After a white-hot spring and summer of brainstorming, cleaning up and getting some much-needed structure in place – not to mention, ahem, a few missteps and learning lessons along the way – the Creston Valley Chamber of Commerce is finally poised to get down to its core business: serving the membership.
Yes, we’re still a bit heads down on finalising our constitution – one of the key learnings being, perhaps, being that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – and we also got consumed with a new project that came to us out of the blue and soaked up a lot of our volunteer time (more on this below).
And so on and so on. Excuses aside, though, we are finally shifting gears and the results are positive. Membership in the Chamber has grown this fall by almost 20% – and that’s just since the start of our “come back to the Chamber” campaign that started in October. We’ve also engaged the Kootenay Lake Chamber of Commerce in discussions (more on this below) and have plans afoot to coordinate and complement each’s efforts to serve our collective members. And, I asked our board – and they readily complied – to pass a motion making Membership a top priority for 2018.
Thanks, then, for the patience of all our members in our “reboot” phase. We’re delighted to be participating in the Winter Festival by offering a $300 top prize for best business presence during the day’s events, and we’ll soon be releasing details on more activities for the coming year.
Now, finally, to the mystery project mentioned above. Both the Creston Valley and Kootenay Lake Chambers of Commerce will be launching a new quarterly magazine in January 2018. Designed to offer a more complete and in-depth Chamber news about business – and businesses – in our specific and shared jurisdictions, the magazine will complement the excellent work of existing publications and media outlets by helping build out awareness of the energy and vitality of the region. Our thanks to Allan Downton for bringing the project to us, and we look forward to building on the growing collaborations that are defining the Kootenays.
