Small Business Saturday is just around the corner! Have your small business members welcome their shoppers on Saturday, Nov. 24, with the Shop Small Welcome Mat, courtesy of American Express.

Small Business Saturday, the day after Black Friday, is dedicated to helping small businesses get what they need most: customers. This Nov. 24, American Express wants to give the small businesses in your community free Shop Small Welcome Mats.*  You can help. Requesting these free mats from Say No More Promotions, a distributor working with American Express, and distribute them to other small businesses in your community.  The mats, when placed at the front door,  let customers know this is a small business on Small Business Saturday, and every day.

To receive your box of 25 free Shop Small Welcome Mats and share them with merchants in your community, click here to visit the Say No More Promotions site.** 

Let’s make this the biggest day of the year for your community’s small businesses.   For more information about Small Business Saturday visit www.shopsmall.com.
 

*Supplies are limited and will be distributed on a first come first served basis. 

** Say No More Promotions is neither owned nor operated by American Express and is acting only as a distributor for this free product.  Any information collected as part of this process is the responsibility of Say No More Promotions.

So many chambers have seen their communities damaged by Hurricane Sandy that it is hard to know where or how to help.  Both the requests for help from chambers and the offers of support will be filtering in here slowly over the coming days.  The first specific request is from our friend Jack Friedman at the Queens Chamber (NY), which most of you know was severely hammered with water, wind and fire.

Jack's members need portable generators and pumps.  If you have a business connection in your region that could help Jack help his members with such equipment, please connect with him directly using his email address (phones are iffy).

I am sure the members of other chambers will have the same needs, so if you find a willing, generous source, please communicate it to Tania Kohut of the ACCE staff.

Thank you.

Jack Friedman
(718) 898-8500, x122
75-20 Astoria Blvd, Suite 140
Jackson Heights, NY 11370

Tags: Disaster, Hurricane Sandy

Last week, the Champaign County, Il., Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual meeting luncheon with a social media theme. The chamber used the Facebook “thumb up” as a way for people to express a “like” during the meeting (see right) and featured a “tweet table” for dessert. Also, members’ tweets of recent successes were displayed around the room. The highlight of the event was a chamber video featuring members that was produced totally in-house. Check it out – all the way to the very end; don’t hit end until you are sure you’re at the end! 

Here’s a funny story about a chamber-led project in Australia that’s got some local residents holding their noses and crying “not funny,” while others may be rolling in their graves.

It was going to cost $80,000 (Australian) for a local cemetery in Millaa Millaa, a small town in North Queensland, to build a bathroom on cemetery property, so the local chamber of commerce took on the project. The result? A toilet facility, complete with septic system, built in the shape of an upright coffin, bearing a cross and the letters “RIP.”  According to chamber President Pat Reynolds, quoted in a  news article,  "You have to be careful, not everyone is going to have our macabre sense of humour. But we did it with good intentions. It's for firstly, the cemetery, and secondly, maybe a few more people will notice Millaa Millaa now." Click here for pictures and the full story.

Larry Bowman, CCE, PaCCE, president & CEO of the Lebanon Valley, Pa., Chamber of Commerce, was awarded the Keystone Award for outstanding service by a chamber of commerce executive. The award was presented at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of Chamber Professionals (PACP) on Monday, October 22^nd.   

The Keystone Award recognizes outstanding service in, and contributions to, the profession of chamber management in Pennsylvania. It is the highest honor bestowed by PACP. It is not presented on an annual basis, but only at such times as an individual has merited such recognition. Bowman is only the twenty-second recipient of the award.

In the nomination information for Bowman he was lauded for his commitment to the profession and was noted as a role model of integrity and hard work.   Chairperson of PACP, Nancy P. Keefer, president of the Chester County Chamber of Business & Industry noted that “I could go on and on about how he has led the individual chambers and communities that he has served.  I know for a fact under his leadership, that chambers have reached new milestones including accreditations, increased memberships and budgets; he has been recognized as a force in legislative affairs, taking strong stands and developing relationships with elected officials and he has developed long-term relationships in many of the communities he has served and is looked upon as a friend to many.”

Bowman has been the president & CEO of the Lebanon Valley Chamber since 2007. He served as the PACP chairman in 2011.
 

Improving educational attainment in your region is not a task on a “to-do” list that you can check off some day. It requires vision, persistence and committed leadership, all of which Greater Spokane Incorporated is supplying for their region.

I was in Spokane last month and sat down with Shelley O’Quinn, Director of Workforce and Education for GSI. Shelley, who’s currently running for county commission, leads their REAL initiative – Regional Education Attainment Legacy. This includes projects, partnerships and policy work address issues from Pre-K though Higher Education.  A few highlights:

• K-12 Roundtable – meeting every other month with public and private superintendents from 14 school systems across the region. Business leaders are at each meeting; the agenda focuses on everything from capital projects to policy reform to education quality. They’ve organized these meetings for 8 years.
• Career Awareness  – Because top business and K-12 leaders have met regularly for so long, they’ve been able to launch programs that would be hard to pull off in one district alone: Aerospace Skills Week, Washington Business Week, and the Professional Development Academy for Science Instructors. Two school districts also house internship coordinators in the GSI offices.
• STEM – GSI is the funding agent and hosts staff for the Spokane STEM Network. A new bioscience focused STEM academy just opened this fall in downtown Spokane. Check out this great video.
• Higher Education Leadership Group – this 12 year old, economic growth-focused group includes the presidents from all 5 of the region’s higher education institutions and key corporate leaders. Their most recent achievement… landing a new state medical school in Spokane.

Better education outcomes through business-educator cooperation, all supported by the regional chamber of commerce.  That’s what REAL in greater Spokane.

Tags: education, higher education, regional cooperation, STEM

The public school system in Nashville is getting national attention for its efforts in high school reform. Each of its 12 zoned high schools have implemented “wall-to-wall” academies within each school, which means that all the students in the school belong to a career or thematic academy for grades 10-12, after starting in a “freshman academy.” What’s attracted attention is the scale of this strategy (15,000+ students, 1,000 teachers), the initial results (graduation rates up, dropout rate down, math scores up), and the deep participation of the business community (more than 170 business-academy partnerships).

Click here to view an invitation from the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce for district, civic, or business/nonprofit leaders to participate in a one-day “deep dive” into the Nashville model on Thursday Nov. 8 as part of the National Career Academy Coalition annual conference in Nashville. It’s an ideal opportunity for leaders who are considering adopting the academy model in their district or are thinking about the systemic issues of taking the academy model to full scale.

Explore all of the education initiatives that are going on at the Nashville Area Chamber by visiting their webpage on K-12 Education including a YouTube playlist with videos showcasing some of their programs.  

New ACCE member - The Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce (TBBCoC) – was recently recognized with the 2012 Florida Association of Chamber Professionals’ (FACP) 2012 Florida Chamber of the Year Award. TBBCoC’s President/CEO Robin Sollie, IOM, was also honored as the 2012 Chamber Professional of the Year. The awards were presented last month at the annual state conference in Boca Raton, Fl.

Tuscaloosa, Ala., Mayor Walt Maddox, with authorization from the City Council’s Finance Committee, is taking steps to contract out the city’s economic development activities with the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama. The move follows a reorganization of City Hall departments, which reduced the size of the Office of Economic Development. As of the date of this posting, the new partnership has yet to be approved by the full City Council.

In an article posted on TuscaloosaNews.com, Mayor Maddox said, “I think this is a groundbreaking opportunity for the city to partner with the chamber and aggressively go after the missing links within our business community.”

According to the article, the chamber will focus on business attraction and retention; “We are ready,” said chamber President Jim Page.  In a related article on AL.com, Page elaborated on the chamber’s role. "We will be out front being the recruitment end of this, but in no way, shape, form or fashion does this enable us to promise things that the city can't do from an incentive standpoint or otherwise," said Page. "So we know our limitations and we'll bring them to the table. Certainly, the mayor and the City Council will make the final decision on any and all projects."

After changing its logo earlier this year, the Woodstock, Ill., Chamber of Commerce kicked off a new marketing campaign: “I Am The Woodstock Chamber,” placing more emphasis on local business owners. The chamber’s Executive Director, Shari Gray, was quoted in a The Northwest Herald article saying that the campaign, which features the faces of four local business owners, “puts a face on the chamber businesses.” Chamber President Todd Kinker echoed her sentiment explaining that, "It's the business owners that make us an organization. By highlighting them and bringing them together, we make our organization stronger." Learn more about the campaign, including how the four “faces” were selected, and see samples of the printed promotional pieces here.