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Courageous Leadership
Case Studies from Chamber of the Year Winners
Finalists that qualify for the Chamber of the Year Award, presented by Personify, submit detailed applications focused on chamber operations and feature high-impact programs that demonstrate the significant work being done by chambers in communities across the country. Read on to learn about some of the programs featured by the winning chambers.
Category One: Mason City Builds CommUNITY
Athens. Rome. Dubai. Budapest. Mason City. At first glance, you might think one of these locations is not like the others. But all of these cities appear on Condé Nast’s list of the World’s 20 Best Cities for Architecture Lovers. Mason City, Iowa, is home to one of the largest collections of Prairie-style homes in the world and features multiple projects by Frank Lloyd Wright, including the only remaining hotel he designed.
But staff at the chamber were stymied as to why they couldn’t land a spot on Money magazine’s Best Places to Live list. The magazine told the chamber that Mason City’s population – over 90 percent white – kept them from making the cut. While demographics in North Iowa are becoming more diverse, the chamber wanted to be at the forefront to both welcome and accommodate new members to the community.
The chamber created the Building CommUNITY initiative to position its diversity, equity and inclusion work as workforce attraction and retention efforts for local businesses. With a history of using public art to solve local problems, the chamber launched the program with a community painting project featuring a paint-by-number mural completed by a variety of resident groups. Second, the chamber offers DEI seminars for area businesses to earn certification as North Iowa Inclusive Employers. Finally, the chamber’s Community Concierge program acts as the boots on the ground for these inclusivity efforts.
The Community Concierge service helps local employers recruit and retain high-value employees through a variety of services to help in the transition, like personalized tours, connecting families to local school leaders and more. “If we can recruit one physician, that supports eight to 11 additional jobs,” said President & CEO Robin Anderson, CCE, IOM. “If we can recruit a specialist, that supports 18 to 21 additional jobs. It’s not only an economic driver, it’s also a quality-of-life issue.” In 2021, over 300 chamber members made contributions to the workforce attraction and retention initiative, with several members investing directly to the Community Concierge program.
Category Two: Henry County Creates Culture of Customer Service
It started with community dialogues. In 2020, the Henry County Chamber of Commerce launched a series of these discussions to address growing tensions around race relations both locally and nationally. A few years prior, the chamber’s tourism division hired a partner relations manager, who witnessed first-hand how customer service at local businesses in the Atlanta suburb was affected by a lack of awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion. “Diversity is huge in our county,” said Joseph Henning, president & CEO. “As a chamber of the future, we’re looking at those proactive models that we can take.”
The tourism division completed a visitor sentiment study in 2018, and while the results were favorable, social media posts and reviews, especially from visitors of color, painted a different picture. Between community dialogues and a partner survey, the chamber saw an opportunity to provide customer service and basic diversity training to the local hospitality industry.
The chamber ensured the community discourse was turned into action through professional development opportunities. Those actions inspired a new initiative, called Culture of Customer Service. “It transitioned and grew to provide hospitality training for our hoteliers and our retailers and looking at the economic impact of diverse customers,” said Henning. Working with subject matter experts, the Culture of Customer Service launched as a six-part online education series addressing both employee and customer audiences. The series opens with Guest Experience 101, followed by five DEI-focused sessions in Hospitality for All.
The goals for this series were accessibility, accountability and practical application for businesses. Because the program was online, it was accessible to hospitality workers who may work irregular hours. Each segment has a 10-question quiz at the end to ensure accountability. Only those who score 80% or higher get to move on. Finally, segments highlight purchasing power of marginalized groups and considerations for stronger inclusion in operations and advertising. After a late summer launch, the chamber’s goal was to have 100 hospitality partners complete the series by the end of the year. They graduated 99 participants and interest continues to grow.
Category Three: Community Visioning in Conway
Over a decade ago, the Conway Area Chamber took the lead in envisioning the future of the community through the coordination and execution of a strategic plan. After surveys, personal input and community meetings, Conway2025 consisted of over 130 goals to be accomplished by 2025. The chamber provided a halfway point update in 2015, but after 10 years, most of the goals were either complete or dropped off the community’s list of priorities. It was time for a new plan.
The week the steering committee was set to meet, COVID-19 closed the chamber’s doors. The chamber team asked the committee how they wanted to proceed. “Every one of them said, ‘Let’s go,’” said Brad Lacy, CCE, IOM, president & CEO. “People need hope. People need something to look forward to. People need to dream about the future. There will be cities that do not take advantage of this time, and we don’t want to be one of them.”
The planning process forged ahead, collecting survey responses, convening stakeholders for a visioning retreat and creating a 15-year community strategic plan. With a goal of 1,500 survey responses, the chamber team got creative, featuring the steering committee in video testimonials to show the importance of taking the survey. The city-owned utility company included survey information on online accounts. Chamber staff and steering committee members went out to community groups and used text messaging to encourage responses.
The survey closed with over 1,800 responses, a 31% increase from 2010. Of those who responded, 450 community members attended meetings to help develop the plan. Conway2035 was unveiled in May 2021. A total of 14 priorities rose to the top and those priorities were broken up into two areas: People of Conway and Places of Conway. Progress is already being made on the priorities. In February, Conway voters approved a community center/soccer initiative with 81% of the vote, addressing four of the eight goals under the Parks and Recreation section of the plan.
Category Four: Dallas Takes Care of Business
In the spring of 2021, vaccination rates in Texas were slowing down, but businesses kept closing. Nearly a third of small businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were shuttered because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And Texans of color were losing their businesses, jobs and the battle against COVID at higher rates. The Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce found that 41% of Black-owned businesses in North Texas shut down, compared to 17% of white-owned businesses.
The Dallas Regional Chamber decided to step in, launching its Take Care of Business/Manos A La Obra vaccination initiative campaign in June 2021. The goal was to get one vaccine in the arms of 600,000 North Texans over the age of 16 between June and September that year. The campaign’s focus was two-fold – to create public awareness to accelerate and broaden interest and acceptance of the vaccine and to enable businesses to reopen their doors safely.
“No one asked us to do this. No one expected us to do this. But we knew it needed to be done because communities of color were being affected more than anybody else,” said Dale Petroskey, president & CEO. The chamber, even with securing some in-kind work, spent almost $720,000 on the campaign that was not in their budget. Members like American Airlines and the Dallas Mavericks donated round-trip airfare and game tickets for sweepstakes prizes. The campaign included radio and television ads, billboards, videos in local doctor’s offices and even grocery store announcements. The chamber created a Take Care of Business vaccination campaign toolkit for local employers, including executive resources and templates for communicators.
By bringing together business leaders and trusted community voices, the chamber successfully helped those who were hesitant to get vaccinated, especially in communities of color, roll up their sleeves. By September 2021, more than 135 vaccination events were held and over 660,000 additional total vaccinations occurred in a four-county region.
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