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Strategic Initiatives in Action with Yvonne Myers

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Brandon Burton (00:01.038)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Yvonne Myers. Yvonne is the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce, a role that she’s held since 2022 after a remarkable 31-year career with Columbine Health Systems.

Yvonne didn’t just pivot into this role. She brought her 14 years of board experience at the Chamber and a passion for building talent pipelines that meet real business needs. Under her leadership, the Chamber has secured over $2.1 million in grants to support work-based learning, sector partnerships, and workforce program development. She’s grown the talent team from a solo effort to a thriving team of three.

and currently chairs the NOCO works executive committee, a two county regional workforce initiative. Yvonne also serves on the boards of the arc of Larimer county and the early childhood council of Larimer county. When she’s not driving strategic change, you might catch her playing the string bass in the local band and orchestras. Yvonne, 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 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.

Yvonne Myers (01:34.82)
Well, Brandon, I’m excited to be here today and honored that you would ask me to participate in your podcast. So so hello, everyone. I’m excited to share the little bit of work we’re doing here. One thing I’ve learned about Chambers, it’s all about sharing and stealing and supporting each other for sure. So this is a great place to do it. So I really appreciate that. I think interesting fact is I was the first person in my family born in the United States. I don’t know why that’s cheering me up. But anyway,

first person to go to college. And so today is Fridays. We support Colorado State University. have a big basketball game this weekend. so having gone to university is very proud for my parents and it’s proud for me as well.

Brandon Burton (02:19.039)
Yeah, that is very cool. I love hearing stories like that. It’s awesome. America is a great place for that. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the Fort Collins area chamber just to give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget you guys work with, just to kind of give some perspective before we dive into our topic today.

Yvonne Myers (02:26.522)
And it’s for sure.

Yvonne Myers (02:41.594)
Sure, yeah, the chamber, we’ve been here since 1904, so we’re not one of the oldest ones around for sure. We have 13 staff members, some are part-time, I think eight are full-time, the rest are part-time. We do have a couple of consultants that we have, subcontractors that we work with as well. We have a place-setting company that does some of our events, and we have a wonderful, cranky advocacy person that writes a lot of our things and supports that work for us. We have about a $2 million budget.

Brandon Burton (02:49.547)
Thank

Brandon Burton (03:06.829)
Good night.

Yvonne Myers (03:10.2)
that we work from, we also have, we’ve done a Northern Colorado Prosper’s event. We’re on the fifth year of our second NCP event where we raise about four and a half million dollars each one of those times to do work like work on transportation, advocacy, workforce, those sorts of things. We also do a total resource campaign every year. We just finished our 15th year of our total resource campaign called Moving Fort Collins Forward, exclamation point at the end of that.

Brandon Burton (03:16.013)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (03:22.317)
Thanks

Brandon Burton (03:33.901)
Yeah, it’s just like being on the top of a spot, just playing with nature.

Yvonne Myers (03:39.262)
and we raised $536,000 this year for our sponsorships and our new members and all that sort of thing. So we have, you know, a volunteer team of about 50 that help raise funds for that. So we’re busy in the Fort Collins area. We also play well with the Greeley and Loveland chambers in our area as well. But we’re also, I would say, a pretty strong, strong lead in our region as far as the chamber goes.

Brandon Burton (03:41.901)
from the way I understand it, I was thinking the same thing.

So you have to be able to concentrate on the details.

Brandon Burton (04:05.249)
Very good. That definitely helps to give us an idea of where you’re coming from as far as the chamber goes. Today we’ll focus a lot of our conversation around that work-based learning, some of sector partnerships you guys are involved with, and some of these workforce programs that you guys are sponsoring. And we will dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All Yvonne, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into some of these work-based learning and these sector partnerships you guys are involved with all around workforce development. I don’t know if there’s a certain area you want to dive into first. I think there’s a lot of branches to this, but maybe just tell us where you guys saw the need and how you guys are addressing the need. Maybe that’s a good place to start.

Yvonne Myers (04:49.645)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (04:56.154)
Yeah, so, you know, the governor in our state, Governor Hickenlooper back in the day in 2013 brought the sector partnership model to the state because he came from industry, right? I mean, he was a geologist and he also had a brewery and all those sorts of things. And our economy was not doing well and he felt like, well, industry is the one to bring that economy forward. So I was lucky to be on our local workforce board working at a long-term care company at Columbine Health Systems and

Brandon Burton (05:08.525)
Thanks

Yvonne Myers (05:24.438)
started the sector help start the health sector partnership and the chamber at the time said boy you know it’s industry-led we should be a part of that and actually became our fiscal agent for no fee we had somebody else doing it for eight percent and when i called the chamber and said can you help us out i hope to get only one or two percent and they actually said well we’ll do it for no cost it was like yay so all of our money was just great

Brandon Burton (05:47.905)
Wow.

Yvonne Myers (05:49.882)
And we are still that fiscal agent. 15, since 2013, we are now fiscal agent for five out of the six sector partnerships in our region. 2013, the House Sector Partnership and Manufacturing Sector Partnerships launched. We’re the two longest sector partnerships in the country that are still active. So that’s a pretty crazy thing we didn’t imagine. And then when I came to the chamber, we

Brandon Burton (05:59.404)
So.

Yvonne Myers (06:18.882)
I really felt like we needed to launch more industries around because I really believe in the sector partnership model of industry leading where things are going. They’re the one who purchased the product of education. They’re the ones that have the issue and opportunity. And I do think our workforce friends, our education friends, our government friends really do want to help us. But when we’re sitting in our businesses doing our work and they’re in their secret lab imagining what we need, it never works. It just doesn’t work.

Brandon Burton (06:36.611)
and turn it into a little bit a little bit.

Thanks

I love that. Just imagining, right?

Yvonne Myers (06:49.114)
So we have to get up out of our house and then speak to them and say this is what we need and they will magically help us, right? But we’re not there at that conversation. so, the vice versa also, which is they’re in their secret lab going, we know what industry needs. So we’re going to create this and they should be also including us in those conversations. So that really is a very basic tenet of the work that we do here is like industry needs to be there and you need to be speaking up. And so,

Brandon Burton (07:09.39)
So, we’re to have a great time.

Yvonne Myers (07:18.508)
When I started then, the nonprofit sector partnership, some of the nonprofits came to me who knew about sector partnerships said, we want to start one. And I was like, are you an industry? I know it’s a terrible question to ask, but I was like, are you? And so we pulled data around how many we have, how many employees, the economic impact, and went, holy buckets. And they don’t tend to show up in numbers because they’re tucked under government. They’re tucked under here. don’t really have to kind of pull them out of light cast in some of those places.

Brandon Burton (07:31.34)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:46.75)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (07:48.25)
We launched the nonprofit sector partnership. You hope to have 30 industry members at your launch meeting to get impact. We had 90 people there from nonprofit. You hope that they walk away with three things they want to work on. They want to work on five. know, nonprofits are used to roll up their sleeves and doing their work. And so we, our region had formed a TID attacks incremental district to

Brandon Burton (07:59.907)
Wow.

Yvonne Myers (08:16.826)
charge more, if you come here, you have to pay a little bit more to our hotels and motels and things. And then that money goes to marketing the region. And I said, well, you’re then already a sector partnership because you have to lay down your competition as industry and come together to work on issues you can collectively solve. So that was an easy lift of the hospitality sector partnership. So they’ve now been launched about four years ago. And construction launched during the

I mean, they launched like March 10th and then we all got shut down like the 20th, right? And so they did very little during COVID. They relaunched and they said, we’re gonna do a construction con. We’re gonna bring hundreds of kids in to learn how to, I mean, they bring in like big equipment and the kids actually get to sit on big equipment and do some things and all of that and do welding and that kind of stuff as well. so they…

Quickly, people want to write them checks, and they’re like, hurry to take the checks. And we’re like, we’ll be your fiscal agent. We’ll help you. So we provide directors and officers insurance. provide, we sign the contracts for the events they go to. We use our liability insurance. So all we do is create that frame for them to be successful and hold them up. And they go off and do the work, right, as well. So a year ago, we launched the Financial Sector Partnership. And I can tell you that.

Brandon Burton (09:21.102)
Thank

Brandon Burton (09:37.39)
Okay.

Yvonne Myers (09:41.221)
We kind of launch them all a bit the same with the leadership team and the committees of work you want to do. And then we let them be who they are. And they are completely all different. They have websites. And you can imagine it’s colorful and lots of stuff on the nonprofit. And the financial sector partnership is black and white. It’s very streamlined and much different. And so we get the opportunity to let them be who they are and do the work that they want to do.

Brandon Burton (10:05.806)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (10:10.508)
So with that, then received grant funds to the Health Sector Partnership came to us and said, we’d really like to do more work-based learning, but it isn’t working the way it’s going. Schools are calling us. We’re calling schools. It’s just like this disconnected mess. We don’t know which schools to call. Schools are reaching out to us multiple times. We were getting asked too much. So.

We collectively wrote a grant between the school districts in our region, the health sector partnership, and the chamber. And we were the fiscal agent and became the lead for the grant because we can more quickly write the grant and do the grant. You have to go through school boards. have to go through. And the health sector partnership is not an entity, so they can’t apply, as you know. So we received funding and hired a subcontractor to work directly with CTE teachers to bring industry to do work-based learning.

Brandon Burton (10:55.938)
Thank

Brandon Burton (11:07.822)
you

Yvonne Myers (11:07.834)
And we’ve gone, they have gone from 40 to over 400 with our help of activities where students are either getting paid and they’re in internships or they’re doing job shadows or informational interviews. And what we find is when we can really hook that industry member and write that plan well of what a student could do in an internship or even in a job shadow, they will take more, right? And they will say, I need two or three.

Brandon Burton (11:34.978)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (11:37.755)
figure out this will be my pipeline for my employees. Some say well I went to Rocky Mountain High School I want to support Rocky Mountain High School I’m doing good work for these students to get exposures and we really push this notion you hear this across the country you know I can’t imagine a job I’ve never heard about right so we really and the we use the Zello platform which is what the school district started with so it’s XELLO

Brandon Burton (11:56.062)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (12:05.698)
And students also make requests. now the grant ended and it’s now a staff member and we found some more funding through our local nonprofits and our county who gave us funds to continue doing this. We find that our staff member has to cold call. Three kids wanted interior design, so she calls the interior designers and she’s got now two wonderful interior designers who regularly take students, them in a great way. These students are

Brandon Burton (12:08.504)
So.

Yvonne Myers (12:34.394)
amplified and say this is what I want to do and off they go into the wide world of you know learning how to be an interior designer. So that’s been highly successful. When the state of Colorado then put out more funds to incentivize business to do this workplace learning, they recognize the cost. I mean the staff member that’s off the floor or out of the position to do that work to develop the plan all those sorts of things. So

We applied and received a half a million dollar grant and we were able to give out 400,000 in incentives and did so in eight months. gave up to $10,000 if you did all the way to an internship. And so we had 150 businesses, we could only fund 48. We really found that this was really, and it didn’t.

Brandon Burton (13:12.194)
Nice, that’s cool.

Yvonne Myers (13:25.252)
There’s not a one-to-one match. Industry isn’t getting fully paid for the work they’re doing. That little donut shop is not, the 2,500 is not gonna cover their costs, even the 10,000. But it’s a recognition that there is a cost, that there is an effort that you have that we recognize that for you. And so we actually received $50,000 in funding this past year from Woodward, one of our larger industries in the area.

Brandon Burton (13:47.886)
you

Yvonne Myers (13:51.109)
who said, well, we want to continue doing that work. have a charitable trust, and they gave us funds. And we have a request in for more funds from them to do this incentive work as well. And that all came out of the sector partnerships wanting to do work-based learning with funding that we got. So it sort of just starts to build on itself as you go.

Brandon Burton (13:59.599)
And that’s awesome.

Brandon Burton (14:07.97)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s very cool. So these business sector partnerships, you know, I imagine for some listening, it may be a new concept. Maybe their chamber doesn’t, you know, take this approach. How do you go about starting a business sector partnership? And do you feel like you have to get all of the businesses in that sector in your region or whatever to be a part of it? Or are there going to be some that abstain from being a part of the partnership? How does that work?

Yvonne Myers (14:37.358)
That’s super. Those are super great questions, Brandon. So when Colorado started it, we used what’s called the Next Gen Sector Partnership model. And they’ve just changed their name to Foundation. So I think you could Google Next Gen Sector Partnership as well. And you do reach out to those who are most influential in that region that are going to bring that

Brandon Burton (14:50.538)
Okay. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (15:03.95)
Makes sense.

Yvonne Myers (15:05.88)
are going to bring others. If you get an invite from that restaurant owner, you’re like, I don’t know what it is, but I better go. So you kind of lean on those. they don’t have to be leaders after that. You kind of not use them, but you activate them for that moment. And so we traditionally always use the Purple Wall model. It’s a Canadian facilitation process. So if you Google Purple Wall facilitation, you will find it.

Brandon Burton (15:12.962)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (15:35.693)
And it’s really just a parachute piece of material that’s purple. And you spray sticky on it, and you put all the industry at a U-shaped table, and you say, what keeps you up at night? And it takes a minute. Someone has to be brave and write the first thing. And with our health care one, one of the hospital administrators wrote, I don’t know how to discharge mentally ill people out of my hospital, and I have no resources. And they’re just sitting there. And so I

Brandon Burton (16:01.046)
that’s huge.

Yvonne Myers (16:03.222)
I lifted that up and read it to all the other people at the U-shaped table and they said, that’s what we’re talking about. And then the cards start flying, right? And you place them together, you know, in cards that match. And pretty soon you have 42 cards that say behavioral health is an opportunity, Workforce is an opportunity. What the last purple wall for the health sector partnership is every couple of years you do it again to be sure you’re on track. For the now for hospitals, it’s safety and security of the staff.

Brandon Burton (16:14.635)
Thank you.

Yvonne Myers (16:33.05)
That is becoming a very big opportunity for a second party to work on. And there’s a bit of a model that says you need a leadership team, you need some bylaws, and you shouldn’t have quarterly meetings and committees, or so. I mean, after that, do what works for you, absolutely. And a lot of times, when we started, I didn’t worry about who came. I just thought, we need to make it.

Brandon Burton (16:34.807)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (16:47.502)
Or do what works for you, right?

Yvonne Myers (16:59.854)
We need to keep moving it forward so people will find out and say, well, I better become a part of that, right? And that we kept it valuable and important. So like the health sector one that I led for eight years as a healthcare employee, we always did a post-legislative recap of what happened. Nobody has time to follow what’s happening in the legislature and know what’s going on. And then sometimes, then they’ve moved to now they have a legislative committee because we have a lot of legislation around healthcare now. So now they’ve moved to a

not a listening after, but a proactive before, right? And that’s again, that evolution of these sector partnerships moving and they want. But for me, they are a confab of the willing, working on what they want to work on. So he who shows up, we work on the things you wanna do, right? And so if it’s not meeting your needs, then you’re not gonna come, or you get a group of people together who say, want to work on this sort of a thing. So yeah, and not everybody has to join.

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Brandon Burton (17:53.603)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (17:57.755)
Keep it going, keep it moving forward, and people will come when they want to.

Brandon Burton (18:01.548)
Yeah. And I imagine in every community, those business sectors are going to look slightly different. I you may have some overlap where healthcare is something important or housing or manufacturing or whatnot, but others, maybe manufacturing is not as big of a factor and you go a different direction.

Yvonne Myers (18:10.595)
Right.

Yvonne Myers (18:18.616)
Very much so. We have one of the only nonprofit sector partnerships in the country because nonprofits, there’s a part where industry also contributes, right? They may pay for all partner meetings. They may, you know, for the construction con, they’re all buying the booths, they’re bringing their equipment. mean, they’re spending cash to do this and nonprofits don’t have as much money. But our nonprofit sector partnership is very active and has figured out how to…

Brandon Burton (18:36.994)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (18:45.156)
to do all of that without pulling money away from the nonprofits themselves. So they’re very active. So you’re right. It’s unique to each community in each region. We found the financial sector partnership when they launched, they’re one that kind of crosses over all the sector partnerships and fiscal literacy or financial literacy has become a topic with everyone because even though wages have gone up, people are still struggling with what things cost and housing and all that.

Brandon Burton (19:00.258)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (19:12.738)
So they’re looking at how they can bring trainings and education to the other sector partnerships. They also highlight the financial sector partnerships. Every all-profit meet and all-partner meeting hosts a nonprofit to share with what they’re doing so these banks and other financial folks can understand what’s happening in the nonprofit world. And so they’ve actually started to cross across each other to support each other as well, which has been fun to watch.

Brandon Burton (19:33.219)
Yeah.

So.

Very cool. Now, I know you guys have gotten into the work with focus with automotive and HVAC industries. You want to tell us about that and how that came to be?

Yvonne Myers (19:47.405)
Yes. Yeah, yeah. So our state did some financial training for those of us that are intermediaries. As the chamber has gotten into workforce, we’re now listed as a workforce intermediary. So we’re a connector between industry and workforce, economic development, all of that. And so, right?

Brandon Burton (20:05.42)
Yeah.

Convino, right?

Yvonne Myers (20:10.606)
And they recognized with all of the ARPA money that had flowed into all of us, post-COVID, that that was going to dry up. That’s once in a lifetime. We hope none of us want to live through another COVID situation. And that what was going to happen after this big infusion of cash, and then things were going to stop. And so they did financial training for us. And in that were folks from the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation and their Talent Pipeline Management Program.

Brandon Burton (20:20.215)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (20:38.682)
And so I started to learn about that program. So I decided to take the course. And so glad that I did, because it really builds on sector partnerships, which is industry-led, but in really the workforce committee. The sector partnerships might work on legislation or labor laws or other things, labor laws, or liquor laws. We have a thing that went on in liquor laws with hospitality. And so.

Brandon Burton (20:57.186)
Good.

Yvonne Myers (21:03.49)
With the talent pipeline management, really is industry coming together and kind of owning what’s happening in that space. And what I mean by that, like with HVAC, when we met with them, we said, what is your greatest need that you have to solve in the next two years? That’s how TPM is. And they said, we need entry-level maintenance technicians. But guess what? With those 10 folks, they titled that title 10 different names.

And that’s a problem, right? So how can I as a CTE teacher, how can I as a parent, how can I as an applicant even figure out what role this is across all of these vendors and providers? Also, we went through an exercise of agreeing to what are all the skills they need to have to be hired and what skills are they going to be taught as they’re moving forward. So they come into alignment with that because then we take that to education and say,

Brandon Burton (21:30.432)
Really? Yeah it is.

Yvonne Myers (21:58.157)
If you can teach these things, we will hire them from you. And maybe there’s 15 things, and my business wants 18 things. Well, those three are mine to teach. These 15 will come from education. And then you survey your education and say, what programs do you have? How many students can you take? So in our region, our HVAC providers, and it’s from Brighton, Colorado, which is a little closer to Denver, up to Laramie, Wyoming, that’s the

Brandon Burton (22:02.52)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (22:26.616)
the geographic area our HVAC members provide, they said we need 250 over the next two years. Well, that number wakes up education, right? If I call as my own little HVAC company and I say I need three people in next two years, they go, well, isn’t that sweet? I’ll send some resumes or, you know, come see our students. You say 250, you move the nation, honestly. And so our local school district here, are

Brandon Burton (22:34.478)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (22:44.898)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (22:54.292)
aging as a state in Colorado and we’re not having as many babies and our schools are you know some places in Colorado are closing schools and our district would like to repurpose them and use them for education of other folks right in the evenings on the weekends adults that kind of thing I’m sure that’s happening across the country as well so the HVAC folks did surveys with educators and community colleges and you know do you need a two-year degree do you know

Brandon Burton (23:09.314)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (23:24.154)
what education do you need? Where can we hire folks and then train them and then put them back into education? How can we look at this differently? The automotive is in the same place. There are a few months behind them. in both cases, like yesterday’s meeting with our automotive, we had our school district here and they’re like, what would it take for you to hire somebody under 18? They’re like, well, we can’t. Well, right.

Brandon Burton (23:49.342)
Why not?

Yvonne Myers (23:53.131)
In healthcare, when I was asked that question, why can’t you hire him under 18? I said, well, it’s a nursing home regulation. Well, it’s not. And I said, it’s an OSHA rule. It’s not. It must be a labor law because we’ve always done it that way, right? It’s not a labor law. I asked our liability insurance provider. He said, yeah, you can’t. And I said, can you show me where that is? Because I needed to tell other people why we couldn’t do it. So give me the piece of paper. And then he came back two weeks later and he said, yeah, I got it.

Brandon Burton (24:03.48)
No.

Brandon Burton (24:16.11)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (24:22.042)
So we started taking students in high school when they finished the med prep program because you want to grab them when they’re ready and you want to get them going and you want to get them in your, you know, in jobs and, and then we’d scholarship them. Then we would pay for their nursing, right? And so same sort of thing in automotive and HVAC. And what I love about it is it, it holds industry accountable to stop stealing from each other and paying another dollar and taking that employee there collectively together.

Brandon Burton (24:47.512)
breath.

Yvonne Myers (24:49.848)
They also are helping develop curriculum. They also are helping to donate supplies. Like they can push on their suppliers and say, hey, so our high school automotive bay is one bay and I guess the lift is bad. I don’t know about lifts, know, but all the automotive people are like, this is terrible. We need to get to four bays and they can use their influence with their suppliers who want students to be hired so that they can supply the supplies. And so

Brandon Burton (25:06.007)
yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:19.182)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (25:19.896)
Here it works. And the magic of it is that industry has had their head down all these years saying, well, they just don’t provide me the right people. Those educators don’t know, get to play and understand the parameters of what education has to work under and the limitations they might have or the issues they might have. The educators who say, well, these industry people never hire the right people, they get to hear on the other side. And then we collectively come together and try to solve that problem.

Brandon Burton (25:46.742)
Right.

Yvonne Myers (25:47.567)
You know, it’s a long journey, right? We’re not going to get to 250 students. But three to five years, we should look back. And the idea is now we’ve done maintenance technician for both HVAC and automotive. Now what’s the next step? And what’s the next step? So the last part I’ll say is that for automotive, the greatest need they have are master mechanics. And that takes 10 years. You have to have enough pipeline coming in to get enough people to go that decade to get to be your master mechanic, right? And that’s what we’re doing.

Brandon Burton (26:01.518)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:16.686)
Yeah. And really with both of those industries, HVAC and automotive, I mean, with the rise of AI, those are going to be jobs that are around for a while still while a lot of white collar jobs are going by the wayside with AI.

Yvonne Myers (26:17.476)
create here.

Yvonne Myers (26:31.702)
are going away. And yesterday we had our Larimer County Workforce Center staff member with our automotive meeting and he said, and I had never heard this before, but that a lot of AI jobs are filled by women, jobs that AI may take away, and that this would be a new place, a new market to get, have women that can come into HVAC and automotive. And most of the people in our area anyway that are managing, owning, running these businesses

Brandon Burton (26:51.534)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (27:00.362)
all came out of like VOTEC programs. They had automotive in middle school, right? And those programs are gone and they’re coming back, but they need to come back with industry supporting them and getting the right equipment. can share an interesting story. One of our community colleges here had a tour with all the automotive folks and they said, and over here’s our showers, because we know you all have showers, so we wanna mimic that, we wanna teach them how it’s all gonna be. And…

Brandon Burton (27:05.454)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:16.942)
for the AI on the of this unit.

Brandon Burton (27:24.472)
Thanks.

Yvonne Myers (27:26.914)
I looked around and all the automotive people had such funny looks on their faces. And so when we got back to the main room, I said, I want to go back to that shower. You all had such funny looks on your faces. And they said, not a one of them has showers, not a one. And so there must have been some automotive person someplace that said we had a shower and then education thinks they need to provide that. And think of the cost of putting in the showers and having the showers and talking about the showers. That’s not what we need. We might have needed.

Brandon Burton (27:41.077)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (27:48.162)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (27:53.989)
three more car bays or an electric car bay or something different than that. And so I’m super excited and to watch the aha moments. So yesterday they said to the school district, well, if you have 18 students and they’ve gone through semester one and semester two and they have their ASE certification, how do we get those kids? You could just like, wow, 18 kids, you know? And she said, well, have this, do you do a career fair? And I said to them, when you’re in this talent pipeline management,

collaborative and you’re coming to meetings and you’re donating equipment and maybe even giving scholarship funds. You you pay or do what you want, but you have opportunities to play more because you know what the need is. You have first bid on those students right like you are helping to create the pipeline and it was like. What like crazy town and the other part is that industry, whether it’s HVAC or automotive, we’ve heard this a lot honestly feel like.

The students that come out of the schools are the ones who everyone said, well, Timmy and Sally, they’re not going to make it. So we’ll just stick them in automotive or HVAC. And that is right. And that really isn’t true. And with the advent of computers and the technology around automotive and even HVAC, I you have to plug in with your phone and understand the error messages and all the things. These are becoming highly technical positions.

Brandon Burton (29:02.798)
Right, yeah. Kind of a negative connotation, right?

Yvonne Myers (29:21.294)
They want all of the levels of students to come to them. And with HVAC, we’ve learned there’s 49,000 openings right now in the country for HVAC across the country. And these call centers and all these other places that have to be cooled and heated and all of that. And they say if you get HVAC trained, you can work anywhere in the world. And so kids are starting to hear that, parents.

Brandon Burton (29:45.858)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (29:50.359)
It’s very interesting, exciting stuff. And these were folks that sort of just popped up because the chamber hears and listens and sees what’s going on and has those industries with us. It wasn’t like we have this big data. We had all these automotive people saying we cannot find people we can’t get. And then HVAC, because it doesn’t have a union, which is maybe good or bad, I don’t really know. But because of that, they’re kind of.

Brandon Burton (30:02.638)
Makes those connections. Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (30:16.118)
out there a little bit and because it involves some electrical and some plumbing and a little bit of sheet metal they kind of fall in this no place and I’m super excited to help bring them together with a voice.

Brandon Burton (30:28.45)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. It’s exciting work that you guys are involved with with these partnerships. And yeah, it’s awesome. Well, as we begin to wrap things up, wanted to ask you, for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you leave for them as they try to work towards that?

Yvonne Myers (30:33.119)
well, thank you. Yeah, it’s fun every day. So.

Yvonne Myers (30:51.212)
Yeah, yeah, I do think that I feel very strongly, obviously, I’ve said a little bit earlier in this podcast, but that the chamber is a natural place to be leading this work, because it’s industry that needs to lead it. Education is mandated and is there and government and workforce and all those things are there. And, you know, we’re unabashed at saying industry would never do that. That’s not how you would meet with industry. This is how you would do it.

And our state is really flipping that script because many of our chambers are playing in that space. Our VATA chamber, Boulder, Grand Junction are really also, we’re all collectively in this space. And so I think you’re remiss if you’re not playing in that space, even being at the meetings. You may not have to be leading a TPM, but lifting up that voice and then bringing your chamber members to that.

Brandon Burton (31:35.95)
Thank

Brandon Burton (31:39.849)
Thank

Yvonne Myers (31:43.175)
Because the way the workforce system has worked for a long time isn’t going to continue working the right way if we’re not at that table. So I think that’s a really big deal. Don’t undersell yourself. you are vitally important in the workforce space if you’ve never stepped into it. You really, really are. And it doesn’t take much for you to get going. So don’t be afraid. Call me. I’ll help you.

Brandon Burton (31:48.44)
Right.

Brandon Burton (32:05.932)
Yeah, that’s great. I’d love that. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers and how you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Yvonne Myers (32:17.21)
Yeah, know, next month I’ll celebrate five years here, but as you stated in my bio, you know, I was on the board for 14. And when I took over the marketing position at our company, not running an assisted living anymore, I thought, well, I don’t know if I can do this. The owner said, you have to go, you better go to the chamber. And I thought, well, what is that? So I went and it was Rolodex days way before the computers. And so I went from one Rolodex to two and I became someone at our company that, do you know somebody here?

Brandon Burton (32:36.685)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (32:46.626)
I do, and if not, know somebody who knows somebody here. so chambers are, to me, have to always be here. The collection of how industry comes together, has their voice, advocacy for business, that voice of business. But also, it’s a journey for a business. I come as a new, I just start, opened up my business. So this is how I learn how to market and how to, where SBDC is, where all the resources are to start my business. And then,

Brandon Burton (32:59.118)
Bye.

Yvonne Myers (33:13.752)
I get successful in my business and I start taking on internships or I start, you know, donating back to the community. And then I’m far enough along that I join your board and I’m making impact and decisions about all of that. And even past board members are still very connected to us and call us with ideas and suggestions and all those sorts of things. And I think the future of Chambers is even more important because of the importance of business and how we

Brandon Burton (33:25.432)
Thank you.

Yvonne Myers (33:42.735)
drive the economy, what a big say we have and what happens in our economy. But we also recognize the importance of government and nonprofits and all the other components. But without us, none of that works. And so I feel like chambers are going to maintain their importance and coming together to collectively work on things and not being in silos. And I’m not saying that chambers are, but sometimes in a region, we have 19 chambers in our region. And we do a couple of things.

Brandon Burton (33:53.1)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (34:12.334)
together every year. And that’s important to continue doing and lean on each other and work together. But I feel like chambers, the value of chambers will not go away. It hasn’t gone away since the 1800s and will still continue to be vitally important. And we need to be sure that we’re raising the funds and being in the front seat of convening, championing, and connecting people and continuing to do that work.

Brandon Burton (34:36.94)
Yeah. Yeah. That touches back on your original comment you made when we started this about the R &D within Chambers and just do that ripoff and duplicate and see what works in another community. And if it can work in your community, give it a shot. No shame.

Yvonne Myers (34:53.434)
Absolutely, absolutely. I have never not, I mean, I’ve reached out across the country and I have never not had anyone say, absolutely, here’s all my resources. Then two days later, I found some more videos for it. Here’s some more resources for you. And I just love the camaraderie. I just love the connection to how important industry is and entrepreneurism is and moving the economy forward. So it’s an honor to be here.

Brandon Burton (35:04.429)
Right?

Brandon Burton (35:17.876)
Absolutely. But in that vein, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about all these exciting things you’ve covered today.

Yvonne Myers (35:27.982)
Sure, yeah, for sure. So I’m at the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce. You can always Google that and we, you my picture’s there and all my contact information for sure. My email is the letter Y as in Yvonne Myers, M-Y-E-R-S at F-C as in Fort Collins Chamber dot org (ymyers@fcchamber.org). Our phone number is there as well. My cell phone number is on our website. So feel free to reach out at any point or at any time.

Brandon Burton (35:54.87)
That’s perfect. I’ll have all that linked in our show notes for this episode to make it easy. But Yvonne, this has been great having you on. And you guys are doing great work there in Fort Collins. And keep it up. And thank you for sharing some of that great work with us today.

Yvonne Myers (36:06.126)
Well, thank you.

Yvonne Myers (36:09.944)
Well, thank you for asking me to participate. I’m honored.

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Capital Campaigns with Ann Hutchison

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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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Anne Hutchison, and became President and CEO of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce on January 1. 2021 she started with the Chamber in 2003 is a policy committee coordinator and was promoted to Executive Vice President in 2005 before moving into the CEO role and directly manage the communications and events departments, assisted in the day to day operations of the chamber and managed issues and political advocacy, as Well as as well as the chambers and leadership Fort Collins and leadership northern Colorado programs, and is responsible for the future vision and strategic direction of the organization, while maintaining the staff team and the day to day operations of the Fort Collins Area Chamber, she’s been a key community leader in advancing the business friendly policy agenda while building community through business. And 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 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. Yeah.

Ann Hutchison 2:15
Well, thanks, Brandon. I’m thrilled to be a part of the podcast today and really looking forward to hopefully sharing some insights that are of value to my colleagues across the country. As far as something interesting about myself, I don’t know that this is interesting, but I am a true blue or true green CSU RAM fan. So I graduated from University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, which is about an hour away from Fort Collins. But my father and my sister have multiple degrees from Colorado State, and they, they gave me the opportunity to be a fan of Colorado State, and so, so I am. I’m fully invested football, basketball, volleyball, you name the sport that has a clock and a and score, and you’ll most likely see myself and my sister there cheering the Rams on. I’m wearing green today because we do Fan Friday here in Fort Collins, where we get our green on on Friday. So you will, you will regularly see me sporting the green and the gold in support of that important community partner. But also it’s just a lot of

Brandon Burton 3:29
fun. Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s always nice to get those proxy invitations to be a fan, right? Exactly, exactly. That’s awesome, but you wear it well. So this is that that’s fun. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Fort Collins area Chamber, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today, so we know where you’re coming from in this conversation, to tell us about the size staff, budget, scope of work, the things that you guys are involved with, to kind of preface for this conversation, yeah.

Ann Hutchison 3:57
So Fort Collins is located in Colorado, we’re about an hour north of Denver, and as already noted, Colorado State is our single largest employer in Fort Collins, they’re a key primary employer in that we bring in about 10,000 new students every year onto Campus. So we have a campus of about 40,000 students, and we learn them up, we take that raw material, we learn them up, and then we send them back out into the world to do really great things, and as a sizable employer, but also that primary employer, bringing those new dollars into the community, incredibly important to Fort Collins, but we’re not a single industry town. We also then have a strong technology presence here in our economy. Um, we’re well known for our retail sector. Um, at one point we had the justification that we had more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the United States. So a beautiful cross section community that the economy is driven by a lot of really interesting and great companies and organizations. As far as the chamber goes, we are the Fort Collins area Chamber, and that’s very intentional, that we not only support concepts and visions and ideas for Fort Collins, but we really do address issues on a regional basis. So it’s a connection between Larimer County, which is where Fort Collins is, and Weld County, which has Greeley as it’s a county seat. That two county area represents almost 700,000 people, and we really are a regional economy, with people living, working and playing throughout that two county area. As a result, we then end up being one of the largest chambers in the two county area. We have about 1200 members. We then staff the work that those 1200 members request with about 14 people that represent 11 and a half FTE. We’ve We’ve tested out a lot of concepts that we funded through grant funding that then we move those folks off of contract basis onto our staff, so you’ll see us continue to grow a little bit, although the last several years, we’ve really leaned into that concept of not FTE, but contracts in order to get the work done. Last little note would be, we function under a five year strategic plan that we call northern Colorado prospers. And you and I’ll talk a little bit more about how we created northern Colorado prospers and what it does for us, but it sets the stage for the work of the chamber to be largely around four key goals we’re we’re staying highly focused on the economy and how the economy works and how we can influence the economy here in the two county area, we spend a lot of time working on our talent ecosystem and making sure that the ecosystem is easy for people to get into, but also then creating the talent and the workforce that our employers need moving forward, we spend a lot of time talking about transportation in a two county area, and really making sure that there’s a system that allows people to get throughout the two county area. And then our fourth goal is around a business for the environment, really making changes locally, at the county level and at the state level, to make sure that business has an opportunity to thrive throughout Northern Colorado.

Brandon Burton 7:40
That’s great. Yeah, that gives us a really good snapshot of what you guys are involved with. So do you have any of the tourism or economic development, or you solely chamber? Or what’s the what’s that scope look like?

Ann Hutchison 7:52
We are solely chamber. So here in Fort Collins, we have a separate organization that manages our visit profile. We have a separate organization that manages our downtown Fort Collins promotions. We have a separate organization that does any of the pageants and parties. So yes, our full time job is membership, connections and

Brandon Burton 8:17
advocacy. Awesome now that that helps set the stage, for sure. And I’m, I’m curious more about the the contract workers, and exploring that through grants and and I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for other chambers to be able to to really assess the needs. See, do we need a full time person for this? Is it a short term commitment that could be a contract thing or, or if it may be a long trip. I’ve heard of accounting, you know, being contracted out and not necessarily having a staff person for that. So, yes, they’re doing some innovative things. It sounds like, Oh,

Ann Hutchison 8:48
thank you. Yeah. It really the contract design has really allowed us to test out concepts and test out concepts using other people’s money, which is kind of fantastic, but it also then gives us as an organization that opportunity to buy only the services that we need for that moment in time without then having that long time commitment, especially if a concept doesn’t work, but that long time commitment of staff time benefits, office space, technology, I mean, you name all of the parts and pieces. And so using that contract model really has given us the opportunity to test ideas, make sure that they work, and then we can, we can adopt those into our organization, if they make sense. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 9:33
so I don’t think you mentioned what the your budget is, operating budget there at the Chamber, because I think that’ll be a key thing as we get into our topic for today. Yes,

Ann Hutchison 9:43
so we function with a with approximately $2 million a year. Half of that budget comes directly from membership dues and community events or membership events that we run. The other half of that. Budget, then, is a funding stream that very specifically drives our major priority work for the organization. So and again, we’ll we’ll talk deeper about this, but we ran a five campaign that asked business to make a five year investment with us, and that generated about $4 million for use over five years. So that’s where that other million dollars comes from. Is that very specific campaign that then drives and funds this very specific strategic work? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 10:35
now that that’s perfect. Yes. And as you alluded to, we’re going to be focusing our conversation today around capital campaigns and being able to use those to raise the funds for these important you know, key work for the chambers are involved with so I’m excited to dive in deeper on that topic, learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the Fort Collins area Chamber. Soon as we get back from this quick break,

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All right, Ann, we are back, as we mentioned before the break today, we’re going to be talking about capital campaigns, and you mentioned how that makes up about half of your your operating budget there at the Fort Collins area Chamber. And you had mentioned that you go about asking people to commit to to support this strategic strategy for a five year plan. Tell us more about the structure, how this is done. Just unpack it for us, you bet.

Ann Hutchison 14:41
So it it’s important to note that I inherited an amazing legacy here at the Fort Collins area Chamber. So our our former CEO, David May, who led this organization for 20 years, really did a fantastic job and helping. Our business community and especially our leadership. Think about the role of the chamber and and placing the chamber into a space where we were taking on the biggest of regional issues we were we were proving out that we could be a trusted resource, that we could actually move the dial on policy and create the future that we really want here in Northern Colorado. At the same time, he identified that we were doing that in one year chunks, and it was really challenging to start to move that flywheel relative to these really massive system changing issues. If you if you spend half of your foot your fundraising, and then you only end up with six months in order to work on the issue itself, and then you go right back into fundraising again. So David led our board through an analysis to really identify that this capital campaign concept could work for things other than buildings. And so we launched in 2016 a fundraising effort where, number one, we worked with the business community to identify the biggest issues that the business community wanted to see the chamber work on. We then packaged those with four major goals and took it out into the market and said, business community, are you willing to make a five year commitment in order for us to do this work? And that first campaign, we were able to raise $3.8 million for use over a five year window and and it was transformational for our organization. It really got this out of that one year cycle, but also laid down a marker to say our organization Well, yes, we are about people connections is really about taking on the biggest issues of our region and delivering on the promise of making change with those issues. So under David’s leadership, we ran with Northern Colorado prospers 1.0 had some great success as David then prepared to retire in 2020. We were coming up onto the last year of that five year campaign. We we went back out into the market and said, Hey, community, we’ve been doing this work. Here’s what we’ve been able to do. We think we’re still the right organization to continue this work. Would you be willing to fund us again? That feasibility study came back and said, Absolutely, we could show very specific improvements that we had made to our business environment. And business was very willing to say, yes, let’s let’s give it another round. So my first year in seat in 2021 was to take that new product out into the market and spend 2021 fundraising while wrapping up the first campaign, as far as moving the dial and again, very successful, about $4 million that was committed to us for then the next five years of programming. So we’ve been under northern Colorado prospers 2.0 for for three years, four years, with 2223 and 24 being the first three years of that campaign we’re will be taking on in next year, 2025 an analysis of, is this the right tool moving forward? Do we run another campaign or not, and what that might look like for for fundraising in 2026 so it’s, it’s, it’s been transformational for us? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:35
I really like the idea of of not needing to spend half the year on fundraising, and only have six months to do the actual work, right? So be able to do it once, and kind of have it set for a five year time frame and and be able to really roll your sleeves up and get some things done. So you’ve been there at the Chamber for you know well before this, this is put into place. How have you seen the change? I know you said you guys will be doing an analysis to see if it’s worth going forward, but how have you seen the before versus after? With with using this kind of strategy? Yeah,

Ann Hutchison 19:13
I’d love to use the example that really showcases this idea of the flywheel turning and the impact having lasting, lasting change in your community. So here in Northern Colorado, Fort Collins is connected to Denver, our city center, by an interstate. It’s called I 25 and it’s an interstate that was put down on the ground in 1969 and had really very little improvement to it since we were starting to experience as a community that our commute to Denver, whether it was to head to an international airport or or to interact with state government or or just to do business. Was going from a 45 minute commute up to closer to an hour and a half, with projections that that commute could expand to three hours in a very short amount of time. So So capacity on that roadway was was a growing, growing concern. Our transportation division said, don’t you worry about that. Northern Colorado, we have you slated to to do some pretty major improvements to that roadway, adding an extra lane, and we’ll be, we’ll be getting that done in 2075

Brandon Burton 20:35
awesome, can’t wait, right?

Ann Hutchison 20:37
This is 2015 when we’re having this conversation. Business leaders around the room had some very choice words to say and said, You know what? We appreciate that, but we’re going to knock about half a century off of that number, and we are committed as a business community and as a government community to find the funding in order to improve that roadway and have all of those dollars secured, if not the construction completed by 2025 so we’re in 2015 2020 make the big declaration we are going to fix north I 25 by 2025 because of Northern Colorado prospers and that fundraising, that campaign style fundraising, we knew we had money for the next five years to be able to very specifically create a lobbying plan to build relationships, to to to dive in full time to this conversation, To make a change. And I’m happy to report that we’re we’re coming up on January one of 2025, and we have been able to secure $1.2 billion for the improvement of that roadway. We actually have, of the five segments that we were working to improve, four of them have been completed. And actually we have concrete on the ground with an additional lane that is offering free flowing traffic we have then the final segment is now fully funded and is under construction now. So because of the funding that we had in place, we were able to go on a absolutely proactive pathway in order to make change and then turn around and deliver to our business community exactly what we promised. So very real example, and made all the difference.

Brandon Burton 22:32
That is awesome. That’s quite the quite the example,

Ann Hutchison 22:40
if only every issue was that easy, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you have a problem, you know exactly what the answer is, right? Problem is road doesn’t work. I need $1.2 billion we find $1.2 billion and we fix it. Some of these other challenges are, sadly not as easily, easily addressed it and and you can’t check the box quite as quite as quickly, but it is a very real example for us.

Brandon Burton 23:08
You had mentioned earlier that there’s there’s pillars to this work, to this plan that you guys have going forward the northern Colorado prospers. Can you talk to us about what those pillars are and and the thinking that went behind creating those pillars Absolutely.

Ann Hutchison 23:26
So our four pillars are number one, reigniting the economy. That pillar was created as we were coming out of COVID. And so reignite was a concept that we were using relative to, how do we bounce back from COVID? I would say with that goal, we’ve actually evolved it into not only recovery, which we we have been able to do since COVID, but also now, how do we accelerate our economy? How do we grow our economy in northern Colorado? So that’s our first our first goal, or our first pillar is around the economy. Our second goal is around our talent ecosystem. And how do we continue to attract, grow and retain the right talent for Northern Colorado, and what are the systems that we need to affect in order to make it again easy for people to come into our workforce, stay in our workforce, and grow in our workforce. Our third pillar is around transportation. That’s where that I 25 example comes from. We were really keenly focused at the beginning of this campaign spend window on I 25 now that we’ve been able to check those boxes, we’re now altering our vision to really be about regional roadways. How do we connect to that spine of I 25 to go east and west across the two county area, and then the fourth pillar, or fourth goal, is around a business friendly environment? What are the barriers? What are the regulations? What are the artists? Official limiters that we’ve created here in Northern Colorado that make us less business friendly. How do we eliminate those in order to inspire and encourage the opportunity for business to have success here so for for very broad areas, gives us a lot of space to be impactful, but also fully driven by our business community, saying these are our biggest pain points that we believe the chamber can be impactful around. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:30
I knew you guys would get the feedback right. You wouldn’t just, you know, pull topics out of a hat and say, this is where we’re going to put our attention and and not have any data to support that. So that’s fantastic. So when it comes to the capital campaign, do you guys? Do you put it on yourself? Do you make all the contacts? Do you bring in a consultant? How do you guys approach it?

Ann Hutchison 25:51
Yeah, so for Northern Colorado prospers 1.0 we did a full RFP with the with the fundraising community and interviewed consultants from across the country. We created a fantastic relationship with Sean McCullough with power 10. They’re in Atlanta, Georgia, and Sean is just this really dynamic leader that absolutely takes off his hat of I live in Atlanta, and becomes immersed in our community to help us really understand what’s happening at boots on the ground. He ran a feasibility study for us where we took out the basic concepts, and he then was that third party to give our business community a really confidential but easy path to share their feedback. Once we completed the feasibility study with Sean, we then did enter into a contract where he, working with our staff, managed that actual fundraising campaign for the first northern Colorado prospers. We then went back with Sean a second time to do another feasibility study, and then they were a key partner with me as I was doing the fundraising in 2021 and that outside consultant was incredibly powerful. I think, as chamber folks, we have a tendency of thinking we can bootstrap everything. But I will say that investment with power 10 and with Sean paid for itself in so many ways. They pushed us hard to be able to articulate what we were offering to the community. They also pushed us hard to be able to tell the story once we did start the work, and then again, that that anonymous, almost anonymous, third party pathway for our investors to really provide strong, raw insider feedback that again, we may or may not get as as a chamber with our community so big proponent of sometimes you have to spend money in order to make money in order to get the work done. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:09
So when it comes to making the asks for people to commit to funding, this is that you that’s actually making the ask. You’re sitting down and making those calls and make setting those meetings exactly

Ann Hutchison 28:23
right. Power 10 came in, and they were, in some ways, our back office. So they were coached, yeah, and they would coach us up. They helped us with the messaging and the narrative. They would set up the meetings so that so they were they were going through the brain damage of getting on two different schedules. And how does it work? And is it in person? Is it online? But then it was myself as CEO, doing the pitch as well as the ask. And then the great news was then power 10 was, in some ways, that that follow up closer, so I would make the ask in some cases, you know it was, it was an ask of $50,000 a year from a company for five years, and then power 10 would do the follow up to make sure if we got a warm or a hot Yes. They then did all the follow up to to finalize, have the paperwork done, and then we process the rest of that internally.

Brandon Burton 29:20
Yeah. So how long would you say the the capital campaign lasts like the actual work of, you know, from start to finish, from doing the research and, you know, surveys and everything to you’re done, and you’ve know, you know what the dollar amount has been committed for the next five years. So

Ann Hutchison 29:38
it’s, it’s probably an 18 month process. And as I noted, we’re highly focused in next year, year four of the current campaign. We’re in in doing analysis from start to finish, and then fundraising in 25 and we’re planning 18 months for that process. So. Um, we’ll be starting as soon as January, talking with our board about other ways that we could create the same kind of funding streams. Um, deciding if any other pathways make sense, or if we need to stay on this campaign path, then going out into the field with a feasibility study in q2 of next year, then making a decision in q3 on where we head. Um, q4 then is, is the narrative and the finalizing of goals. And then January one of of 26 crazy to say out loud, January 26 then I would be heading into the field to start, start those one on one conversations with a goal of being able to wrap up the campaign within about six months.

Brandon Burton 30:45
Okay, very good that that definitely helps. So you’ve done it. You’ve been in it through point 1.0 and 2.0 now, and it looks like the the amount that was committed was it increased some. So hopefully that speaks well to it being received well by those who have committed to fund this. Yes, and hopefully that’ll continue. I know you need to be sensitive, and that’s why you’re going to do the you know, this assessment, to make sure you’re not wearing people out. But it seems to, seems to work well. If they can see the results of the work you’re doing, they’ll, they’ll continue to fund it.

Ann Hutchison 31:21
Absolutely, I will say, I think one of the opportunities that’s in front of us, one is with the campaign we were talking to regional business leaders and having people that probably wouldn’t necessarily write a check for a membership, write a check four times the size of membership because they were investing directly in specific work. So so that was a tremendous change of opportunity for us as a chamber. We weren’t going to the same well all the time now, certainly key investors in our organization that have been long time. Sizable membership. Investors also invested in NCP, but the new audience, the new employer that we had the opportunity to talk to was was just tremendous. I do think as we start to look at NCP 3.0 we not only want to continue to expand that UN unusual investor in the chamber, I’m also curious about, how do we broaden this opportunity for investment to our our basic membership participants? What are those pathways for even our smallest of investors on the chamber side of the house to also then invest in northern Colorado prospers. So for us, it’s looking at both ends of that spectrum, top and the bottom.

Brandon Burton 32:51
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I can feel the excitement of it too. I mean, it definitely it funds important work, and the money needs to come from somewhere, and you guys are lucky enough to have some strong partners there in your chamber to help fund this. As we start to wrap things up, I’d like to ask for the chamber listening who’s trying to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tips or action item might you share with them to try to accomplish that goal? Yeah,

Ann Hutchison 33:21
and I know a lot of us have been using this line ever since COVID, but I think it’s very true in that chambers need and should be at the forefront of the biggest issues that are impacting a community. We have the skill set, we have the relationships we we have the foundational presence in a community to be able to take on the very biggest challenges for us in each of our communities. I would suggest that pre COVID, we were maybe hesitant as an industry and as chamber leaders to really dive in full on being that resource. COVID forced many of our organizations to be in a space that was new and unexpected, but proved out that we can be not just a voice for business, but we can be a change agent, and I really encourage my colleagues across the country to embrace that. Yes, membership connections are important. Yes, community parades and community celebrations are important. But if you really want to be a change agent, there is an opportunity and you can do it, and you’d be surprised how much the business community is willing to fund that work.

Brandon Burton 34:43
Yeah. Proofing point right there. But as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ann Hutchison 34:53
Yeah, again, I think in this time and space where we have a lot of. Of conflict in communities. We’ve just come off an election season that was probably as divided as we’ve ever seen since we became a country of people having very, very different views of the world. The chamber can be this fascinating, exciting, vibrant home base for multitudes of perspectives to come together, to then identify what is very best for the future of your community, and realizing that we’ve built these connections that we’re interacting with business and that can remain this incredible home base for so many community decisions. That gets me excited and showcases, I think, the role that chambers can absolutely play across the country in in creating our next future.

Brandon Burton 36:00
Yeah, I love that. I love that response well, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, if there’s anyone out there who wants to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys have gone about your capital campaign results, things that maybe we didn’t touch on, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Ann Hutchison 36:19
Yeah, certainly. My email is probably the very best pathway. Um, I’ll promote that. Our website has tons of information, just as as every chamber across the country does. So our website is FortCollinsChamber.com and Fort is spelled out. So F, O, R, T, C, O, L, L, I, N, S, C, H, A, M, B, r.com, is our website, and then my email, I’m please, please take full advantage of that, and my email is ahutchison@fcchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 37:01
That’s perfect. And we’ll get it in our show notes too, so people don’t have to try to catch all the spelling. We’ll we’ll get it in there and clickable and everything so But Anne, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast. Appreciate you sharing your experiences and impact from your capital campaigns and really driving the work forward there in the in the Fort Collins area. Thank you for for being with us and sharing these insights with us today.

Ann Hutchison 37:25
Absolutely. Thank you Brandon for the invite, and again, I hope it’s of value to my colleagues across the country. If

Brandon Burton 37:32
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