Any Chamber of commerce members?

[maxryde]

I havn't seen any post's like this so I want to ask "How many folks here are Chamber members?"
My wife has been involved in the COC in our area for a number of years and we attend some of their functions occationally. Last night we went to a "Sotial after work" that was sponcered by the local chamber. I was suprised to be recognized right away by a customer and made a couple of other connections while we were there. We were there for under an hour and had to leave due to a situation that came up. I was happy to make a couple of new connections that was not in the plan when we left the house so....... Any others have this kind of experience?
Scott

[StarQuest]

Scott,

I was a chamber commerce member for 3 years when I owned a local Auto Glass & Accessory shop. I picked up some additional work and referrals through membership but to be honest it wasn't anything to brag about. I soon realized after three years of weekly chamber hour sessions that I was losing more money by attending these meetings than I would have made simply by working my shop for those hours. I don't want to paint black over these commerce meetings because it might work for your area and be benificial to your business. Just didn't happen to work out that way in my location.

[Bois]

I've thought about joining local COC's but there's 4 of them in my market area and that can get expensive. My primary motivator to join my home city's COC is to get listed in their monthly newspaper which is given out free at stores, etc. They list all business members. One a negative note, however, is they will probably want me to devote time or donate funds to various chanmber activities. Like StarQuest says, it's time I could be using to make money.

Dale...

[Coitster]

I used to be a chamber member but no longer. Its really a personal prefferance, I don't do it anymore.
David
Coitster

[WSDSteve]

We belong to the COC, the good thing is most of my business is fleet and most of the dealerships are members of the same COC, when trying to pick up new accounts and they say they use some one else from the City. (several of them didn't even now they were members as corporate pays the membership) I let them know I am from the same COC and our goal is to refer to each other as members. It has worked. The monthly news letter goes out to 758 business members and your add only cost $25.00 for a business size each month. It is a good way to keep your name recognized by the business owners. I do put Member of M COC in my letters to show I am community involved. Went to several meetings and found always the exact same people there. They got to know me but I found it difficult reaching out the paying members only, who go just to list there community involvement and use the Chamber name too.