The Chamber is looking to maximize your investment in the Chamber and help you get connected, enhance your visibility in the community, and help you support the community in which you've chosen to work or live. 

Every year in November the Chamber Board of Directors meet for an all-day retreat to discuss the Chamber in review and also choose priorities for the coming year.  The Chamber constantly re-evaluates its programming to make sure we're providing the best possible value for your membership dollars.  Here are a few of the major initiatives we'll be working on in 2011... 

• Tourism Initiative - we began this in earnest in July of 2008 with the passing of a room tax.  Having a long-term, sustainable stream of funds has allowed us to approach visitor promotion in a way that was not possible previously.  We are excited about this project and the impact it can have on our community.
•  Buy Local Campaign - In this economy it is vitally important that everyone know what resources are available in our community.  We will continue to work with GO Kids Day to inform and educate the community and provide value to member businesses through coupons, hot deals and other special promotions.  
• Strengthen Board/Ambassador Connection – The Chamber Ambassadors are the goodwill and retention arm of the Chamber.  The 20+ Ambassadors visit over 20 businesses a year, hand-deliver our membership directories and organize our annual golf outing.  Our priority this year is to strengthen that connection to ensure that the Ambassadors have the tools they need to continue to serve the Chamber and the business community.  New programs include a "new member bag" and personal visit to new businesses in town, a special Ambassador page on our website and other items! 
• Plus lots of networking and other events - We have all of our usual suspects lined up – networking events (Annual Dinner, Golf Tourney, Business After Hours, Chamber Coffees, Business Breakfasts), community events, Chamber seminars, leadership program, and more. We are big fans of incremental improvement so look for little changes that make all of these events even better.

Of course, we couldn’t do all of this without the time and talent donations of many, many volunteers.  With just two full-time staff we simply would not be able to accomplish this without all of you, our members.  Thank you to all that contribute their time, energy and talent to making these things happen.  Together we can do so much more than each of us can do individually and I’m looking forward to working with ALL of you this year to accomplish great things.

Please let us know how we help you succeed this year - we'd love to hear from you.

This past year saw many successes for the Chamber as well.  Just a few of the highlights include: 

• Business Expo - We created this event to showcase our local business community.  We had over 50 businesses participate and well over 750 community members attend and see what our local business community has to offer.  It was a fun, interactive event and we heard many positive comments from both community and business members. 
• Community Events - Every year we have several community events, most notably River Falls Days and Town N’ Country Day.  These events draw residents and visitors into town and increases the economic activity in the area.  While they are in town, they may have lunch, fill their tanks with gas, hit the ATM machine and do some shopping – all of this is good for our business community.  Last year, we moved Town N’ Country Day to a new location (Heritage Park).  With this new location we were able to get even more businesses involved and were able to expand our event to include more activities.  We were also able to help promote the grand opening of the new City Hall building.  It was a great partnership.
• Downtown Committee – A strong downtown is an important part of our community and this committee has been very active this year in promoting the downtown area.  This committee is made up of local business owners and they are continually looking for ways to keep our Main Street as a viable, fun place to do business.