• Survey Contents

Page Contents

• Overview
• Purpose
• Survey Methods
• Respondent Profile

Using this Website

• Page contents
• Moving around
• Printing

Contact ACCE

• Questions & troubleshooting

The Report & Data

• Survey Contents - View the index of data tables/charts
• View the list of available Excel files

Overview of the Survey

This first annual ACCE Chamber Operations Survey is our baseline edition. Though this survey builds on over a decade of collecting data from and about chambers of commerce, the 2004-5 edition represents significant strides forward to ensure chambers have better data to use in evaluating their operations. Financial, membership and staffing statistics have been calculated from 270 chambers' 2004 program year data.

The survey reveals statistics for common chamber operational measures:

• financial
• customer
• internal process/operations
• growth and stability

The results are presented, in an on-line format to ACCE members who participated in the Chamber Operations Survey at no charge. Non-participating ACCE members may view results at a cost of $89. These results include everything a chamber would need to benchmark against other like-chambers.

Each of the 32 results web pages includes:

• the survey questions
• hyperlinks to glossary terms
• discussion points
• raw data in a spreadsheet format
• formulas for calculating the ratios

Purpose

ACCE is striving to identify chamber profession standards for the statistics most chambers track in their organizations. This Chamber Operations survey will be conducted annually in January and was developed with a full glossary of terms to ensure apples-to-apples comparisons.

Although most of the same questions will be on the ACCE Chamber Operations Survey in subsequent years, the glossary of terms will continue to be fine-tuned and enhanced with examples as ACCE learns from each study.

This survey is also used to identify the qualifiers for the Membership Development (formerly NAMD) Division Award for Excellence (AFE) program, which recognizes top membership and operational performance.

Survey Methods

Survey invitations were emailed to the 1,300 chambers of commerce across the United States and Canada who belong to the American Chamber of Commerce Executives. The survey was administered online, and data from completed surveys was compiled by ACCE staff. The Membership Development Division advisory board and a task force of chief financial officers at several member chambers reviewed data.

Aggregate and Non-Aggregate Data Available

All survey participants were offered to be included in and see the results anonymously or collaboratively. If your chamber chose collaboratively, you will see all other chambers that chose that same option throughout the spreadsheet data from which the charts have been created.

Two-thirds of the respondents chose to be identified with their data in online results and will have access to results where other collaborative survey participants are identified. Benchmarks can be most valuable when you can contact the chamber with impressive numbers to find out more about their operations.

Respondent Profile

273 chambers of commerce responded to the survey, yielding a 20% response rate. It is the most comprehensive survey of chamber operations. Click here for a list of participating chambers.

Annual dues volume of responding chambers:

• 67 chambers have less than $200,000
• 86 chambers have between $200,000 and $499,000
• 58 chambers have between $500,000 and $1,000,000
• 62 chambers have over $1 million

Using This Website

Note: Viewing the survey slides requires Macromedia's Flash player - download Flash.

Page Contents

• Each page contains an interactive table or graph. 
• Click within the table to change the data set displayed in the graph above.
• Mouse over the graph or read the table under the chart to view the actual data points.
• Click on the Excel link to open a new window with that slide's Excel data sheet.

Moving Around

• Use the "survey home" button at the top of every page to return to the master list of contents
• Use the "next" or "back" links at the top, right of each page to move forward in sequence

Printing

• Most pages will print on a single, portrait oriented page using Internet Explorer's default print settings. Make sure you have the desired dues volume row selected, prior to printing slide.

Saving an Excel Document

• To save an Excel document to your local machine for editing, etc., select File/Save As and change your "Save in" location and "File name" as appropriate.

Contact ACCE

• Data collection and analysis questions: Lisa Sohn
• Website troubleshooting: Lisa Sohn
• Questions about ACCE Research: Tamara Philbin