefully one that is getting some ideas turning in the minds of the listeners to be able to find other ways to meaningfully add to their bottom line in their organization. I appreciate it.

Sheila Thomas 32:42.946
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas 32:46.287
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

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