o What: Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce hosts a 125th birthday party for its members. The chamber’s new mural will be unveiled.
o When: 5-7 p.m. Friday.
o Where: C and 11th streets, across from The Academy, in Vancouver.
o Cost: Free.
The Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, now celebrating its 125th anniversary as the voice of local business, isn’t what it used to be. But of course, neither is Vancouver.
The chamber started out in 1890 at the Vancouver Commercial Club, and it was the single unified voice for business when the city had just 3,545 residents. It grew in size and ambition, becoming a booster for the Interstate Bridge that opened in 1917 and even purchasing land adjacent to Pearson Field in 1925 for a commercial airstrip to serve airmail delivery. Not long after, the chamber helped raise money to build the only hotel between Olympia and Portland, and in the Greater Depression it supported widening of the Columbia River to the mouth of the Willamette to boost commerce.
Along the way, it became the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce as it broadened its reach to a growing Clark County subregion of a larger metropolitan area. It remained influential even as other business-friendly organizations, including the Columbia River Economic Development Council, Identity Clark County, and Leadership Clark County, emerged with the chamber’s support.
“The chamber has always been willing to make changes to best serve the business community,” said Kelly Love, the chamber’s president since 2011.
The organization is celebrating and reflecting on those 125 years with a birthday party for members from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday at C and 11th streets, just outside its 11th and Broadway office.
But as chamber leaders look to the past for inspiration, they’re also looking to the challenges of the future. The ever-changing organization maintains its traditional role as a business booster, but it also has moved into new programs and services for its members and the larger community. At the same time, it is continually looking for ways to attract new members in an era when traditional business models are being upended by technology and changing values of the millennial generation.
Love said the chamber is focused on upgrading is own technology and online presence, offering more technical services and support to small businesses, and maintaining its role as an advocate for businesses. As examples, Love points to the chamber’s work on helping businesses win contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense through its Procurement Technical Assistance Program, its counseling program for small and emerging businesses, and an educational workshop series for small businesses.
Such programs extend the chamber’s reach and relevance, but they also benefit the chamber by bringing in an infusion of government funding to help pay for those services. The importance of income diversification became apparent during the most recent economic downturn when the chamber, like most civic organizations, was forced to tighten its belt and take a hard look at its financial model.
About half of the chambers funding comes from its 1,200 business members and 6,000 individual members, with much of the remainder coming from reimbursements for services and programs. Eric Sawyer, the chamber’s board chairman for the past year, said the chamber is looking for ways to further diversify its funding base through programs and activities.
“The magic word is diversification,” said Sawyer, an area payroll manager for Barrett Business Services Inc. “How do you spread out your sources of revenue?”
A second challenge is to attract young people who are working in a very different business environment than 125 years ago or even a generation ago.
Sawyer said the millennial generation now moving up in the workforce is in many ways opposite of the boomer generation. Generally speaking, boomers would aspire to buy or build a business they could sell or pass down to the next generation. Millennials, again in general terms, seem less interested in that model and are more willing to create new business structures built around technology that are less constrained by geographic boundaries. “They are thinking more on a global level,” he said. “We just need to embrace that.”
Love is encouraged that about half of those who have recently joined the chamber are younger than 30. She said the chamber’s growing service offerings are intended to appeal to that generation.
“We are doing what we are doing so we are not a stodgy organization,” she said. “We must adapt and change.”
