What We've Done for You Lately - and What We're Doing

I often get asked to define a chamber and what it does for business and the community.

This isn’t as odd as it sounds: Every chamber in the world is a little bit different from the others. It must be, in order to serve the unique community it represents.
Overall, a chamber of commerce is a business membership organization that promotes economic and community development, working in a collective manner through committees, networking and idea sharing.

Chambers of commerce bring people together to discuss and find solutions for common challenges. A good chamber works toward creating partnerships, so as not to duplicate efforts.

We do economic development, but it’s not necessary the part of economic development that you seen. It’s behind the scenes work, or as one of our Chamber Ambassadors put it, “It’s like an iceberg and what the chamber does is often below the surface.”

A good chamber evolves with the changing needs of the community and I think we’ve done a pretty good job in that area. One of the needs that we’ve been targeting lately is the need to make you people aware of all the training and job opportunities that exist locally. We’ve heard again and again that local industries want to hire area residents with a commitment to the community.

Our staff and volunteers work extensively with local schools to encourage connections between officials and business, teachers and businesses and students and businesses. One goal is to teach kids about careers, life management skills, business and local job opportunities.
We also strive to help young people develop valuable work skills and make connection with adults who can help mentor them or serve as role models. Another goal is to keep our young people in the community to get the education and training to fill local jobs.

The chamber supports buying locally and retaining local businesses. Our members have told us they want learning opportunities that give them the skills to keep their businesses well managed and their bottom line healthy.

The chamber supports tourism and small business as well as industry. We manage tourism under a contract with Marinette County. In 2008 we formed a small business council to bring learning and networking opportunities to small businesses. We work in tandem with NWTC and UW-Marinette to bring training opportunities and more to larger businesses.

A good chamber is a work in progress.

And we are.