I remember when I was a child and I heard the legendary speech by John F. Kennedy where he made the statement Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. In this was a message of patriotism, of selflessness that was to be admired and emulated. Today it seems that some Chambers of Commerce are asking this same level of commitment from their members. To illustrate this I will tell you a true story. Around the first of the year I was working as a sales associate for a local small internet services company. We received an RFP from a local Chamber to redesign their web site and quickly put together a 12-page proposal outlining a statement of work. As I was putting together the bid, the owner of the company told me that he really wanted the exposure that the job would offer and to bid it at half of what the project would actually cost to complete. I bid it very low knowing that he would do whatever it took to satisfy them and provide them with an awesome new web site. About two months later I received a call that we had come down to the final two companies and was asked to come in for a meeting. At the meeting I told them that we would give them whatever they wanted to make them happy and outlined how we would put the project together. To make a long story short, I received an email about a week ago telling me that they were going with another company. No problem, maybe another local company? No. In fact they were going with a company out of state, more than a thousand miles from their local office. I was stunned. I dont know how many times I have sat through speeches and presentations from Chambers of Commerce where the topic centers on members supporting other member businesses and especially the Chamber itself, yet when it came time to award a contract to one of the ten member companies capable of doing the work, they chose a company from out of state. This raised the question of how much other work is outsourced to companies outside of the membership. When I wrote back and asked about this practice, I got a simple response that went like this We appreciate your involvement and willingness to participate in the process. I leave it up to our professional staff to analyze any proposals in any department and to make the appropriate selections for vendors. I do not pretend to have the expertise to make those decisions. That is why we hire the very best in all of our disciplines. In other words, they felt that the ten member companies who might have done the work were incapable of doing so. Now I do know that most of these companies ARE indeed capable. To boil this article down to the essence of what I am trying to say, I will put it like this. Each year thousands of small businesses across this great country give their local Chamber of Commerce their annual membership fees with the expectation that the Chamber has the best interest of their membership as their mission. And while the Chambers say their interest is to develop local business, are they in fact doing everything possible? Would it not be a win-win situation for them to encourage their members by not just allowing members to bid, but to award the contract to a member business? If the Chamber did not feel that any of the members were qualified to complete the project, they could then ask the members for referrals from a LOCAL company outside the membership. This would at least allow members to build relationships with other businesses that they were working with or might be interested in working with, and quite possibly the "outside" local company would then become a member of the Chamber. If you are a member of a Chamber, do you know how their contracts are awarded? If not, you might consider doing an investigation into their practices. You may find that the contracts are being awarded to companies in other counties or states, or worse other countries. It is one thing to ask for help to build an organization, but that organization should also work to support the members who are working to build it. Lets put an end to Ask not what the Chamber can do for you, ask what you can do for the Chamber, and instead hold the Chamber accountable for assisting the local business membership that is paying for it to exist. |
