I don’t discuss it much, but being in my ninth year as the executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber, I have to say, we’ve come a long way. Behind the strength of the Board of Directors, we have grown from an office of just me, to now three of us. We have grown our member events, our membership, and really expanded our programming in the past decade.

I mention all of that, not pat myself on the back, but rather to show the development and the evolution of the chamber. What we have been through are just the first two phases of our evolution from a staff-driven, single-staff organization, to what we are now. I want to lay out that evolution, because the next phases involve some of you, and it’s vital to our growth and development.

When I arrived in 2016, there was a one-month transition from the retiring staff member, the incomparable Carolyn Farkas-Noe, to me. Carolyn had worked at the chamber in an admin role for over 30 years, and was a very capable interim director between stints of the full-time directors. After working with Carolyn for a month to understand the members, programs, and processes in place, I took over as the lone staff person with only two active committees. The board members played nearly all of the roles of the committees, and so, with the exception of a member or two (such as Rick Chabot who was an instrumental member for our Finance Committee) the event committees, and membership committees were pretty much just different combinations of board members coming to extra meetings. The other active committee was the Midcoast Edge, our young professionals group, who were affiliated with the chamber, but were really a self-run entity.

Honestly, in the beginning that was alright- it was very functional to have a small staff, and a small group of volunteers. It was a great way to get started as you can be flexible and quick with your decisions and actions. However, one of the great things about organizations like a chamber of commerce, are all the networking connections you can make through project committees, and event committees. We saw that with the emergence of our WILL Power team- the women in local leadership committee.

We started WILL Power about 6 months into my tenure, with the impetus being, I asked members what they wanted and overwhelmingly they mentioned a former committee called the Women’s Networking Group. We decided to call a November meeting in the e-newsletter saying ‘anyone interested in a women’s business group, we’ll be meeting at BEK on such and such date’ and 17 women showed up to the first meeting which blew me away. What grew from that is an incredible group of women, building a network that has introduced in February, and has since produced over a dozen successful events over the years.

The emergence of WILL Power coincided with the end of the initial phase of development. By then we had also reformatted the e-newsletter (which spiked the open rates), re-envisioned 12 @ 12 to be a traveling network event rather than chamber-hosted, and varying the Chamber After Hours hosts and format.

The second stage was growing the staff, which we did a couple of years later, bringing in our first Chamber Coordinator. Immediately our capacity grew. In this second phase we began to expand our social media, completely overhauled the guest guide through a marketing committee, began to host some workshops, and started the initial re-branding and re-naming of the chamber. During this phase we have recruited new board members, created the Midcoast Tree Festival, expanded our committees, and began Chamber Works 2030, our chamber workforce program. Oh, and we dealt with the fallout of a worldwide pandemic and helped our businesses through it with new programming and assistance.

This is where you come in.

We are at the end of this phase now, as we have two full-time director-level employees, and a part-time marketing savant. However, most projects and committees are staff-initiated, and the board still makes up the majority of most committees.

The next phase of evolution starts with bringing in dozens of more volunteers to help with chamber projects and committees. I’ve written several columns on the importance of volunteer engagement in growing the skill sets of your young leaders, and this is a perfect way for business owners to engage themselves, or to get the leaders of tomorrow, linked into some productive, positive community networks. Our committees help teach partnership, collaboration, negotiation, and volunteers develop strong bonds with members of the community they wouldn’t otherwise meet.

Side note: it looks like by giving you so much context about the evolution of our chamber, that I may have led myself into a to-be-continued Part II for next week, which is fine. It’s important to know how we got to where we are, and I don’t want to short myself on describing what some of these great opportunities are.

As a taste of what next week’s column will include, we will talk about the three major chamber events- the Annual Awards Night, the Hacker’s Ball, and the Midcoast Tree Festival- and how you can help with them. Also, for those that like to meet and greet people, our Ambassadors team is a great way to get to know your local businesses. The Marketing team is helping with the new website, the annual guide, social media, and chamber promotional materials. The Government Liaisons takes a look at policy issues and how we should inform members about them. Also, we still have WILL Power plus the Midcoast Edge making a comeback.

There is quite literally something for everyone with our chamber committees, and the next phase of our growth depends on getting a few dozen more active and engaged volunteers to help us with this work. It’s a great way to grow your network- more on that, next week.

Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber of Commerce.