BV Chamber comes back from the red
Members rally to pay debt
The Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce is back in the black month-to-month and expects to soon wipe out the balance of its $55,000 debt.
But more than that, says turnaround specialist and the chamber's acting Executive Director Joseph Deliso, BVCC is gaining renewed momentum from members stepping up to support it during tough times.
"It's fired up peoples' commitment to having a viable chamber," Deliso said of members' reaction to a year of difficulties that culminated in the meltdown of the chamber's key fundraising event, the Celtic Festival, last summer.
The chamber lost $70,000 when the event was rained out and its insurer refused to cover the loss. That, on top of the chamber "doing more than it could afford" in programming over the past two years, according to Deliso, depleted the chamber's reserves and left it with a debt of $55,000 between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2006.
Emergency fund drive
But chamber members and event suppliers have rallied to help wipe out the debt and rebuild the chamber, Deliso said.
Companies contributed $19,000 to the chamber through an emergency fund drive started in September. Suppliers of the Celtic Festival also forgave some $10,000 in debt, Deliso said, after he visited each one. And, he said, the group secured a $25,000 grant from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
In addition, the chamber is launching a membership drive in June in hopes of beefing up its members, from about 450 to 600 by June 2008.
BVCC is not yet ready to hire a permanent executive director but will do so soon, Deliso said. In the meantime, it has pared operating expense by cutting its staff from four to two. Deliso, who helps manufacturers turn their operations around as owner of Blackstone Management & Consulting of Sutton, technically works for the chamber one week a month, though he and other members said he puts in far more time than that.
Chamber President Joseph Barbato Jr., president and CEO of Millbury Federal Credit Union, credited Deliso's expertise and changes on the chamber board with revitalizing the group in the past four months. The chamber should never have run the cultural festival, Barbato said. It is now trying to get back to serving its predominately small business membership with networking and services.
Both Barbato and Deliso pointed to strong turn out at the chamber's annual business expo, held March 3 in Northboro, as a sign that the organization is drawing support. The event attracted a record 103 exhibitors, compared with 72 last year, and some 5,000 attendees, Deliso said.
Skimming the trees
Not everyone is convinced the chamber is out of the financial woods yet, however.
"I would say that they've pulled out of the nosedive but they're still skimming the trees," said former Chamber President Lee Gaudette, owner of Whitinsville-based Gaudette Insurance Agency. Gaudette says the chamber board, on which he served until last year, did not do well in handling the transition to a new executive director in 2004 after the departure of longtime Executive Director Marty Green. It waited too long to fill the spot and did not make the right choice in naming Jeff Ritter to the spot, he said. Ritter resigned in August 2006 after less than one year in the job.
Gaudette disagrees that the expo turnout reflects chamber momentum, saying it is well attended because it is in its ninth year. Still, he concluded, "I think we're going to be OK."
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