Strategic Thinking: Evaluate Your Response to 2020

It’s been a year since we all began to experience the Covid-19 pandemic in personal ways. We talked about ‘expecting the unexpected’ and about how to ‘pivot’ (one of our favorite words for 2020) and how to continue to serve your members and communities in the midst of what felt like chaos.

After every TRC we conduct, we hold focus groups so we can get feedback on what Chamber staff and volunteers felt went well and what didn’t. We also review the statistics and provide those to the Chamber staff and leadership.

In short, we do a comprehensive review so we can continue to improve. It’s something all good strategic planners do after a big event.

While we are in no way saying the Covid-19 pandemic is over, we do think that maybe – at this one year mark – we’re all at a place in which we need to do some reviews of the last year. It will be like no other evaluation you have ever done because this last year has been like nothing we have ever done.

But we challenge you to take this as an opportunity to look critically at how your chamber functions in crisis, because that’s what this last year has been… one seemingly never-ending crisis.

You may have had to let staff go because of budgetary shortfalls. You may have had to move everyone to remote workspaces. You most likely had to cancel events and programming.

But you may have also found that your staff rose to the occasion and worked together in new and more productive ways. And you assuredly discovered which of your staff work better in-person in the office and which ones thrived in the remote environment. And you may have discovered a world of webinars that allow you to offer programming to your members while still maintaining a safe environment for all.

As you work through your 12 month evaluation, consider if there are aspects of this last year that you want to keep. Will you continue to have some staff members work remotely – even if only a few days a week? Will you continue to offer virtual programming – at least for certain programs? Did you begin a new program that was intended to be a stop-gap but that you now have data showing it should be a standing program?

For us, we discovered an array of new sponsorship ideas that we will continue to offer to chambers choosing to conduct TRCs in the future. We have seen the power of social media and the value of sponsorships based around various social media platforms.

As more people are being vaccinated and as many states loosen their precautionary restrictions, we are all going to be moving toward more in-person events and programs. We encourage you to take the bones of those events and programs (from what you used before 2020) and look at them critically. Are there line items within each that no longer serve your chamber, your members, or your community? If so, we hope you feel empowered to let those aspects go. Replace them with newer options that you have seen be successful in this last year.

We are not the same after this last year. Your program of work shouldn’t be either. If we all work to learn from this experience, the next time a crisis happens (and there will always be another crisis around the corner, though hopefully not one with the size and scope of Covid-19), you and your team will be ready.

If you need help doing an annual review of this nature, let us know. We’re here to help. We hope to see chambers everywhere flourish in the coming months and years, in part because they stood strong in their communities during this last year.

As we look to the new year (with great relief to let 2020 go and great hope for 2021), we know that we cannot fully prepare for the new without pausing to take stock of the old.

Without a doubt, 2020 was the Year of the Unexpected. I doubt any of us will talk in the future of how a speaker arriving late to a luncheon because of travel disruptions was ‘unexpected’ or ‘the worst.’ Because we know for certain now that, while those types of things are certainly challenging in the moment, they are things we can quickly overcome.

And we also know that we and our staffs and our communities can overcome so much more. In honor of that, I would encourage each of you to take a moment to think about how overwhelmed you were at points throughout this year. And now think about how you are here today. You made it through it all. Likely not unscathed, but through.

We’re in it together.

It was a team effort. I can say that with all certainty, even not knowing each of you personally. Because one of the things 2020 taught us was that we need community. Even those of us who identify as introverts, loners. We all need community. We need people to work with us and support us, to bounce ideas off of and to collaborate with us. We need to feel like we are in it together, whether ‘it’ is a project at work or just life itself.

I would encourage you, if you are the captain of your team’s ship, to carve out a few moments in the coming days to send notes – handwritten or email – to those who work with you and to let them know how much you appreciate their hard work in 2020. Tell them specifically how their presence in the chaos made a difference.

People are motivated and encouraged by hearing that they and their actions matter.

Benefits matter.

As we have worked with businesses through the year discussing the move of programs and events from in-person to virtual environments, we have found that sponsoring businesses have been accommodating, by-and-large.

Though initially, concerns were about meeting in-person, we discovered through honest dialogue that those weren’t their real concerns. The true issues they were concerned with were getting their messaging to their target markets. And if you have built out the benefits offered with your sponsorships properly, those benefits translate to both in-person and virtual environments.

It is our hope that chamber professionals will carry this lesson with them into 2021 and years to come. Member businesses – sponsoring businesses – want options that allow them to reach their target markets while also telling the story of their business. Make sure your benefits are structured so your businesses are able to do those two things. If you have done that, you don’t need to be concerned with whether or not your events are in-person or are in a virtual environment.

Change is good.

How often do we as chamber professionals brush off a new idea because ‘that’s not the way we do it?’ Or insist upon keeping an event that uses more staff hours than it has value for simply because ‘we’ve always done it that way?’

This year has forced chambers everywhere to take a hard look at their programs and initiatives and determine what really was necessary, what served the mission, and what was simply a sacred cow, even if no one could quite articulate why. With finances tight and communities struggling, this was a good year to let some of those sacred cows move on to pasture. With that extra time and energy, it’s an opportunity to try new things.

Failure is an option.

Do you remember at the beginning of 2020 when we were all starting to use online meeting platforms? The internet would crash, or someone’s significant other would walk through, or you would hear a pet or a child in the background, and everyone would be horrified? And now, everyone asks to see the pet or child, and we now know everyone’s roommates and spouses. If someone’s internet crashes, we casually wait, knowing they will be back in a moment.

We have learned that we try things and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, and it isn’t a big deal. And in that knowledge, we have gained a freedom we didn’t have before. If we embrace that freedom with boldness, we will see that we can take chances with the programs and initiatives that we would like to implement in the coming months in our chambers. We can try something, knowing that even if it isn’t a traditional success, we can still learn from it and put that knowledge into the next new project. And the next. Because it is better to be consistently moving forward (even with the occasional misstep) than to be mired in perpetual sameness.

Collective and individual.

While these lessons apply to most of us, there are individual lessons that we can each only assess for ourselves. We encourage you to take a few moments and think about the year. What did you learn about how you and your chamber handle adversity? Who on your staff is your encourager? Who kept everyone on track, even when you were in separate locations?

What did you discover about your chamber and the way your members interact? What one program are you most proud of this year? What sacred cow are you looking to let go in the coming year?

May we all be more mindful in the coming year of how we can be in community and support one another.

Did you put your Christmas decorations up the day after Halloween? It seems like a lot of people are ignoring their usual holiday traditions this year and jumping into Christmas because that season just tends to lend itself to joy. And if 2020 is in need of anything, it is joy.

As we work with clients looking toward the holiday season, we are looking for ways for chambers to help their communities, to help small businesses especially in this time when sales and profits are usually high.

While many communities have ordinances in place that make in-person gatherings like holiday mixers or parades impossible in their traditional formats, even those aren’t without possibility given a little creativity and innovation. And 2020 has proven true the old adage about necessity being the mother of invention.

Support Small Businesses

Develop your community’s version of a #ShopLocal campaign. There are lots of available options from which to model your version if you need inspiration. (Just Google #ShopLocal and scan through the campaigns already being done. Keep in mind your community size and what would work best.)

Your campaign should ideally include:

• The ability for residents to purchase gift cards online (both for safety and convenience)
• Some incentive for member businesses to participate
• Sponsorships for the chamber

Be sure you are really considering how this will impact your businesses and how you can make this beneficial for all parties. If you have questions, please contact us (info@nullygmtrc.com) and we will be happy to walk you through options that would best suit your chamber and community.

Christmas Parades

Much of what will be done by your chamber in this next month will be done in the effort to build your community up, to foster a sense of goodwill amongst the people around you. Because this year has been difficult, people are looking forward to this time to give them a feeling of hope, of community, in its truest meaning.

And that’s challenging when we may not be able to safely gather in community. If your chamber doesn’t usually sponsor a Christmas parade, maybe now is the time to consider one of these options just for the ways in which they can provide people with a boost of positive energy.

If you do usually sponsor the annual Christmas Parade but know it’s impossible to gather a crowd of that size right now, don’t despair. You have options.

• Do you have a video of last year’s parade? Would the businesses who were involved in the parade be willing to pay sponsorship dollars to help bring the video to a virtual format for this year? Play it on an accessible format and promote both it and your sponsors. Have local businesses offer Parade Discounts for take out or delivery dinners and snacks. Promote it on social media. Ask families to share their favorite memories of parades through the years. Have them share favorite photos from past parades. Not only will you generate excitement for the 2020 Parade, but you’ll build a bank of photos for your archives.
• Offer your members the opportunity to dress up and perform sketches for a Parade of Businesses. Have them video themselves and submit them (for a fee, of course). Compile the video and distribute it on social media and your website.
• Consider a contest. Invite local businesses to create a float just as they might for an in-person parade. Each entry needs a float, elves or other holiday characters in costume, and a dance routine. Videos should be 30 to 45 seconds. Let your community vote on the best videos. Be sure to get sponsorships along with entry fees.

Make Old Traditions New

When you were a child, did your parents put you and your siblings in the car to drive around and look at Christmas lights? A little seasonal music on the radio… candy canes or a hot chocolate in a thermos? Did you do the same with your children?

This year, as we’re being advised to stay with our ‘Covid pod,’ consider how you can give that old holiday stand-by a makeover.

• Can you create a Trail of Lights? Let businesses pay to have their location and light display included on your Trail of Lights. Produce an online listing of where the best lights are available. Let businesses give short stories or links to their lights or businesses.
• Do a ‘Best Of’ and let the community vote. Set a specified time period and allow the community to vote for the business that has the best lights display.

There are so many ways you could spend this next month celebrating the holidays with your community. Start from the basics… what could you do to bring that feeling of Christmas cheer, of holiday happiness, to your community? And go from there.

If we can help you brainstorm ideas, please get in touch with us (info@nullygmtrc.com).

This year has brought uncertainty and discomfort to communities and individuals on a mass scale, to which few of us have seen firsthand in our lifetimes. It left everyone scrambling to determine how to continue onward in different ways, to find ways to make 2020 productive, bearable.

And now, we are all looking to 2021 to decide how to grasp hold of its potential now. We know there are lots of things we just can’t plan yet because there are still lots of things we just don’t know now.

But instead of approaching the new year either with a sense of unease and trepidation or with the same plan as usual, we encourage you to approach 2021 with a different model.

Covid-19, for all of its devastation, has allowed us the opportunity to get out of the everyday rut we’ve been in and shown us possibilities to change in places where we thought change wasn’t possible. Our programming and initiatives may not be as inflexible as we had previously thought. We now have, to some degree, a blank slate in terms of our 2021 calendars.

We are suggesting to clients – and to you – to print out two blank calendars for 2021 with just the months. BLANK calendars.

On the first one, write in all of the events and initiatives you usually schedule in each month. Take a good look at each of the items you wrote down. You’re going to do some critical evaluations of your calendar in light of the unsettled nature of 2021.

Those items scheduled for the first quarter may not be able to be held in person. We are all hopeful things will settle into a new normal by mid-year, but we know the first few months may still include restricted movement for some.  

Even though your by-laws require you to have an annual meeting, they do not require the dinner that accompanies it. Can your meeting portion be done via Zoom or another platform? Can you handle the required portion at the usual time while postponing the dinner and fun portions until later in the year when you can gather together?

Or could you do the entire thing virtually but from a new perspective? Have the meeting and some fun networking things as well. Depending on how you market the event, you can still sell tickets and sponsorships.

• You can offer 30 minute networking opportunities with a speaker or select member prior to the event.
• You can hand deliver event boxes to ticket holders prior to the event with small bottles of wine or champagne, gift cards to a local restaurant to cover the meal that normally would have been served, along with give aways from sponsors.
• You can have a webpage set up for your live auction and allow online bidding until a certain time and announce the winners during the event.

The possibilities are endless. It’s up to you to determine how you want to approach the options. We encourage you, however, to refrain from calling an event held online a ‘virtual’ event. For instance, don’t call it your ‘virtual annual meeting.’ You would never have called it the ‘hotel annual meeting.’ The hotel was merely the location of the event. The same is true if you have the meeting virtually. We would suggest you merely call it your 2021 Annual Meeting. Location: Virtual.

You should not be charging people to attend an event because of the location or the meal. You should be charging based upon the content, for the access to the people in the room, even if that room looks a lot like a Zoom gallery. 

Before you move an event, we urge you to take some time to look at each item under the following four lenses.

1. Income Gain/Loss – Is it financially profitable to move?
2. Participation – Is your target market going to attend?
3. Staff Time – How focused can staff be?
4. Value to Members – Should you be more focused on more important initiatives?

Consider especially whether it would be better to move to virtual or to move to later in the year. In looking at this option, consider especially staff time. You don’t want to expend staff time early in the year to only have to postpone and then have staff have to do that work again later in the year.

After reviewing these questions for your events and initiatives, you should be able to take that second blank calendar and build your 2021 calendar with a more accurate reflection of what a productive 2021 might look like for your chamber, both in terms of being a strong supporter of your members and in terms of building your own internal foundation.

While the word for 2020 was surely ‘unexpected,’ here at YGM we are claiming the word ‘wiggle’ for 2021. We’re aware that there will need to be some flexibility in order to greet the year with hope and in order to continue through the year with promise. Join us as we plan to wiggle through 2021.

YGM recently sponsored one of our favorite workshops – ACCE’s 60 Sponsorship Ideas in 60 Minutes. This is our fourth year to sponsor this workshop, though this was the first time the workshop was conducted entirely online. We were delighted with how well the workshop went and with the interaction with the participants.

If you missed the workshop, here are some of the ideas suggested.

1. Institute a webinar series. Sell sponsorships of the series.
2. Move your networking events from in-person to virtual via Remo.
3. Send an email per day with chamber and local news. Sell a sponsorship for that email.
4. Sell sponsorships of Zoom backgrounds with sponsor’s logo on the background.
5. Maker’s Mark Spirit Sponsorship – Attendees paid $35 for a signature cocktail with a specially dipped bottle
6. Boxed lunch sponsorship – For the Military Appreciation Luncheon, the event was pushed to a virtual platform for the awards portion, and a sponsor was found to provide a boxed lunch, which were delivered to soldiers on a local Army base.
7. Chamber Trivia – host virtual trivia nights and get sponsorships
8. When you transfer meetings and such to a virtual format, consider having a virtual swag bag. Instead of pens, give tips. Create a virtual, secret website on which you give warm leads.
9. Sell series sponsorships
10.  Life Fair (job fair) which is a talent portal and allows sponsors to spotlight jobs within their businesses.
11. Online trivia nights can feature sponsors throughout – blur sponsor logos or remove portions of the logo… whichever participant guesses the logo receives a prize from the sponsor business
12. Podcasts are excellent sponsorship opportunities and provides sponsor recognition through deep-dive conversations.
13. Annual meetings – Everyone has to have one. This chamber’s was themed each year. The chamber planned a theme and delivered theme boxes, including the kind of swag that would normally be on the tables, along with a bottle of wine and a gift card for dinner. It made it so that while people watched the awards portion online, they were also able to simulate the experience of the dinner portion at home.
14. Question of the Day – On social media, allow each sponsor to answer a question regarding their business and how it is involved in the community or how they impact the community.
15. Blog posts – There is a need for current information right now. Get sponsors for blog posts such as what businesses should do if they have an employee test positive for Covid-19.
16. Do you have a Community Improvement Awards Luncheon? This chamber is doing them as a publication this year.
17. Support local employees who might be out of work. Sponsors pay to be in a video, holding one word of a supporting message.
18. Pay it forward. Establish a program in which your larger, more established businesses can “sponsor” your smaller businesses’ membership dues.
19. Recovery kits – This chamber had posters with helpful information printed. The kits included the posters, sanitizers and other useful information. Sponsorships made it possible to distribute to both members and non-members alike. The chamber gained new memberships as a result.
20. Seniors on the Silos – This chamber has multiple silos in town. To honor the high school seniors, the chamber got sponsors and projected the photos of the seniors onto the silos each evening for a certain number of days.
21. So many chambers have a Taste Of. This chamber continued on with their’s despite the issues Covid presented. They changed it to a drive-thru event, giving the samples in take away packaging.
22. Chamber Night Out at the Movies – Sponsors have video promo spots prior to the movie.
23. Race Bridge – This chamber’s YP group hosted conversations focusing on race relations via zoom.
24. Trade Show – Rather than moving their trade show to a virtual platform, this chamber created a publication similar to a “Who’s Who” and included a check-in challenge encouraging people to visit each business in person.
25. Book Club – This chamber started a book club focusing on diversity, inclusion, and equity. Businesses can showcase what they are doing toward these things. A branded swag bag was created to go with the book giveaway.
26. Game Changers – The chamber President interviewed local leaders who have innovative ideas. The sponsor was able to present the opening remarks.
27. Coffee and Connections – Hosted on a virtual platform that allowed participants to move to different rooms. Each room had a sponsor who was a coffee shop and the sponsors were able to chat with participants directly.
28. Keep it Local Directory – Magazine which featured a multi-cultural section that was sponsored.
29. Member Minutes on Facebook – Sponsors were able to be visible and linked on Facebook
30. VIP Meet & Greet for webinars – Sponsor the 15 or 30 minutes prior to a webinar and allow the sponsors to host the networking time prior to a webinar. Sell the breakout rooms
31. Virtual Chamber Auction – Members provide donations for the Chamber to auction.
32. Steam-a-thon – In a telethon format, Chamber and COVID information shared throughout the day with sponsors having promo spots.

Our congratulations to the winners of the best ideas:
* Honorable Mention: Nate Phillips at Grand Rapids Chamber
* Third Place: Colleen Schipsi of the Michigan West Coast Chamber of Commerce
* Second Place: Randall Chase, IOM, of the Cedar Hill Chamber of Commerce
* First Place: Andrea Cole of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce

If you would like to watch the video of the workshop, you may find it here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7J7_3ZM5TY&feature=youtu.be

We encourage you to take these ideas and take them for yourself. Modify the ones you like to fit your chamber and your community.

And make notes of what you think are your chamber’s best sponsorship ideas. Make plans to present those at next year’s workshop at the annual ACCE conference – hopefully in person!