Business group to be a Chamber

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PENDLETON — It will take a while for the full changeover to occur, but one of the first things people will notice — and something that will be highly visible — is use of the new name: Pendleton Chamber of Commerce.
“One of the main reasons that we wanted to do this was for name recognition,” said Laura Shank, president of Pendleton Business Association, whose members voted Feb. 15 to become a Chamber of Commerce.
“With the anticipated growth and whatnot, when businesses search, looking for Pendleton as a new home, they’ll search for a Chamber of Commerce before they would search for a business association.”
About 20 members attended and voted at last week’s meeting to make the change, Shank said. There was no one against the switch.
Pendleton Business Association had 144 business members in south Madison County last year and is in the middle of its enrollment period for this year, she said.
The full transition to a Chamber will require a lot of internal adjustments, including updating the organization’s articles of incorporation and bylaws and other “legal stuff,” Shank said.
That process likely won’t be complete until the end of this year.
Shank said she expects they’ll start using the name in a few weeks, after some paperwork gets processed.
The switch to a Chamber doesn’t change what the organization is allowed or able to do, Shank said, but the group is taking the opportunity to make some other changes that will alter how the group operates and how it serves its members.
One of those changes is expanding the board, which currently has four members and will be increased to at least seven.
“We have been starting that search process right now,” Shank said. “We want to make sure that our board is inclusive of all sizes of business. So when we go to add people we want to make sure that we’re not filling them with the same size and type of business that’s already represented on the board.
“We’re looking at the size, the type of business, you know, male/female — we want to make sure that we get a good representation on the board,” Shank said. “Can we meet all of those things that we would like to have? We’re not sure. But we do want to be as inclusive as we can be.”
The group also wants to stress the organization’s identity, Shank said.
All Chambers are different, she said, and the PBA/Pendleton Chamber of Commerce is and will be for businesses in Adams, Green and Fall Creek townships.
“I really, truly believe that moving forward that we need to establish who we are as a Chamber, and, you know, the people that we want to represent and how we represent them.
“We are limiting ours (membership) to companies that are physically located in those three townships. That’s one of the differences between us (and about 90% of Chambers in the United States),” she said. “We’re not interested in growth for growth’s sake. We want to represent people who are physically here.”
“Our main goal is to service the businesses in our area, to do local advocacy for them, but not at the national level or any of that. There’s just no way. We don’t have the resources to do that.”
Keeping membership costs low and providing affordable ways to participate in Chamber programs is another priority, she said.
“We’re going to try to keep our costs, our dues, to where, you know, our members today can remain members,” she said.
PBA annual dues are $100, a fraction of what it costs to belong to many Chamber organizations, she said.
“We hope to, going forward, have sponsorship opportunities for all sizes of business. So if people want to participate, they can.”
Amy Turner, a local State Farm agent who joined the PBA in 2011 and is a board member now, said she’s excited about the pending changes — including the anticipated addition of a paid employee — and what will follow.
“I think it’ll be good. I think it’ll be a nice move forward for us,” she said. “It’ll give us a better opportunity to service the business community, to change our focus to a lot more business programming, and a lot of that will come with the introduction of the director.”
The director role will filled by a person hired by the Town of Pendleton and shared with the Chamber as well as another local non-profit, Pendleton Main Street.
Pendleton Town Council voted once on Feb. 9 to create the new full-time position, but a second vote is still needed before the position is secure.
If that position is approved and filled, even working just part-time for the Chamber, it’ll provide “somebody to kind of guide the way and be that point of contact, not that we don’t have that now, but a little bit different scenario,” Turner said.
All of the changes hold even greater potential further down the road, Turner said.
“In the three- to five-year plans, I mean, to ramp up, like we have all these wishes for programming and things that we would love to put into place but with an all-volunteer organization it’s been really hard to get all those sort of wishes taken care of.
“So I think in the long term, when we are able so sustain a full-time director, that it’ll move much more efficiently,” Turner said. “I think with the growth that, you know, the town manager sees coming, we would rather be on top of it than behind it, and be able to grow with the community versus lagging behind.”
Short-term, she said, the name change alone could provide a boost.
“I think we’re all hopeful that the Chamber name in and of itself will lend to a little more membership,” Turner said. “Because when you have a new business coming into town they’re not going to search the Pendleton Business Association, they’re going to search for a Chamber, so I think it’ll make us a little easier to find, as well.”

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