The Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce continues to celebrate our 2009 Chamber of the Year Award. Watch WBKO-TV's complete interview with Chamber President & CEO James N. Hizer, CEcD.

Labels: Chamber of the Year

A Note from James N. Hizer, CEcD, Chamber President & CEO

Over 3 weeks have passed since the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce was named by ACCE as the 2009 national Chamber of the Year. Yesterday, we held our official celebration with our partnership. We are still pinching ourselves—what an amazing honor. It was almost surreal hearing our name called at the Awards Banquet!

Yesterday, several of our past chairs offered toasts and words of congratulation, during our celebration reception. It was a reminder that the Bowling Green Area Chamber has been such a strong organization for so many years. It is gratifying to see that all of our volunteers, both past and present, are receiving the national recognition they so richly deserve. I wish all of those individuals, who have made the Chamber such a special organization over the years, could have joined us on the stage when we received our award. This honor belongs to all of you.

It is important that we capitalize on this opportunity as a Chamber and as a community. We will spend the next 12 months telling the world that there is no other Chamber in the country quite like the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce.

James N. Hizer, CEcD
President & CEO

View photos from the event.

Watch WBKO's coverage of the event.

Labels: Chamber of the Year

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Labels: Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, Chamber of the Year

It is nice seeing the Daily News' letters to the editor from our partners about the Chamber’s designation as one of the top three in our size in the nation. As I read Bill Waltrip's letter this weekend and thought about what is done every day by the Chamber, I watched the children playing in the pool. They were having a fabulous time flipping and slashing. Dads were throwing their kids in the air, whose loud squeals of joy were followed by the big spash. As I finished reading Bill’s letter to the editor to the laugher of the children nearby, I was reminded why it all counts. Everything connects. Because 1,300 Chamber partners contribute to make a difference in our business community equals so much more. One example came to my mind in an instant.

The leadership of Rick Kelley as Chamber Chairman in 2006 created a successful $2.8 million capital campaign and the new Chamber headquarters now at 710 College Street. Then he takes that same leadership that he shares with the business community and turns it to the children in our community leading the BG East 11 -12 Year Old Little League to win the State Championship. On Wednesday they head to the Great Lakes Regional Tournament for a chance to compete in the Little League World Series. They will be led out of town with a police escort, businesses will have good luck messages on their readerboards, and friends and families will cheer them on as they begin their journey. It all connects. It is our community!

Labels: Chamber of the Year, Community Pride

Last month Tonya Matthews, vice president of operations, submitted a post explaining that the Chamber has qualified to submit for ACCE's Chamber of the Year. This was an honor in an of itself, but now we have more news to share. We are ranked as one of the top three chambers in the U.S. and Canada within our dues structure!

The American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) selects three to four chambers in each of four dues categories each year, honoring these chambers for their excellence in overall operations, programs, partnership numbers and other functions. In our submission, we highlighted our capital campaign for our new building, our economic development efforts, our partnership numbers and our programs--all of which contribute to the outstanding work of the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce's board, staff, volunteers and partners!

The only national association serving the professional development needs of chamber executives in the United States and Canada, ACCE currently represents more than 7,800 professional members in 1,400 chambers of commerce. It is the premier organization for chamber executives, and the Chamber will receive national recognition at the annual convention in Pittsburgh at the end of July.

Congratulations and thank you to all of our partners! This ranking wouldn't have been possible without you!

Read the full news release.
Watch WBKO's coverage of our ranking.

Labels: Chamber of the Year

On May 6 we learned that the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce had qualified for Chamber of the Year, an award to be presented at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives Convention in August. We celebrated for the day, sending emails back and forth between staff and volunteers with congrats and deserved pats on the back. Qualifying in itself isn't easy; a chamber must meet four of the seven criteria to even be considered. We were encouraged when we learned that we'd met five of the seven. Soon after the initial excitement though, we dove into the application. Knowing the compitition for this honor had to be tough, we didn't want to waste any time.

The Application: the test to weed out the "wanna be" Chambers of the Year from the real thing. The first few days were a thrill ride as we summarized the Chamber's recent accolades. Obviously the new building and its successful capital campaign would be a strong picture of what our Chamber has accomplished; as well, it would be a must to include the South Central Kentucky Marketing plan and the regional economic development job creation and investment numbers that have resulted. Then there is the fact that 2007 had our largest ever new partner numbers. While the national survey conducted by ACCE shows that chambers our size on average had a 0% increase, our membership growth reached greater than 9%.

Though with all there was to document, it wasn't long before Dana came out of her office with her hand on her forehead and called out across the hallway, "I can't do it! I can't represent everything we've accomplished in partnership (membership) in the past year in 200 words or less. In my five years with the Chamber I've been challenged but nothing ever this hard!"

I laughed. She was right. It was very hard to do! I encouraged her that I had confidence that if we could get the important points down that we had the talent on our team to edit the sections and make it sound even better, yet with less words.

An even greater challenge that I'd found though was that it was really hard to build a picture of what 2007 was like with just accomplishment bullets. I wanted to share the many challenges overcome that really make the victories even greater! Moving from a non-regional economic development approach to a regional one that has advanced beyond our origional plan-- WOW what a story behind that! Locating in a new building sounds neat and simple on paper, but what a month that was! Then there is even so much more that shows the heart and drive of our Chamber; there was no way to strategically worked it all in.

Additionally was the challenge to work such an intense project into a three-week window with everything else currently underway, but we did it! Our application was mailed out Monday (June 2), and now we wait for several weeks to learn if we proceed to the next stage: The Interview.

This project reinforced yet another reason we qualified for Chamber of the Year that is underlying in every synopsis enclosed and all the support material submitted in the five-inch massive binders resulting from the project--the people behind it all. It is much more than words that tell our story, it is the team I work with daily at the Chamber, the board members and volunteers! Here's to an already winning Chamber!

Labels: Chamber of the Year