July 2013 Inside this issue: GM’s Report New Members Event Reviews Golf Thank you Presidents Message Cont’d Meet the New Board
CHAMBER at a glance
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a publication of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Chamber to Refocus on Economic & Business Development I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank our outgoing directors Sharon Shepherd, Denny Bouchard and Cam Clark. These folks served the chamber extremely well over many years and their contributions were tremendous. I also want to commend Nate Andrews on a fantastic term as President. I can tell you with great admiration and confidence that Nate has matched any past president with his passion and dedication over the past year.
had much more to offer. We have made a strategic decision to beef up our Government Relations Committee and further empower them. This is going to be led by the very capable Carla Milne. The changes we are making there will allow the committee to largely look after this important part of our mandate and allow the executive to refocus and evolve to grow the Chamber mandate.
We felt that if we are to spend this much As an executive and board, we spent a lot volunteer time on something, that we of time over the past several months might as well be spending it on thinking about what our role had become something that will provide more value and what it to our membership, should be. I be more energizing want to share and more fun. “I believe we are with you the direction we are We have decided to entering a period of taking the expand the unprecedented Chamber over Chamber focus on not only the economic and abundance.” next year, but business the next several. development. Now, this is nothing new by any stretch. The While our role as business taxpayer Chamber has been involved in economic advocate is and will continue to play an development at different levels over the important part of our ongoing mandate, years with initiatives such as the we felt that this part of our role was Economic Development Board, the beginning to consume us and that we Economic Development Corporation,
Craig Senchuk, Chamber President
Team Brandon and the list goes on, but over time we have lost such sense of involvement in business development and we want to get that back. We have spent a lot of time talking with the various folks involved in those earlier initiatives, in order to learn what went well and what did not, in order to develop a sense of what it should look like.
Economic and business development is about enhancing our existing businesses and attracting new ones. We are excited to have already started some significant initiatives. The Chamber is represented on the current Community Economic Development Planning Committee and we must give credit to the City for reaching out to us at the Chamber to be involved in this important initiative. I think we all recognize that government at (Continued on page 6)