Ignite Your Chamber Membership

Ignite Your Membership

The Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce is fortunate to have dedicated members that continue to invest in this region through membership renewal. Our membership retention rate of 90 percent far exceeds the national average. However, The Chamber never ceases to increase member benefits and services. 
Your investment allows the Chamber to carry out programs and initiatives that help make the Cedar Rapids region a better place for all who live and work here. Through your involvement with The Chamber, you have the opportunity to be part of the dynamics that change, improve and grow the community.
Make the most of your partnership and review our many benefits which include tools such as networking, marketing, publications, sponsorships, and involvement.
Take advantage of your elite benefits on a daily basis; make it part of your business plan.
Everything listed is INCLUDED in your membership!

·         Listing in Online Membership Directory

·         Listing in the Greater Cedar Rapids Community & Business Guide

·         Referral Services

·         Free coupon listings

·         New Member listing in Chamber Report

·         Ribbon Cutting or Anniversary Celebration Services

·         Event Postings on Our Community Calendar

·         Relocation Packets

·         Chamber Meeting Room Usage

·         Business Networking Opportunities

·         Registered Lobbyist

·         Legislative Updates Throughout the Year

·         Membership Window Decal

·         Discounted advertising opportunity

·         Weekly Chamber Email

·         Monthly Chamber Report

·         Discounts for Chamber Events (per employee)

·         U.S. Chamber Membership

·         Utilization of Chamber staff expertise, resources & connections

Maximize your investment by engaging multiple employees within your organization.  As a member, every individual within your company is also a member. Determine ways to grow, advance and expand your own business by involving employees in the various chamber programming opportunities.
As a Chamber member you join 1,300 other members representing more than 75,000 employees, allowing the Chamber to be an advocate for business in our region.  The Chamber works relentlessly to unite businesses, amplify the voice of our members and ignite opportunities that power a thriving community.
We welcome the chance to work with you on the important issues that will shape our region's future prosperity -- from legislative to small business growth, and from downtown revitalization to community development.
The Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and staff are dedicated to facilitating community leadership to create economic prosperity. That leadership begins with you, our members.

DID YOU KNOW?

Most consumers (59%) think being active in a local chamber of commerce is an effective business strategy overall.

Consumers are 12 percent more likely to think the products of a highly involved chamber member stack up better against its competition.

When consumers know that a small business is a member of the chamber of commerce, they are 44 percent more likely to think favorably of it and 63 percent more likely to purchase goods or services from the company in the future.

When a consumer thinks a company’s products stack up better against the competition because the company is highly involved in its local chamber of commerce it is because he/she infers that the company is:

·                     trustworthy,

·                     involved in the community; and

·                     is an industry leader

Source: Shapiro Study

PLANNING SUCCESS

As the Chamber works to unite businesses, amplify the voice of our members and ignite opportunities that power a thriving community, a number of initiatives have begun in our community to create an innovative culture that will drive measurable results. Stemmed from the three-year strategic plan launched last fall, the Chamber has played a distinctive role in the economic vitality of our region, requiring innovation in organizational structure, partnerships and programming. In February, The Chamber hosted award-winning speaker, Sarah Miller Caldicott, to share with the community the details from her years of research and her book Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America’s Greatest Inventor. Sarah offered step-by-step guidance on how to harness ones own innovation potential. A great grandniece of Thomas Edison and his second wife Mina Miller Edison, Sarah brought to the forefront a term that has been used in multiple conversations since: “dense networks.”

Dense networks are crucial for driving change, virtually any kind of change. Thomas Edison used dense networks extensively to drive innovation during the Industrial Revolution. Dense networks can be leveraged today to bring about change in a company or community. As a next step, The Chamber implemented a series of workshops for individuals interested in creating positive change in our community by attending leadership workshops facilitated by The Pacific Institute. Individuals committed to participating in both session 1 and  session 2 of the designed workshops, create a dense network in our community, which result in faster and more effective change accomplishing our community’s vision plan. To-date, nearly 70 people have participated in the training opportunity; attendees not only improve their own area of personal effectiveness in such areas as leadership effectiveness but understand how they can build effective and positive cultures in their organization and their community.

In June, nearly 20 individuals attended facilitator training offered by Pacific Institute; another step towards creating an adaptive culture for our community. By building our own community facilitators, we have the ability to expand our dense networks into the necessary segments that will assist in creating positive change and economic vitality in our community.

The reason for this extensive training is to change the culture in our community. Culture drives performance not only within a company but also in a community. As our region has researched other successful innovative regions around the nation it has been apparent that the successful community has an adaptive culture.

“An adaptive culture entails a risk-taking, trusting and pro-active approach to organizational as well as individual life. Members actively support one another's efforts to identify all problems and implement workable solutions. There is a shared feeling of confidence: the members believe, without doubt, that they can manage whatever new problems and opportunities will come their way. There is widespread enthusiasm, a spirit of doing whatever it takes to achieve organizational success within the limits of their agreed values and what is collectively agreed to be ethical behavior. The members are receptive to change and innovation.” Professor John P Kotter and Dr Jame L Heskett Corporate Culture and Performance Free Press 1992 

What can you expect?

After participating in the program individuals have greater expectations of success, more self-belief and more self-esteem; they are more willing to challenge the status quo, and to provide inspiring and inclusive leadership. This new sense of confidence has a direct correlation to the desire to also impact a positive change in our community.

After completing the workshop individuals will have:

. Higher levels of motivation
. Improved problem solving and innovative thinking
. More commitment to organizational/community goals
. Measurable improvements against targets
. Increased accountability at all levels
. Transform downward spirals into springboards for success
. Better team functioning
. Attain goals that were once out of reach
 

This curriculum affects not only the individual, but the family, workplace, community and much more.

Progress is already being made in our community and the desire to shift our community’s culture is taking hold. This initiative looks to create the following:

. A constructive culture will dramatically outperform defensive cultures
. Strategy needs the support of culture
. Leaders create culture
 

The Chamber will continue its initiative to drive an innovative culture in order ignite opportunities and power a thriving a community. By implementing the sound principals for success with leaders throughout the community the result will translate into results including the implementation of our community’s vision.

Chamber Attended Big Omaha 2011

As the Chamber looks to encourage and support an entrepreneurial ecosystem a trip was made to experience Big Omaha by Chamber staff May 18-20.  Big Omaha is a relatively young event created only three years ago but in that short time the sold out event brings together more than 600 people from over 20 states and 3 countries and a long waiting list of attendee hopefuls.  The fast-paced, high energy event features a line-up of nearly 20 keynote speakers including experienced entrepreneurs, writers and developers, entrepreneurial support organizations and more.

Big Omaha’s tagline: “The nation’s most ambitious conference on innovation and entrepreneurship.” The intent is to provide inspiration, energy, drive and motivation to attendees that can return home and launch the idea(s) they have only been thinking of. 

Memorable Quotes:

• “Entrepreneurship is happening all over, but it's not surfaced and made known like the Valley. We need to bring it to the surface in places like Omaha. It’s less obvious here and needs to be drawn out. That is our hope,” Erich Broksas, Startup American Partnership.
• “For the first time ever your ears matter more than your mouth,” Gary Vaynerchuk, VaynerMedia.
•  “The answer is always no — 100 percent of the time — if you don’t ask,” Shervin Pishevar, Social Gaming Network.
• "This is the time to fix the broken immigration system in our country because you can’t talk about entrepreneurship and innovation without acknowledging the very real point that from 1995-2005, well over 25 percent of all of the startups in the United States were founded by immigrant entrepreneurs," Aneesh Chopra, United States CTO.

The conference is produced by Silicon Prairie News. Silicon Prairie News exists to highlight and support the burgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem on the Silicon Prairie. With the goal of connecting, educating and inspiring individuals, Silicon Prairie News produces regular events, such as Big Omaha and has a hand in planning many more events throughout the year. Learn more at SiliconPrairieNews.com/about

The Power of Open Networks

The concept of open networks is a fairly new business model however open networks is transforming how companies develop new product and service ideas. Companies utilizing open networks use external ideas as well as internal ideas to advance technologies. P&G claims that more than 35 percent of its new product ideas now come from outside the company. Companies can no longer rely entirely on their own resources to stay competitive in today’s global economy. The successes come from better ideas and innovative thinking developed from collaboration that transcends the boundaries of the company itself. This same concept can be used to transcend our region into a place where people want to live, companies want to locate and from which globally relevant ideas spring. 

The benefits of open networks can be used to create significant improvements in our entrepreneurial ecosystem. As we look to other cities that have a culture of innovation within their community, key words such as collaboration, networks (both dense and open), and inclusive mindsets continue to be a mantra expressed by all cities with a thriving innovative culture.

As our region looks to create and implement collaborative spaces that will provide an inclusive environment to share ideas and concepts, everyone has the potential to benefit.  Establishing a network that is inclusive, open and welcoming enables individuals interested in developing a new concept the opportunity to connect with others in the community willing to make linkages and open doors. By having an open network environment and creating valuable connections for start-ups will reduce the amount of time an individual can go from idea to product launch.

The old saying “It’s all about who you know” still rings true in some form. The goal is to allow everyone an easy-to-navigate roadmap to the right people willing to collaborate and connect.