Our Chamber Qualifies to Submit for Chamber of the Year!
Posted by Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce - 6/03/2008 08:44:00 AM
On May 6 we learned that the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce had qualified for Chamber of the Year, an award to be presented at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives Convention in August. We celebrated for the day, sending emails back and forth between staff and volunteers with congrats and deserved pats on the back. Qualifying in itself isn't easy; a chamber must meet four of the seven criteria to even be considered. We were encouraged when we learned that we'd met five of the seven. Soon after the initial excitement though, we dove into the application. Knowing the compitition for this honor had to be tough, we didn't want to waste any time.
The Application: the test to weed out the "wanna be" Chambers of the Year from the real thing. The first few days were a thrill ride as we summarized the Chamber's recent accolades. Obviously the new building and its successful capital campaign would be a strong picture of what our Chamber has accomplished; as well, it would be a must to include the South Central Kentucky Marketing plan and the regional economic development job creation and investment numbers that have resulted. Then there is the fact that 2007 had our largest ever new partner numbers. While the national survey conducted by ACCE shows that chambers our size on average had a 0% increase, our membership growth reached greater than 9%.
Though with all there was to document, it wasn't long before Dana came out of her office with her hand on her forehead and called out across the hallway, "I can't do it! I can't represent everything we've accomplished in partnership (membership) in the past year in 200 words or less. In my five years with the Chamber I've been challenged but nothing ever this hard!"
I laughed. She was right. It was very hard to do! I encouraged her that I had confidence that if we could get the important points down that we had the talent on our team to edit the sections and make it sound even better, yet with less words.
An even greater challenge that I'd found though was that it was really hard to build a picture of what 2007 was like with just accomplishment bullets. I wanted to share the many challenges overcome that really make the victories even greater! Moving from a non-regional economic development approach to a regional one that has advanced beyond our origional plan-- WOW what a story behind that! Locating in a new building sounds neat and simple on paper, but what a month that was! Then there is even so much more that shows the heart and drive of our Chamber; there was no way to strategically worked it all in.
Additionally was the challenge to work such an intense project into a three-week window with everything else currently underway, but we did it! Our application was mailed out Monday (June 2), and now we wait for several weeks to learn if we proceed to the next stage: The Interview.
This project reinforced yet another reason we qualified for Chamber of the Year that is underlying in every synopsis enclosed and all the support material submitted in the five-inch massive binders resulting from the project--the people behind it all. It is much more than words that tell our story, it is the team I work with daily at the Chamber, the board members and volunteers! Here's to an already winning Chamber!
The Application: the test to weed out the "wanna be" Chambers of the Year from the real thing. The first few days were a thrill ride as we summarized the Chamber's recent accolades. Obviously the new building and its successful capital campaign would be a strong picture of what our Chamber has accomplished; as well, it would be a must to include the South Central Kentucky Marketing plan and the regional economic development job creation and investment numbers that have resulted. Then there is the fact that 2007 had our largest ever new partner numbers. While the national survey conducted by ACCE shows that chambers our size on average had a 0% increase, our membership growth reached greater than 9%.
Though with all there was to document, it wasn't long before Dana came out of her office with her hand on her forehead and called out across the hallway, "I can't do it! I can't represent everything we've accomplished in partnership (membership) in the past year in 200 words or less. In my five years with the Chamber I've been challenged but nothing ever this hard!"
I laughed. She was right. It was very hard to do! I encouraged her that I had confidence that if we could get the important points down that we had the talent on our team to edit the sections and make it sound even better, yet with less words.
An even greater challenge that I'd found though was that it was really hard to build a picture of what 2007 was like with just accomplishment bullets. I wanted to share the many challenges overcome that really make the victories even greater! Moving from a non-regional economic development approach to a regional one that has advanced beyond our origional plan-- WOW what a story behind that! Locating in a new building sounds neat and simple on paper, but what a month that was! Then there is even so much more that shows the heart and drive of our Chamber; there was no way to strategically worked it all in.
Additionally was the challenge to work such an intense project into a three-week window with everything else currently underway, but we did it! Our application was mailed out Monday (June 2), and now we wait for several weeks to learn if we proceed to the next stage: The Interview.
This project reinforced yet another reason we qualified for Chamber of the Year that is underlying in every synopsis enclosed and all the support material submitted in the five-inch massive binders resulting from the project--the people behind it all. It is much more than words that tell our story, it is the team I work with daily at the Chamber, the board members and volunteers! Here's to an already winning Chamber!
Labels: Chamber of the Year
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