This week we held our annual offsite meeting for our Board of Trustees – this is my third one since I started in my role at the Chamber and each year I have left feeling proud of the good work the Chamber team has done and energized for the year to come. While we will officially celebrate our victories and lay the course for next year at our 142nd Annual Meeting in September, here is some of what we shared with the board.

From the big-picture perspective, I am feeling proud of three things:

First is bringing more alignment to our community. We know from our work and our research the voters are aligned with each other both on the most pressing issues and on all of the above solutions. Voters and businesses are also aligned on those issues and solutions as well as on the importance of a healthy downtown Seattle economy for our own personal economic health. And elected leaders more and more are aligned with both voters and employers. To me, it means the time will never be better to address challenges, seize opportunities, and leave it all on the field to support a thriving regional economy.

Second, is upping our game operationally here at the Chamber. How we track and manage our systems and processes, operations, planning, and performance internally is a factor in how well we deliver externally. We’ve been doing better and better in this work.

And third, is meeting the goals and metrics we set for ourselves as a Chamber. When it comes to the numbers, everything we want to be up is up – like our media hits and event attendance, which hit nearly 8,000 event registrants this year. Everything we want to be down is down like employee turnover and canceled members – cancellations are the lowest we’ve seen in more than five years.

When it comes to our members and your engagement with our work, we know that if you aren’t seeing the value, you don’t stay involved. The good news? By all our proof points, you are seeing the value! Here’s some of our accomplishments by the numbers:

  • We have a 90% membership retention rate (most chambers our size average about 85%), our membership dues retention is at 95% (most chambers average about 90%), and the Chamber is tracking to hit over 400 new members this year.
  • Two of the levies we endorsed and worked to pass at the ballot did so handily – the Seattle housing levy passed with nearly 70% of the vote, and the King County Crisis Care levy passed with 56% of the vote.
  • Our Community Business Connector program engaged more than 825 small businesses through the program – and 78% of this outreach activity was with BIPOC- and women-owned businesses.
  • Chamber staff completed more than six hours of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging training, and we conducted our first employee engagement survey with 95% of employees saying they agree or strongly agree they know how their work impacts our organizational goals.
  • We released two installments of our public opinion research, The Index, and had over 100 media hits on the results.
  • We featured 223 members on stage at events and programming and took over 250 members on trips around the world.

We had big wins in the policy arena as well:

  • We created a racial equity rubric to evaluate policies and priorities for their impact on racial equity and for their alignment with Chamber values and priorities – and we’ve used it while considering three ballot measures.
  • In Olympia, we successfully opposed an effort for state government to seize unused gift card balances, which would have negatively impacted consumers and businesses; we worked in coalition to beat back an effort to repeal the state’s moratorium on rent control, which we know reduces housing demand; and we kept a proposal to provide unemployment insurance for striking workers at bay because those benefits are for people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
  • Regionally, we saw the passage of the implementation plan for the Crisis Care Levy, we hired a new CEO for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and light rail finally came to the Eastside, with the 2 Line opening in Bellevue and Redmond and in fewer than 50 days, light rail will finally open in Snohomish County.
  • And in Seattle, we were successful in advocating for the Mayor and Council to pass an ordinance to improve recruitment and retention within the Seattle Police Department, pass land use changes to aid in downtown revitalization, and include all our priorities in the City of Seattle’s transportation levy, which will be on the ballot this fall.

In our work to be your advocate, I’m optimistic about new leaders, and optimistic about solving problems – and you can read more about that in my latest op-ed in The Seattle Times. 

And we do this work on behalf of you, our amazing members. I hope you can join us at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 14 for our Member Appreciation Reception at The Canal in Ballard. This is a free event for members and a party at the Ballard Locks is a great way to spend a summer evening.

I can’t wait to tell you even more about what your Chamber has been up to – so please join me at our 142nd Annual Meeting from 3:00-5:30 p.m. on Sep. 12 at The Westin Seattle. You will love our new later program with cocktail-style networking. I look forward to raising a glass to celebrate you and our business community.

Cheers!

Rachel