By Amy Todisco and Jack Sharry
We are pleased to bring our community and fellow Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce members up to date on the important progress being made by the chamber.
We have focused our efforts on business support, marketing, growing our membership and energizing the board with new members.
We had two very successful workshops: Partnering for Profit with Tim Piper and Marketing Your Business with Amy Mattinat. We are in the midst of planning more and welcome suggestions.
We created a professional marketing plan and have been focusing on social media and The Valley Reporter. We have been regularly posting to our chamber Facebook page with a high rate of “likes,” comments and engagement. We would like to do more.
The membership committee has created introductory rates for single proprietor businesses and we have been pleased to welcome new members as a result.
Four new members – Lori Klein, Jack Sharry, Jim Tabor and Amy Todisco – have been added to the chamber board and have brought a new energy and enthusiasm while volunteering many hours on revitalized committees to bring about positive improvements. Two current board members' terms are coming to an end and we are looking for people willing to roll up their sleeves to make a positive contribution to our business community and area’s economy.
We have contracted with a new website provider and are in the final stages of providing a user-friendly interface that allows for changes and updates to be made more readily and at no extra cost. We will offer training to those who haven’t used it, as well as how to update your profile, add packages, etc. once the new site is up and running. We invite all community members to use the significantly improved online Community Calendar hosted by the chamber to post events.
We continue to send out newsletters and have chamber-networking mixers monthly. The July mixer on July 19 will be at Hartshorn Farm.
Great momentum was generated following the Economic Summit. Four asset groups were formed – Food/Drink, Wellness, Innovation/Arts and Recreation. The most recent example of success in action was the recent Maple and Strawberry Festivals. The chamber actively promoted these events, rallied business members to participate and met with Dave Hartshorn and Amy Todisco, who led the festivals, to debrief and develop a process for building on and improving future festivals. In addition, the Wellness Alliance reports it has already exceeded its 2016 goals after only six months.
Since the Economic Summit, some members of the chamber board, the Mad River Valley Planning District (MRVPD) and community members at large have been meeting as the Community Economic Development Committee (CEDC) to make a recommendation to the MRVPD about the ways our community could address the requests and recommendations that came out of the Vision and Vitality Series as the Economic Summit. The CEDC has been working on possible next steps to ensure the work of the planning district and chamber can make the work started during the Economic Vitality process sustainable and ongoing.
After putting in over 1,500 people-hours on research and developing ideas to advance the community’s economic vitality, a range of possible approaches was presented to the MRVPD in June. The MRVPD will be responding with recommendations on how to move forward at the next MRVPD meeting on Thursday, July 21. The chamber looks forward to working closely with the CEDC and MRVPD as we review our strategic planning in line with the recommendations of the CEDC and determine the best way to advance the economic interests of our community.
And, we've been spending considerable time clarifying our role in how best to support the business community and have begun a formal search for an executive director of the chamber with advertisements being posted in local and regional publications.
We are working hard to improve the economic interests of this place we call home. We request your support, your participation and your feedback.
Todisco and Sharry are members of the chamber board.
