Chamber surpasses goal for new members

Fort Scott, Kan. -- The Fort Scott Area Chamber of Commerce recently completed the largest membership drive on record, recruiting 112 new members during a three-day period last week, chamber officials said Friday.

The chamber membership drive, which took place Nov. 6-7, was conducted in an attempt to drastically increase the chamber's current membership so that an even greater number of chamber representatives would be available to lobby in the future for locally important issues in Topeka, officials said.

After the first day of the drive, chamber members were about halfway toward their original goal of 101 new members, FSACC President and CEO Gary Emry said.

"They (numbers) simply blew me away," Emry said. "After day one, we had 48 new members, so I thought after two days we'd end up somewhere in the 60 to 75 range, but they just kept coming in."

Emry said this year's drive was the largest in chamber history and the largest since the chamber recruited about 70 new members about six years ago.

The addition of 112 new members for a community the size of Fort Scott, and the relatively low number of chamber members -- about 80 members -- who participated in the drive, is an astounding achievement, Emry said.

"What that number (new members) tells me is that the population in general, and the business community, believes in what the chamber is doing and are supportive of that, especially with numbers like this," he said. "With the low numbers (of people) involved, we did an outstanding job."

The drive officially concluded Thursday with a dinner and awards ceremony that also featured the announcement of the total number of new members. With the new additions, the chamber membership now stands at 441 members. The size of the current chamber in Fort Scott is not viewed as small when compared to chambers in other Southeast Kansas towns and communities that are similar in population to Fort Scott, Emry said.

About 80 chamber members, who were broken up into six teams -- with four or five members on each team -- before the drive began, called prospective members and also met with several people face-to-face to visit with them about joining the chamber.

Each team member had a goal of recruiting at least one new member.

"You had to know people who could go out and get at least one," chamber member and team chairwoman Jean Jackson said.

Jackson said team members worked two separate shifts on Tuesday, and two shifts on Wednesday covering all of Fort Scott and Bourbon County.

"It was a wonderful event," Jackson said. "It was real successful."

Each team also had captains and chairpersons who appointed members of their respective teams. The goal of each team was to explain to prospective members how the chamber can help their businesses. Only people who already had some sort of business or professional relationship with the chamber were contacted, officials said.

The drive used to be an annual event, but chamber officials now plan to conduct one every few years.

The chamber used a recruitment agency in Texas called Your Chamber Connection that helps chambers of all sizes in several different states to recruit new members.

The national average in terms of recruitment in chambers of commerce across the United States, is 2.5 new chamber members per volunteer. Volunteer members in Fort Scott exceeded that average during this year's drive, netting an average of 2.9 new members per volunteer, even outdoing membership drives in some of the nation's larger cities, Emry said.

New members include a blend of agriculure businesses and farmers, other businesses, individuals, and former businesspeople, he said.