From sponsorships to rental fees for Fourth of July event booths, the Wrangell Chamber of Commerce is doing what it can to make sure the organization no longer operates at a deficit.
In a work session on March 24, chamber leadership looked at various ways to raise funds and cut costs where possible.
“Basically, we’re trying to break even,” said chamber board of directors president Bill Burr. “The chamber has been running in the red for quite some time. We can’t. We’re at a point where breaking even is fine, but we can’t go backward.”
The purpose of the chamber is to promote and support its business members, and running in the red is not a good way to run a business. “We want to act in best accordance,” Burr said.
As such, the board members and chamber staff will look at ways to cut costs but also raise funds. One way will be to rent booth space for events, particularly the Fourth of July celebration that draws crowds to Wrangell. Space will run $25 a day for no amenities where people provide their own tent, $50 if they borrow a tent from the chamber, or $100 for space in the pavilion, said Brittani Robbins, executive director of the chamber. Parade entries will cost $5 each.
The fees will take effect this year.
“That’s a typical thing nationwide,” she said. “Like Bill (Burr) pointed out in the last budget meeting, this chamber has been in a spending-saving deficit for six years. If we continue to do that without bringing in any sort of income, there’s no way there can even continue to be a Fourth of July (celebration).”
In order to continue such events, she said, there have to be changes.
As of this week, the chamber has about $34,000 total in all its accounts, Robbins estimated.
Burr said the chamber has to evaluate the services it offers and do away with the things that have no benefit to the chamber.
“We’re looking at things the chamber does that it puts time and administration into that has nothing come back, like Tax Free Day … there isn’t anything that comes back to the chamber,” he said. “It takes us time and money to run it.”
“Tax Free Day Doesn’t benefit us or the city,” Robbins said. “We facilitate it, the city agrees to it, and the businesses get the rewards from it.”
Fundraisers like the annual chamber dinner and king salmon derby typically pay for themselves. If sponsors can be secured for various events, it would help offset any costs associated with each one. Robbins said she’s already had the cruise line company Royal Caribbean Group reach out, asking if there are events it can sponsor.
She said they will also need to raise membership fees, which the chamber did in 2022 and will do again in 2024.
“We don’t have the capacity in our business sector … to fund the chamber unless we triple our membership dues,” she said.
Currently, dues are $260 a year for a small business with at least one employee and $150 for a proprietor with no employees.
Another avenue that’s been kicked around but not explored too much is merging the chamber with the visitor bureau, which is what Petersburg and other communities in Southeast have done, Robbins said.
Burr said there will be changes to events, such as what prizes are awarded, but the chamber will continue to offer what it can.
“There’s got to be something to offset, again, that break-even mentality at a minimum,” he said. “We still want to provide the things that we do, Fourth of July being the biggest one, of course.”
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