Chambers of commerce report decline in memberships

The U.S. recession nearly toppled Ventura County’s commercial sector like a row of dominoes in 2009. Employees laid off from their jobs led to a year-end, unprecedented 11.1 percent current unemployment rate; and many retailers and companies, unable to weather the financial strain, subsequently closed their doors.

But that next link in the chain, that figurative glue bonding together the local business community, is also showing signs of economic strain.

Chambers of commerce across Ventura County are reporting that their memberships are down. Weakened not by cancellations but by attrition, more than half of chambers in the county, which serve as outlets for companies to network and enhance their business models, are now looking for new approaches to bring those numbers up again.
In Ventura and Oxnard, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley and beyond, the message is the same: a chamber’s success relies on its clients’ success, and when businesses do poorly, so do their commercial hosts.

The Ventura Chamber of Commerce, for example, boasts a healthy number of members — roughly 850 — but that’s 100 less than at the start of last year.

Randy Hinton, president of the chamber’s board of directors, says the exodus of members is the highest the chamber has experienced in years, at a time when the group is also without an executive director.

“There were businesses that literally closed and disappeared,” says Hinton. “There’s a higher percentage of people who say they don’t have a lot of money. Nonprofits are facing the same thing.”

Oxnard’s chamber of commerce, at about 625 business members, endures a similar ordeal.

“We had a much higher number of businesses that closed or had severe budget cuts than we’ve ever heard of before,” says Executive Director Nancy Lindholm.

In Simi Valley, the local chamber of commerce currently logs 769 members. Approximated, that’s 40 members less than in 2008, according to Leigh Nixon, chamber director.

“For the first time in about the last five years, we ended with a loss in membership,” she said. “The 40 we lost were going out of business, sold their business, all the right reasons. The economy was really tough on some of them. This was a tough year for everyone.”

Even smaller chambers like Port Hueneme’s bear the impact of the economy.

“We’re still getting new members, we’re just not getting as many as we’re losing,” said Kathleen Misewitch, president of that chamber, which logs 160 members.

The Camarillo Chamber of Commerce keeps close track of increases and declines in its membership roster, and over a one-and-a-half-year period, from April 2008 to December 2009, it lost nearly 200 members, according to chamber data. The numbers also reflect six new businesses joining the chamber between October and December of last year.

On the whole, membership is healthy at Camarillo, but with the chamber’s gross total of 600 members as of Jan. 1, it’s still a far cry from just two years prior, when it boasted a total of 783 members in January 2008. That time marked the end of a remarkable, six-year growth period for the chamber, when membership thrived, growing by 51 percent.

The loss of members at the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce isn’t directly the result of retailers or shopkeepers going under.

“We’ve had quite a few businesses close, and some businesses merge,” says Sandra Walker, the chamber’s director of operations. “People are learning to do more with less.”

Consolidating has its benefits, Walker says, because it’s a way for businesses to cut costs and save overhead before dropping their memberships altogether or, in the worst case, shutting their doors when the economy has soured.

Traditionally, chamber membership fees are scaled according to the number of employees in a company.

At least two chambers of commerce in Ventura County are the anomalies and have remained mostly resistant to the poor economic climate. The Thousand Oaks-Westlake Village Regional Chamber of Commerce, the county’s largest, witnessed a slight decline in membership this past year, but its figures remained stable with a directory of more than 1,300 members. Jill Lederer, the chamber’s director, credits the chamber’s success with its regional scope through the Conejo Valley, which also extends to parts of Agoura Hills in Los Angeles County.

The Moorpark Chamber of Commerce was the only chamber to see a marked increase in 2009, according to President Patrick Ellis. Closing out the year with 267 business clients, the chamber gained nine new members.

“Moorpark, because we’re a smaller community, we’re tight knit and supportive of one another here,” Ellis said. “The businesses here have seen quite a bit of support from residents.”

Ellis believes the Moorpark chamber’s embrace of emerging new media influences its success. In the past year, he said, the chamber established a Facebook presence and began publishing a monthly e-mail periodical, along with weekly Web podcasts.

Chambers of commerce, as well as their business clients, need to firm up on their Internet savvy and social Web networking skills to survive into the 21st century, says Ronald Hagler, a business administration professor at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

“In these kinds of economic times, chambers need programs to be more helpful for business,” he said. “Their role should change a bit, and maybe this will re-evaluate chambers to change their role.”

The Camarillo chamber’s role, for one, differed slightly between 1940, when it was founded, and 1965, when the city was incorporated.

“The rumor is, the chamber had run this town,” Walker says.

In 2009, however, Hagler says chambers of commerce need to engage their members in not just social media, but also by holding more seminars and offering more courses on finance and accounting. Another effort that chambers in Ventura County can make, Hagler says, is to find ways to encourage budding entrepreneurs to start a business in spite of the harsh economy.

“With jobs, there’s a total perception now of how much debt we’re in, and that scares the living daylights out of anybody that wants to start a business,” he said.

Neither the Ojai nor Gold Coast Hispanic chambers of commerce returned phone calls for this story.    

paul@vcreporter.com