Strong Chambers for the Future

One of the most popular electives at Institute for Organization Management (IOM) is "Strong Chambers for the Future."

Chambers of commerce are essential organizations that play a vital role in the economic development of their communities.

They provide a variety of services to businesses, such as networking opportunities, advocacy, and education.

In order to remain strong in the future, chambers of commerce need to focus on the following:

• Reinventing their value proposition: Chambers need to re-evaluate what they offer businesses and how they can add value to their members. This may involve providing new services, such as business consulting or workforce development, or expanding their reach to new audiences.

• Building relationships with key stakeholders: Chambers need to build strong relationships with key stakeholders, such as government officials, economic development agencies, and other businesses. These relationships will be essential for chambers to advocate for their members and to secure funding for their programs.

• Using technology to their advantage: Chambers need to use technology to their advantage in order to reach more businesses and to provide more efficient services. This may involve using social media, online networking tools, or cloud-based software.

• Staying relevant in a changing world: Chambers need to stay relevant in a changing world by adapting to the needs of their members. This may involve focusing on new industries, developing new programs, or expanding their reach to new geographic areas.

By focusing on these areas, chambers can ensure that they remain strong and relevant in the future.

Here are some additional tips for chambers of commerce that want to be strong in the future:

• Be clear about their mission and purpose: Chambers need to be clear about their mission and purpose in order to attract and retain members. Their mission should be concise and easy to understand, and it should be something that businesses can get behind.

• Be customer-focused: Chambers need to be customer-focused in order to provide the best possible services to their members. This means understanding the needs of their members and tailoring their services accordingly.

• Be innovative: Chambers need to be innovative in order to stay ahead of the competition. This means developing new programs and services that meet the needs of their members.

• Be collaborative: Chambers need to be collaborative in order to achieve their goals. This means working with other organizations, such as government agencies and economic development agencies.

Stay focused on what you do well to ensure that your chamber is strong and relevant for the future.

Chambers and Economic Development

I attended an incredible breakout session at a recent ACCE Annual Meeting on how to message your chamber and economic development program of work, moderated by chamber executives who are recognized as leaders in the field.

1.  They stated that the chamber is the voice of business and visionary for the community at large:

• Communication and marketing are key.  You can never communicate enough.  Many chambers are doing both and it is important that all staff should know what the other side of the house is doing (chamber - events, etc, economic development - jobs).

• You need to work with your city manager to make sure all are on the same page.  Stay ahead of the issues as they pop up.

• Your chamber’s workforce efforts are economic development for the community.

• Think about your external vs internal communications.

• Translate economic development work into the chamber sales team.

• Start up company vs local bakery - it’s all about Commerce.

• Economic development is new dollars to the community.  Chamber is advocacy for those small businesses already in the community.

• The theme is not to separate the two - build a community! Don’t call out individual events or programs of work.

2.  What are some the trends in the debate of bringing the two together as a new entity:

• Grow and sustain the local economy is the new message.

• Whether you’re at a chamber event or economic development meeting you talk about what the other group is doing.

• Meet the projects?  Coming out party for the new deals to hit the community and talk about how you landed the deal (workforce, road built, etc.).  The workforce piece is the chamber deal.

• Black box - confidentiality in economic development is a real issue.

3.  Using metrics to tell your story:

• Run economic models for the new company to see if the company should get any incentive money based on what they are bringing to the community.

• These metrics can tell your story on how it will impact the local community (sales at the local stores, taxes, real estate community, etc.)

4.  Money and where does it come from:

• Public and private funding.  No consistency on what chambers/economic groups are doing.

• Straight contract with the city.  As a general rule if you’re doing both get 2/3 from private and 1/3 or less from the city.  You don’t want to be beholden to the city government.

5.  Once you land a company how do you get them involved in the chamber?

• Hopefully they will support both organizations.  It’s sensitive!  You need to be careful on the quid pro quo issue.

• Get them involved in your programming and not necessarily a chamber member.

• Chamber relational not transactional which is the economic development group.

• Chamber can throw an event where that new company does not want to do that.

Final comments made were you always should think regional - not just inside your city limits.  They talked about a number of resources to help you tell you story: Inplan, RIMS, etc. sites that can run your modeling scenarios about your communities.

At the end of the day, our job is to grow and sustain the community we live in - communication and collaboration is key.

And their final comment, never burn a bridge!

5 Myths About Chamber Revenue and One Legend

Chris Mead with the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives recently conducted a webinar on the title of this blog.

The following are his 5 myths and one legend with a follow-up comment or two from me, based on my experience working with chambers over the past 15 years.

Myth #1

Total resource campaigns are trending down - 35% - 40% of budgets are accessed by those chambers who do it.  15% growth in YGM's clients doing campaigns.  This method of raising money has proven to be very effective for many chambers around the country.  Not sure how I feel concerning the monetary benefits given to members, who participate in these campaigns, based on their performance.

Myth #2

All membership events (drives) have bad renewal rates - one or two-day events to gain new members (think a formal member-get-a-member campaign).  Don't forget, the membership dues raised comes in immediately.  You have a year to work on retention.  What better way to sell a membership than have one of your current members telling their peers that they should belong too!

Myth #3

Affinity programs are dead - they're not for everyone but if managed properly they can be profitable.  What's key is that you have a product or service that your members want or need and you have the numbers of members to support the offering of the product.

Think office supplies, printing, shipping, or myth #5 - the travel program.  What are those potential programs for your chamber?  A challenge for the local chamber is doing an affinity deal with a national company when you may have local members who can supply that same product, albeit, maybe not at the same discount.

Myth #4

Obama killed chamber health care and it's never coming back - legislation passed in 2018 to open up the country geographically to offer plans across state lines.  Stay tuned on how that will affect this affinity program.  But don't forget many chambers are in the business and making money.  Association Health Plans (AHP's).  I could make the argument that doing away with the state restriction will allow a national company to provide a plan across the country for the betterment of all. Associations were pushing for this for years.  Let’s wait and see how it plays out!

Myth #5

Chamber travel ran out of gas – they are still going strong. There are so many different trips available today by many different travel companies.

The China trip seemed to be the first that chambers started to participate in over 20 years ago.  Now there are multiple companies providing these trips to many places around the world.

And One Legend

Capital Campaigns - not to raise money for new staff but for something big in your community.  These campaigns are typically multi-year  (3 years or more) to raise a large some of money that it designated for something specific.  Why specific? That's what you're raising the money for, think a new chamber office building.

Thanks Chris for a great session and for anybody who doesn’t know Chris, he’s the author of The Magicians of Main Street and more information on that product can be found HERE.

4 Ways for Local Chambers to Engage in Advocacy

There are many ways to engage in the advocacy arena.

It's important that you make the distinction between legislative activity and political activity.

The following 4 things are key in having a full on government affairs program for your chamber.

The first two fall under the legislative activity category and the last two are clearly political activities.

1.    Lobbying

2.    Grassroots

3.    PAC's

4.    Endorsements

Lobbying

I've talked about this before HERE and in a nutshell this is where you and your members are having direct contact with your legislative leaders. Preferrably a one-on-one meeting with the member or his or her staff.

Grassroots

This is where you may engage your entire membership in a letter writing campaign or a phone call campaign.  Don’t forget the letter-to-the-editor grassroots tactic.  It can be very productive.

PAC's

This is a separate entity and designated fund that your members can contribute personal money to, which in turn, allows you to can make direct contributions to candidates.

Endorsements

This is where you go on record and endorse a specific candidate for elected office.  While you may not make everybody happy when you make endorsements it's an effective tool in your government affairs toolbox.  It's important that you use a clear set of criteria to measure candidates so you can decide on endorsing pro-business candidates or incumbents in an open and transparent way.

Remember, the key to making the above four activities successful is having a strong government affairs committee that can vet the above and make recommendations to your full chamber board for consideration and action.

Good luck!

What's The Chamber's Role in the Community?

Have you had this discussion with your board lately?

It's a great place to start the next time you conduct that strategic planning session.

I'm not here to tell you what that role is, your members should decide.

There are studies out there that could help you decide or give you some direction on what areas to focus on.

In a recent study by the Western Association of Chamber Executives (WACE) they identified the following four areas based on their 2012 study of 15 western states.

• Advocacy
• Economic Development
• Networking
• Community

I am a firm believer that you can't be all things to all people.  So don't try and do it, you're just setting yourself up for failure.  Just from life's experiences you know you can't make all people happy all the time.

In fact I wrote about it HERE before.

Focus on what your members want from their chamber and be the best at it!

What's Your Goal Using Digital Media?

At a recent conference, I attended a breakout session with the same title of this blog post.

What did I get out of the session?

Three key points that I took away were:

• Message needs to be a benefit not an annoyance;
• Integration of data/information is key to your audience; and
• Media agnostic, on demand, mass communication with personalized content needs to be in real time.

I especially want to focus on the last bullet since I believe it's a key component of running a successful digital campaign.

You can't just focus on one medium (i.e., web, a social media platform, etc.).  You must be on all, web, mobile, audio and video and then find the platform where your members our listening (i.e., Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.).

Make no mistake about it, this is not easy to do.  Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good.

For a list of Jay Baer's top 33 digital marketing blogs go HERE.

Just get started today!

Chamber Mergers: Lessons Learned

At a recent best practices session with a dozen of seasoned chamber CEO's the topic of mergers was addressed.

With a sluggish economy it was suggested that there will probably be more mergers or outright closings of chambers in the future, not less.

Let's start with a couple of facts:

• There are over 7,000 chambers of commerce in this country
•  Local chambers are in competition with each other

Now that we can agree that mergers are inevitable in our business, as discussed in this session, I thought I'd share a few comments from the panel.

The following statements we're made:

• Most difficult thing I've ever done!
• Put people on your board who can be change agents
• You may not have a job at the end of it
• It's emotional
• In today's global economy there will be more mergers in the future
• Address all the issues
• You must believe in the merger
• Potential companies don't look at community lines, it's bigger than that

But at the end of they day, you need to do what’s best for the organization and the surrounding community.

Can you come up with any partnerships with surrounding chambers of commerce?

For some research on the subject of nonprofit mergers by the Stanford Social Innovation Review go HERE.

Economic Development

For many chambers economic development is their number one priority.

You’ve heard it said before, if you’ve met one chamber, you’ve met one chamber.

In the chamber business there are some generalizations that I agree with (with exceptions).

• State chambers – advocacy driven
• Metro/Regional chambers – economic development/strong workforce
• Local Chambers – networking

Obviously, each of the three types of chambers listed above are in all three (i.e., advocacy, economic development, and networking to different degrees) but what they specialize in, in my opinion, is accurately stated above.

As for economic development, what are chambers focusing on?  I suggest the following:

• Financial incentives;
• Strong educated workforce;
• Business friendly regulations; and
• Infrastructure.

Successful chambers focus on all four.

Put your business hat on!  If you headed a company, what would be the things you’d look for in opening or relocating your business?

You'd want to know that the local chamber is tracking each of the four areas listed above to ensure a positive business environment for your company.

A strong business community = a strong chamber!

If you’re focusing on the above four areas, I bet you’re a successful chamber.

For more information on economic development and the profession click HERE.

How to Stay Ahead of the Competition

With over 7,000 local, regional and state chambers of commerce in this country, you need to look no farther than the next community for your competition.

That’s right!

The next town, county, region, are all fighting (marketing) for the same small businesses to become members of their organization!

Now that we can agree that competition is all around us.  What are you doing to stand out amongst the crowded field?

I’m reminded of the Hedgehog theory put forth in Jim Collin’s book, Good to Great.  The three items I took from the Hedgehog theory are:

• What do you have passion for?
• What are you the best at or can you be the best at?
• Where do you make money?

This is just another way of focusing on your brand.  What do you want to be known for?

• Advocacy
• Education
• Economic Development
• Networking
• Ribbon Cutting
• Other

Remember, you can’t be all things to all people.

Focus on the important stuff identified by your board – and then execute that program of work.