Chamber Listens – Other people’s ideas
Topic: How the Chamber can Improve My Bottom Line
Start a small business committee to help steer chamber efforts and initiatives.
The chamber should offer continuing education credits for varying sectors of their membership.
Tell the story of small business more often..why we matter to the community. We employ people, contribute to local causes, serve on community boards
Chamber should always be watching the horizon and reporting to members on issues important to members (trends in business, legislature, etc). Develop community dashboard/environmental scan
The Chamber should host a reception for prospective members and each past board member could invite a non member. The program could be to provide a chamber overview "discussion on the future" and value of being a member. Member to member sales is more effective than staff sale.
2. Chamber events should be inspirational (like TED Talks). I want to learn more about billings industry. Events could take place at local businesses and be industry specific. Like a Leadership Billings Day. Also, panel discussion are preferred over a single presenter to hear different angles on the issue and keep things lively.
Have a chamber mentoring program so new members can feel comfortable participating in programs and meeting new people.
Push to get the Allegiant Airlines direct flight to LAX to be a year round flight. Subsidize it or something. Los Angeles is one of the largest cities in the country. Being able to target that market would help increase our bottom lines. Not having it in the winter eliminates Billings/Red Lodge/our local hunting and fishing areas from being a weekend destination from a pool of about 15 million people.
Does the Billings Chamber have special marketing/recruiting efforts that are targeted specifically to women-owned businesses? If not, I would think this would be worthwhile.
A program similar to Leadership Billings - mini days on a topic. "Discover Billings" or "Trailhead Discovery." It could be a session of 4.5 days, every tues or Thursday in a month on a topic or 2 full days a couple weeks apart.