In my first nine months serving the Worthington Area Chamber as your Executive Director, the Board of Trustees and I have worked tirelessly to ensure our Chamber moves forward while creating increased value to you.
Through our efforts and hearing from our member businesses who invest in our Chamber, we identified many areas that needed our attention. From creating a user-friendly website to our database upgrades, we have made great strides.
We heard from our members that we needed to strengthen our communications. As a result, we designed a regular communication schedule to feature our monthly Events Bulletin (first week of the month) and Chamber Corner Newsletter (third Thursday of the month). *If you haven’t seen these check your spam folder or update your online account.
Another area we knew we must address was our membership structure. We heard about confusion over levels and realized an a la cart pricing structure for marketing features and fees to join special networks was not the way to show value on your investment with our Chamber.
Beginning Monday, July 11th we are going to make changes to our current structure in a few ways that includes a $30 price increase to our smallest of businesses and other small price increases. This will be the first time we have increased our rates in the past ten years. We will also combine some membership levels adjusting pricing a little more and we will define some of the more confusing details related to some of our levels. In doing so, we will provide you with access to many new features as part of this price increase. This price increase and access to the new features will begin at the time of your next renewal date.
With the price increase you’ll gain:
- FREE marketing enhancements to your online listing like:
- Upload your logo (currently $25)
- Post photos ($25))
- Unlimited keywords ($25)
- Locator map ($25)
- FREE participation in special networks like:
- Women’s Business Network (currently $25)
- Young Professionals of Worthington ($15)
- Small Business Roundtable ($30)
- FREE opportunities to share information:
- Job listings on our website
- Office space for rent on our website
- Community events on our website
- Business to business deals in our online member portal
These added features not only help tell your business’ story it allows you to reach a diverse audience. Our website nets nearly 7,000 visits a month, which directly helps increase your SEO and visibility in Google searches for your online listing with us, especially for our smaller businesses.
Our promise to you:
We are going to lock in this pricing for the next two years with no additional increases. In doing so, we will work with our Board and member businesses to aggressively seek out ways to make our membership structure more inclusive and straightforward for you and our business community. With the goal to roll that structure out after our two-year promise.
What if I don’t want to pay the increase?
We understand that this can come as a shock and that budgets are tight. So, in full transparency and fairness to you, we will allow any business who doesn’t want to pay the increase to have the option to lock in your current rate for one more year.
Please, contact us at connect@worthingtonchamber.org or by phone at (614) 888-3040 before end of day on Friday, July 8th. We will make a note at your renewal that you requested the price lock for one more year. In doing so, these businesses will not have access to the free features and will pay the new price in year #2.
We want to hear from you!
It is our Chamber promise that we will continue our relentless pursuit of offering dynamic, relevant business resources to you and your team. As we do so, we encourage you to please reach out. We will be hosting many opportunities to tell our Chamber about your business needs and ways we can best serve you.
- June 28th: Chamber Day – Join us between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. in our parking lot to grab lunch from a food truck on site, learn about Chamber events and benefits and connect with area business leaders over cornhole and other outdoor activities. Visit our Event page.
- June 30th: Discovery 315 – Set up a 15-minute virtual one-on-one meeting with Matt as we ask you three questions:
- What’s the current state of your business in 2022?
- How can the Chamber best support you NOW?
- Going forward, what ways can the Chamber help you do business?
Visit our event page to learn more and to set up your time now so we can hear from you about your business!
- July 13th: Discovery 315 – We’ll host a second opportunity to discover more ways to support you and your business. Visit our event page.
- TBD: Meet Up with Matt: We are currently scheduling morning and afternoon Meet Ups for late June, July and August. Stay tuned.
The New Membership Structure:
1-2 Employees $235
3-9 Employees $255
10-15 Employees $305
16-25 Employees $335
26-50 Employees $420
51-99 Employees $580
100-500 Employees $710
501+ Employees $830
Other Memberships:
Real Estate Agent $145
Same-Owner Business $145
Volunteer-Led Nonprofit $130
Civic Organization $130
Retiree $55
**There will be no changes made to our Sustaining levels at this time.**
Definitions of:
*An individual is a person not associated with a member business and could be a greater Worthington resident, retiree, etc.
*All levels include full marketing benefits for the online listing, along with availability to special Chamber cost-savings benefits and member-only pricing/ marketing opportunities.
As our Chamber continues to make changes and enhancements, we hope that you'll help us move our Chamber forward. Together we can work to give a strong voice to our business community and can continue to grow our local economy. Please, give us your input every step of the way. Email or call our office, follow and engage with us across our social media platforms and join us at our events.
We will continue to work hard to support our business members and will always continue to do business the Worthington Way!
Matt Lofy
Executive Director
Worthington Area Chamber