Cheif Judge Belvin Perry, Jr. swore in the new board of directors for the East Orlando Chamber.
Social networking, a fresh website and new partnerships are what the East Orlando Chamber of Commerce hopes will turn things around after a long absence of leadership in the organization.
The tipping point for the Chamber: the departure of executive director Kevin McFall in January after only three months on the job.
“We’re working with other groups to see what kind of symbiotic relationships we can develop such as government, which we can tap to let people know about new tax incentives or local transportation issues and members like our members from Medical City,” Board Chairman Brian Watson of Broad and Cassel in Orlando said. “It goes back to connectivity. It’s not just about networking.”
Before McFall, there was only one staff person running the show for more than a year — planning events, building up membership and acting as the mouthpiece for the organization.
At its peak, which was during the economic boom in 2004 and 2005, the EOCC had about 800 members. Now it has a little more than 200 members. The board’s vice chairperson, Carol Ann Dykes, manager of the University of Central Florida Business Incubator, attributed the decline to the recession and a lack of leadership.
“We had periods of time when we’ve been without core leadership, when we have not had a face in the community. We’ve lost memberships and not attained a lot of new members like we could have if we had that strong core leadership in place. We’re looking forward to having that,” she said.
Now, not only are they looking for a new leader, the chamber inducted nine new members to its 18-person Board of Directors last month. Dykes said new blood mixing with the old on the board should help cultivate the change the chamber needs to become stronger in the community.
“We’re very excited to have a lot of new energy and fresh ideas and new perspectives. But it’s also very important for any board to have those individuals who have been there for a while too for continuity and history,” she said. “We are refocusing, reorganizing and we really want to re-energize this chamber.”
Last year, the chamber moved from their store front in the Alafaya Village plaza along Alafaya Trail to an older building donated to the organization on East Colonial Drive. But Dykes is excited about yet another move the chamber will make soon to the UCF Incubator in the Central Florida Research Park.
“The building is an older building. It really doesn’t present the image that we would like and it kind of isolates the chamber being in that location,” Dykes said.
At the incubator, the chamber will be able to interact with the nearly 50 businesses that are incubator clients, and have access to meeting facilities to host events and seminars and storage space. Being so close to the UCF campus, it will allow the chamber to more easily take on student interns.
“It was a no-brainer for me. We have a lot of opportunity to give exposure to these small businesses, in the chamber and the Incubator. There’s a lot of mutual benefit,” Dykes said.
Elaine Hinsdale, the EOCC’s executive director from 2009 to 2010, said a strong chamber is most important during an economic slump because when a chamber is not functioning effectively, the small business community suffers, as small businesses tend to make up the majority of chamber membership.
“If you’ve got small businesses that are able to grow, they’re going to be hiring and the local economy is going to be doing well, but if they are struggling and shutting their doors, then the opposite happens.”
Help is here
One of the partnerships the chamber has created is with Oviedo/Winter Springs Regional Chamber of Commerce. President and CEO Cory Skeates said his chamber has already essentially recreated what a chamber does by getting on Facebook and Twitter, creating different avenues for their memberships to showcase their business to the community — such as an online calendar they can post events to — and hiring a marketing person to ensure exposure to the community.
“We try to be more of a civic organization rather than just a business organization,” he said.
The Oviedo/Winter Springs chamber has 475 members — 200 more than when Skeates started there five years ago. During the boom there were about 650 members, so he said they have seen a reduction but those members are now starting to come back.
Skeates is one of a three-person staff at the chamber, including a marketing and events director, whom he credits with a lot of the chamber’s success.
“We put in a lot of hours, that’s for sure,” he said. “If you’re on the outside looking in, you wouldn’t know it’s that few of staff. We have a lot of members who step up and help out. Being involved helps them as much as it does us.”
Dykes said there’s no way they could hire another staff person at this time.
“It’s a matter of finances. We would love to hire another staff person but we need to build our membership first and hold more events to re-grow the chamber and rebuild its budget,” Dykes said. “We’ve been operating in the black and that’s really a testament to the board members of the past year or two. There’s been good fiscal management.”
Although they may not be able to follow the Oviedo/Winter Springs chamber’s lead in that way, they are planning to team up with them in hopes to attract new members and retain the ones they have. For instance, they’re planning a dual-chamber speed networking event, a hob nob on June 26 at the UCF Bright House Stadium, and they are partnering for the annual Ovations Awards program, which recognizes excellence in business.
“We’re really trying to do what we can to make sure all of the chambers in the area are successful,” Skeates said. “The worst thing for every chamber right now is to have a neighboring chamber fail because it reflects poorly on all the chambers. People see one drop off and they think all the chambers are doing poorly.”
During a struggling economy, oftentimes one of the first things to suffer is memberships to different clubs and organizations. Hinesdale said the only way to retain membership during this time is to provide something to the members that they need and can’t get elsewhere.
“Here, with all this going on with the Alafaya Trail widening and now the East Colonial Drive widening from Dean (Road) to Bithlo, that’s going to impact the business community. There’s a great chamber opportunity there: provide the businesses along those corridors with news and information that they can’t get in their local newspapers or anywhere else.”