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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Ralph Schulz. Ralph is the President and CEO of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, one of middle Tennessee’s oldest and largest business Federation’s. Ralph joined the chamber in 2006, following a 30 year career in nonprofit management, marketing and fundraising. During his tenure, the Chamber played a key role in helping the region emerge from the 2007 recession to a period of unprecedented growth. The chamber’s also led the movement to improve public school performance through the creation of the academics of Nashville established the moving forward initiative to ensure the creation of a regional transportation solution through a cohesive community effort and developed into a respected publisher of data on the Nashville on the Nashville metropolitan statistical area. With an annual publication of the vital signs report, he currently serves on numerous civic and nonprofit boards. And He’s a graduate of the University of Tennessee that, Ralph, we’re 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 that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.
Ralph Schulz 3:19
Well, Brandon, it’s great to be on the podcast here with you in chambers do such urgent work and every one of the communities that they’re engaged in that it’s just a pleasure to be a part of the industry and be a part of today’s podcast. You know, I think I think one of the things I probably share with chamber people even though this is my only chamber job ever, even though it’s been 16 years, is I’ve had the chance to live in 11 different cities and eight different states around the country. And Nashville was one of those places that I was fortunate to be able to choose to live in and stay in. So the biggest benefit of all of that is I have seven grandkids and they’re they all live here and I get to see them all the time. And I really do think that that’s kind of linked to the fact that opportunities in Nashville and so you know, their parents have things that they can they can do here and stay here.
Brandon Burton 4:26
That is a great point. Having that that livability aspect of being able to stay in the community that you’re from and be able to raise a family and I think often we see when we talk about workforce and talent development of trying to retain you know, people within our within our communities. So that’s a great testament to be able to have all your your kids and grandkids in the same community with you.
Ralph Schulz 4:53
I tell groups that I speak to all the time that eventually they’re going to realize what a blessing that is
Brandon Burton 4:59
that So, yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Nashville chamber. And we all know Nashville. But give us an idea of the size of the chamber staff budget scope of work, things you guys are involved with just to kind of set the table for our discussion.
Ralph Schulz 5:20
Well, the Chamber has been around since 1847. But if you really want to track the work that has resulted in the economic boom, and so forth, that we’ve enjoyed in this region, you really go back to about 1990, when the public officials that were elected and business leaders who were interested, really began to focus on reversing what had been about a 20 year decline in the economy. And so the purpose statement for this chamber, which is to create economic prosperity by facilitating community leadership, that’s really the birth of that statement. And and what you see from that time forward is a five year planning process, we’re in our seventh five year plan. And that requires us to have a budget of somewhere in the eight to 9 million category, it requires us to have a staff of 40 to 50 people. We are the regional economic development hub for a 10 County area in this region. But I really want to emphasize that that is a role that we fill, as part of the larger team of economic developers we we interact as, as a partner with TVA on a regional basis with the state economic development operation with local EDA o’s and economic developers throughout that 10 county region. And, and the staff is really kind of devoted to four operational areas, they are devoted to a policy area because we are advocates for our, for our members in the business community. We have a workforce or a talent development team that is really focused on that workforce issue, which we think is going to be our essential priority for at least the next 10 years, and probably the next 20 We have an economic development unit job creation unit that is really focused on the recruiting and the expansion and the creation of jobs in the area. And then, of course, we have that all important growth area that is, you know, the growth team provides the financial fuel and volunteer engagement that allows us to undertake our projects. So, you know, in a nutshell, that’s kind of what we look like.
Brandon Burton 7:56
Yeah, but I would agree with you with the workforce and talent front, that’s a, it’s going to be a long term issue across the country, as so many skills of people that are out of work right now, maybe their skills are not as transferable, you know,
Ralph Schulz 8:15
look at in Middle Tennessee right now, we track the numbers every month, there are about 70,000 job openings available and effort. If every single unemployed person were employed, we’d still have a gap of 30 to 40,000 open jobs, and that reskilling and upskilling of the people who are already here is a major source of being able to fulfill those jobs in migration is strong. Retention is strong because the livability is good. But as affordable housing is a little bit of a challenge. The people who are already here being aligned with the right talent and the right skill for the jobs that are being created is crucial.
Brandon Burton 9:05
For sure. Well, that definitely helps to set the table for our discussion today is we’ve kind of settled on the idea of talking about the way you guys have gone about structuring your board of directors. And I think that’s a an important topic for chambers across the country to pay attention to especially if they’re in a fast growing climate in their region of the country to really make sure that there’s good structure around your board before it gets out of control and runs away from you. So we’ll dive in much deeper into this discussion as soon as I get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 12:42
All right, Ralph, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about your board structure. And I know you guys were very intentional two years ago as you went about creating a real structure to the board. So maybe you just tell us from a high level, what is the structure of your board look like? And and keep in mind for everybody listening that everything is scalable, right, so they take what Ralph was saying and scale it to your community and and try to visualize how that can work?
Ralph Schulz 13:16
Well, when I arrived at the Chamber in 2006, there were 70 board members, a large Executive Committee, and the general conclusion of the board met board was that the board wasn’t functioning at its best. And so there was a group put together that worked for about nine months to rewrite the bylaws that had been in existence since 1847. And there are a few key things that they focused on. First of all, they felt like the board needed to be a lot smaller, so that it was more functional that the board needed to be the actual decision making body of the organization as compared to say an executive committee and that the duties of the chamber would be divided into two main chunks. The first chunk was the function in the role of the board which was to make policy and to assure the achievements of the chamber in the community. And the second chunk was the staff which was identified as implementation, the implementation aspect of the organization. And so what that meant in board construction was that the board was cut in half in terms of size. The committee structure of the board was shrunk to only two committees and they are the Governance Committee which is responsible for the healthy function of the board. They’re also the personnel can MIDI when one is needed, but that governance committee is really about the function of the board. And the other is the Finance and Audit Committee, which is really about the financial stability and the financial status of the organization. It’s not a fundraising group or whatever. The reason they constructed it that way was because they wanted to focus on policy. And so you don’t see a lot of the typical implementational related committees like a membership committee, or a fundraising committee or an events committee or whatever. But realizing that, that limiting the board to 43 slides, there were still, there were still a lot of business leadership in the community that wanted to participate in a leadership role. They created a category of activity called chartered initiatives. And every year at our budget time, we will take the significant initiatives of the chamber, create a written document around the scope and the reach and the authority and the resources deployed against that initiative. And that charter will be given to a group of volunteers and a volunteer leader to say, Go forth, do good things achieve these objectives, and you have authority contained within this charter that allows you to achieve those goals. I think, you know, for a chamber professional, it’s important to know, though that the Accountable person for that initiatives achievement is a staff person. In other words, at the top of the list, when the Accountable individual is named, it is a staff person that is accountable. The volunteer is not the Accountable person. But they they manage the function of those volunteers and can make decisions about changes and strategies and things like that. But so the fundamental structure of the whole thing is built around the board role of policy, the staff role of implementation, the board takes their policy function seriously, only the board can make policy decisions for the chamber, the executive committee can the Finance Committee in the government Governance Committee have assigned roles, but the board is still king. So when you come on to the chamber board, you’re told that you have no obligation to provide any level of resource or per participating in research, participate in resourcing. But every board member does in their own kind of customized way. But it’s purely voluntary. You’re told that you don’t have to serve on a committee, you volunteer to be on that committee. And that’s the way those committees are, are properly staffed, that you get a certain priority to be considered for leadership of the initiatives. So the main board function is to main pop make policy. And then if you like, I can talk about how people get to the Board of Directors, but you know, the board very, very much functions in that policy space.
Brandon Burton 18:24
So I would like to go down that path. At first, I wanted to just mention, at the very beginning of your comments, or you had mentioned readdressing, the bylaws that hadn’t been touched since 1847. Right? And that just like sent off lights to me that I’m like, Oh, that’s a long time. We just recently had Jeremy Arthur on the podcast. And a lot of people are familiar with Jeremy and his work around governance. And in that was one of the things we touched on was the bylaws need to be something that you’re actively looking at, you’re actively making sure that the roles of your chamber are acting within those bylaws, and making sure you have that leeway that you need to to where you’re not going against your bylaws on accident. So that just really stood out to me. Because by addressing your bylaws, it saw the need for addressing the board issues that you are talking about here. There were
Ralph Schulz 19:25
some really fundamental changes that were made at that point. Instead of membership votes on policy. The board became the the functional policy maker we still serve a our membership. It’s not that we don’t get their input. But but thanks aren’t. The membership doesn’t really have a vote. The terms of officers are were changed to be two year terms because the board wanted to have more continuity and accountability because the feeling was a one year term for board off assessors wasn’t enough to assure that we would have the achievement over time that we needed. You know, the structure of committees, the, you know, all of that policy versus implementation aspect. There, there were a lot of changes in the way that that bite those bylaws shape things. And they have been modified along the way, little tweaks along the way to assure that we can function the way that the board wants us to function. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 20:30
that’s a good example of members voting on changes in 1847. I’m sure the membership was a little smaller than what it is today. Probably a little easier maybe to round up the people for of a bit. So yeah, I just wanted to draw attention to that. But yeah, let’s let’s go down the path of how does somebody find their way onto the board and your recruiting process or just how you work that into the structure?
Ralph Schulz 20:58
Well, the board, the board terms are two three year terms, that’s the maximum you can serve. And every three years, the Governance Committee sits down and creates a board development plan for the next three years. And they have a spreadsheet that they’re working with where, you know, when you think of the largest sense of the of diversity, they’re looking to have people on our board that bring perspectives from variety of industry, variety of geography, sex, or gender, race, et cetera. And they’re factoring all of that into the composition of the board for a three year period. They set minimums for for for participation from each of those categories, so that they are getting the right balance. When it comes to who sits on the board, there are four criteria that they apply to each possible participant on the board. And they all of those things happen to start with the letter I. So we call them the four eyes and our governance committee. First of all, the invitation to board members is to the individual, not to the institution, so you will find from time to time retired executives that are still on our board. And that that focus on the invite in individual invitation is very, is very purposeful. Because when you look at the four eyes that they’re looking for, they’re looking for people who are influential in the community, they are looking for people that are independent in their discussion and their perspective on things. They are looking for people that are informed on the community, and they’re looking for people that are invested in the community. Now, the fifth is institution does sometimes come into play. We’re a healthcare dominated economy. So you know, you always want healthcare representation there. And there’s some institutions that have greater influence than others. But fundamentally, it’s an individual invitation built around those four eyes. So on influence, they want people who can reach out to get feedback and also project information into the community into a sphere of influence. When it comes to independent, they want people that will sit at the table not advocating for their own business or their own industry. But also they want them to be at the table regardless of who else is at the table and willing to express their independent thinking, you know, if they have a client at the table, that doesn’t reshape their their expression. from an investment perspective, it’s not just about investment in the chamber, although at a minimum, you have to be a member of the chamber. But they will tend to engage people at the board level who have been engaged in the chamber in leadership ways, already. And then finally, from an information perspective, our board moves rapidly with support from staff on the issues they confront from a policy perspective. But it’s important that people aren’t starting from zero with regards to the information they have about a particular issue. So those four eyes are the things that that they center around and that governance committee will get together they’ll look at a long list of possibilities. Usually the three year planners have slotted some names for the future that they think would be good to consider. And then after they have settled on name they’d like to nominate, we go meet with those people tell them what the obligations are find out if they’re interested. And then the final step, if they say they’re interested is to place them in front of the board at our annual meeting. And then their orientation begins a couple of months after that.
Brandon Burton 25:20
Very good. Yeah, I love the four eyes, the four plus one, maybe sometimes. But the one that really stands out to me is independent, you know, being able to be independent thinkers. And I think a lot of the others being influential and informed and vested in the community. I think those all are. Yeah, they don’t need any additional explanation. I don’t think I think they make perfect sense. Being an independent, independent thinker, you’re not coming with your own agendas. You’re not they’re trying to better your business, or your pocketbook or anything like that. You’re there for the betterment of the community. And that’s you’re able to express yourself in a way that you’re not needing to be as careful unnecessarily with your comments, because of any other collateral damage, maybe that can happen. So that’s your that’s a key I,
Ralph Schulz 26:15
you’re, you’re expected not to be careful, okay? It, it has to be a free flowing and fast conversation, our board meetings happened five times a year, and they’re two hours. And there’s usually two or three strategic items they have to decide on. So, you know, bring your thought quickly, concisely and powerfully,
Brandon Burton 26:37
right. I like that. Well, as we start wrapping up your eye, we can talk probably another hour on this on your board structure and dive in really deep. But I wanted to see if you have any tip or action item for listeners who really want to take their organization up to the next level, what would you suggest for them?
Ralph Schulz 26:58
You know, I think what brought this chamber to the next level didn’t happen while I was here, it happened in the early 1990s, when the business community said our economy’s in decline. And what we’re missing is a plan. And we’ve decided that the chamber is going to be the place that that plan is is created. Intentional is is a constant buzzword at at this chamber. And I would say that for this chamber, that catalytic activity is that plan, you know, we’ll raise $25 million dollars just for our five year plan. And then there’s another 25 or $30 million added on top of that, that comes to us from other revenue sources. And the real secret to being able to do that work is the is the engagement in the planning process of the business and policy, public public leadership in creating that plan, so you know, as far as catapulting to the next level, understanding what people are seeking to achieve, and then being able to facilitate a process where that that becomes a plan with metrics, activity, investment, et cetera. That’s what will propel the organization forward. I will say one last thing, though, if you don’t have a board with heft, if you don’t have a board that is strong, powerful, independent, willing to take risks, willing to move forward with courage, then you’re likely going to stall. And that’s one of the things I love about this board. And one of the reasons I’ve been here 16 years, is because I’ve never had a board that didn’t have that courage, and didn’t have that willingness to invest in making things happen.
Brandon Burton 29:05
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that tip and that the intentionality of having that plan for your community. Ralph, I like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Ralph Schulz 29:24
Well, first of all, I think the horizons work of of ACCE is really valuable work and when it was first unveiled, we took it seriously and began to engage in undertaking it. I do think that the future of chambers is still oriented or oriented around bringing prosperity the community we fill that important role as sort of an intermediary between the business community and the public policy arena. If you look at Nashville’s success over 30 years, it’s been B Because there has been a public private partnership with the public arena, defining an environment that encourages investment. And then it’s about bringing investors to to the table. And so I think the larger, the more the more focused. A chamber is on the community development, livability, workforce development, job creation, the more compelling its position is going to be in the future. And I believe that reaching out for, for for for feedback, and offering compelling plans. I think that’s the future of the chamber. I, you know, we’ve heard a lot in the horizons about how the nature of membership is changing, and what causes people to join and what causes people not to join. I think in the end results are what matter. And when people see results, they want to be a part of the team, they may have a different perspective on priority. But when you achieve results, people want to have the opportunity for their priority to rise. So I think the future of chambers is bright, mainly because of that intermediary role that they fill in communities. And I think that the the professional function of the staff, is what will keep it fresh, vibrant and fulfilling, going forward?
Brandon Burton 31:37
Absolutely. I mean, diving back into the horizons, we’ve seen over the last three years or so just how, you know, future telling that report really was to really give heed to that and and to continue looking forward. I think it’s so important.
Ralph Schulz 31:57
And this podcast is part of that.
Brandon Burton 31:59
So thank you. So, Ralph, I like to give an opportunity for anyone listening who maybe wants to dive in deeper or learn more about the structure of your board, or how you guys are doing things they’re in Nashville, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?
Ralph Schulz 32:19
Well, the best way is to email me at the at rschulz@nashvillechamber.com. Because we do get requests from time to time to have information about board structure, and we’re prepared to provide a package of information. I’m happy to have conversations. Look, I think governance is the absolute root of the effectiveness of an organization. So I’m always happy to share with other chamber professionals our experience, but you said it earlier. And I think it’s worth emphasizing this structure and these protocols. And this practice is very well tailored to the Nashville environment and the Nashville business and political environment. You know, variations on this, you know, are inevitably created in other communities to fit their needs. But we’re always happy to share.
Brandon Burton 33:21
Yeah, and that’s the key, just get that information and adapt it to the best best way to suit your own community and the issues that your chamber is there to address. And your community is not going to look the same as Nashville. So make those make those adjustments where needed. But, Ralph, I really appreciate you setting aside some time to be with us today here on chamber chat podcast. You bring a great perspective and an experience with your board structure that hopefully it will help to energize and keep others motivated to make sure that they have a good structure with their board and see the trajectory of their organization move forward in a positive direction. So thank you for being here with us and sharing this today.
Ralph Schulz 34:09
Well, look, I just appreciate the opportunity to be here and appreciate what you’re doing to help help chamber professionals particularly improve their practice and performance. So these podcasts are really valuable.
Brandon Burton 34:21
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