The New Year will usher in dynamic efforts on the part of Newtown’s Chamber of Commerce to better serve both new and existing members according to its current president.

Chamber leader Tim Haas sat down with The Newtown Bee in late October to talk about the local business support and promotions agency, its expanding efforts to attract new members, and plans to diversify and specialize certain areas of support through newly seated or strategic committees with expertise specific to certain member business types.

“Our most active core members have been really busy working on ways to improve the chamber’s relevance to the community while becoming more engaged politically, socially, and economically,” Mr Haas said.

Mr Haas said that committees will no longer act and strive to achieve results in isolation. They will be taking up initiatives that our membership wants to pursue and working to solve those challenges.”

He believes that expanded level of communication will allow the chamber to engage, and recruit the broader business community for their input and support.

“Participants will see their efforts recognized and publicized, so that the community and our peers will know who the movers and shakers are in Newtown,” he said, reading from a memo outlining the organization’s new mission and goals.

While an ongoing search continues for a part-time executive director, Mr Haas said the chamber and its members will be meeting and hearing from their new office manager Renya Marini, wife of chamber vice president and local restaurateur Angelo Marini of Sal e Pepe.

Local businesses, from some of Newtown’s largest commercial employers to home-based entrepreneurs, will also be hearing from chamber representatives in the coming months about giving the organization a try.

“Our board is recommitted to being more active on the recruiting front,” Mr Haas said. “At the same time, we’re looking at matching existing members with specific expertise to related businesses in town. With this new focus, we’ll be providing greater value to members in exchange for their dues.“

The chamber is also planning to assign specific members to participate in committees focusing on certain areas of town like Sandy Hook and Hawleyville, which are both undergoing commercial transformations.

“The face of our chamber locally really needs to be broadened,” Mr Haas said. “We’ve had a pretty steady core membership of about 300, but I’m hoping to see that number increase to about 500 by the end of next year.”

New Member ‘Churn’

The chamber official said that many core members have been with the chamber for quite awhile.

But with new businesses opening and closing, he is seeing way to much “churn“ among members who sign on and then let their membership lapse after their first year - at exactly the time when they could be taking advantage of support services and networking that can help them survive that critical second year.

“Newtown has a lot of retail and service businesses, as well as home-based enterprises that can get a huge amount of value and exposure through our networking events,” he said. Among those events was a recent and hugely successful golf tournament.

At the same time, Mr Haas believes every business owner or local business leader can help the chamber do its job better, whether that person is a member or not.

“If any local business person sees something they think our chamber can do better — anything we might be able to improve on — or something they can offer in terms of advice, I want to hear from them,” Mr Haas said.

Part of the chamber’s updated mission statement ties these concepts together:

“We value quality products, honest service, fair-dealing, and we especially value the trust our community, our customers, clients and vendors place in us. We return this favor by continuous improvement toward best-in-class practices, across all areas of retail, creative arts, service, and manufacturing.

“We favor all member businesses in their unique and diverse endeavors, who actively support our values, and who do their best to understand the market and create value for our community. We believe the market opportunity in Newtown and northern Fairfield County is broad enough and wide enough so that all members who commit to this community, can thrive and become successful.”

In The Works

Among the other member service enhancement in the works are:

*The new Public Relations Committee will establish a Chamber Business Newsletter distributed to all membership. The newsletter will help committees solicit input, request help and support, and allow them to publicize their results to all chamber members. 

*Government Relations Committee members will coordinate with the municipal government to share information and activities that impact the business community. This would include providing a liaison to the Economic Development Commission.

*Public Relations is a new committee focusing on promoting chamber members, committee activities and results, and chamber events and  helping the Events Committee, liaisons, and board to get word out through print and social media.It will also provide input for important information into monthly chamber newsletter and to post on the chamber website.

*The Finance Committee will be headed by the chamber’s treasurer, and will review revenue and expenses. This panel will be responsible for setting dues, compensation, vendor agreements, etc.

*An Events Committee will coordinate and implement different events to benefit chamber members, and may have subchairs and volunteers for specific major events — Chili Cook-offs, Martini Madness, Summer BBQ, etc.

Anyone interested in learning more about the Newtown Chamber, or with comments about what they would like to see in the organization, can contact Mr Haas directly at 203-304-9689, or visit newtown-ct.com.

Newtown Chamber of Commerce President Tim Haas told The Newtown Bee he and the existing chamber leadership have dynamic plans to steer the organization’s efforts toward attracting new members, as well as better serving all members through new, industry or event-focused committees.