The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce hopes to increase its membership base by 200 next week.
The Chamber will be hosting a two and a half day event with more than 150 volunteers working in teams against the clock and each other to sign up new Chamber members.
“The purpose of the membership event is to grow the Chamber membership base and to help spread the word to local businesses that aren’t Chamber members about what the Chamber does for our local economy,” said Kristi Bailey, Chamber Dir. of Communications and Marketing.
Currently, the St. Joseph Chamber has 1,000 members and about 16 percent of businesses that are on the City of St. Joseph business license list. Bailey said they feel like they should be at around 20-percent with around 4,000 licensed businesses in the City of St. Joseph.
“We think if we could add 200 business to our membership roster that would get us to about the 20-percent mark so we would be more on par with other chambers of our size,” Bailey said.
The event is organized by Jimmy Cusano and a group called Your Chamber Connection. Bailey said the group’s specialty is high energy membership campaigns that allow volunteers to conduct out-of-the-box membership fun while building the membership base.
“It’s about business,” said Mr. Cusano. “The Chamber of Commerce is the business community. This brings everyone together to build our Chamber. It’s a membership-based organization and most people don’t like membership drives. With a Membership Event like this, they come together in a competitive, fun setting and tell the Chamber story. When others hear about everything the Chamber does, all of a sudden you have a great deal of enthusiasm for the Chamber, and a great deal of support.”
The Chamber’s membership event will kick off Tuesday with individual volunteers working in teams to make calls to their connections in an effort to bump up membership.
The event will end with a celebration Thursday.