Support Your Chamber of Commerce

By Blaine Lam

When I went into business a little more than 20 years ago, almost literally the first thing I did was join the Chamber of Commerce. Not exactly sure why, really, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Still does.

Then again, I’m not much more sure now than I was then why I belong.

It’s kind of a protection thing, I suppose, knowing there’s a fear among business people that not everyone fully appreciates our point of view. In all likelihood, that’s the same reason certain employed groups, like unions and guilds, hang together.

As much as anybody -- and more than most -- I’ve had the opportunity to see the inner workings of the Kalamazoo Regional Chamber of Commerce over these past four decades. I maxed out on terms serving on the Board of Directors, co-founded Leadership Kalamazoo, led the first class, and chaired that board; chaired the Transportation Committee for something like 10 years; emceed Percolator Club for at least five; and served as interim chief executive of the Chamber once and then its one-time subsidiary, the Convention & Visitors Bureau.

I’ve seen about every combination of programmatic efforts at the Chamber, ranging from a full spectrum of services to the lineup today, which no longer includes staff support for business attraction, tourist attraction, KAAAP, Jeters Leaders, SCORE, or federal business procurement.

In some ways, the Chamber might be seen as the Rodney Dangerfield of the business community -- no respect -- but in other ways it might be more important than it has ever been.

But first a little history.

Strip away all else from Kalamazoo County history and two giants stand alone: W.E. Upjohn and Homer Stryker. We’ll write about Dr. Stryker another day, but the civic ingeniousness of W.E. Upjohn was just something to behold.

He helped bring us our current form of government and served as our first mayor under it. He founded the Kalamazoo Foundation, built the Civic Theatre and created other cool stuff along the way, notably the Upjohn Company. W.E. founded our Chamber of Commerce.

For all we know, he did it to protect us from people like himself -- business tycoons (a term used affectionately here) who could dominate local politics.

Upjohn, Kindleberger, Parfet, Brown and other big names in business around here didn’t happen to be the kind of people who wanted to impose their will on the town. To the contrary, they did what they could to let others help them serve the public good. In other words, the 800-pound gorillas have been tame.

While fights with 800-pound gorillas weren’t a problem as the business community matured, the Chamber did find itself in the middle of things it had a hard time handling.

Fifty years ago, for instance, businesspeople took note of the schism between the interests of downtown merchants and the rest of the business community, and it was the newly formed Downtown Kalamazoo Association that led the charge to build the nation’s first downtown mall.

Those classic divides have continued to be a problem, as business interests have found themselves at odds over taxes (big business vs. small business), unemployment insurance (positive-based vs. negative-based), incentives (new vs. existing), zoning, planning, urban sprawl and so on.

The issue, of course, is how to represent diverse interests and stay relevant.

The battle for relevance peaked three years ago and had this Chamber looking for a new chief executive and a new mountain to climb. Considering where the political muscle is around these parts, choosing to rally the state behind a part-time legislature was an odd choice. Indeed, they picked one too steep and now appear ready to head off in a new programmatic direction.

Workforce development would be good guess, tried and true as it is, but the infrastructure of do-goodism on the employee-development front is pretty solid, so don’t look for any major breakthroughs.

So, what’s a Chamber to do?

Well, the danger of an 800-pound, ill-mannered gorilla is always out there. So are the threats of elements in the society that think profit is a four-letter word.

It may sound obvious that a membership organization, first and foremost, should be looking for ways to bring its members together. That hits you like a ton of bricks when you play in the Chamber golf outing. Business networking is no minor feat and the Chamber has the license.

You gotta love the Young Professionals group growing up out of the Chamber, and Leadership Kalamazoo, 20 years later, is one of the strongest networks going. It makes sense, too, to build more activity around a broad-based “business friendly” agenda that includes education, transportation, taxation and public policy, regulation and the environment. Professional development might make sense as well.

In any event, when a Chamber is healthy it is the glue that holds the business community together. When a Chamber is humming, so to speak, it is the voice of the business community.

To its credit, with an outstanding board, this Chamber has been working to get healthy, and hopes to hum.

So, support your local Chamber of Commerce. Visit their Web site and find ways to become involved.