I spent the last four days in San Francisco and the bay area at the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce business and leadership conference. I was there representing the local Austin chamber. It was a little overwhelming, as the Austin chamber is the smallest among those attending. I know we're not the smallest in the country, but apparently we're the smallest that could afford to send representatives.
What some of these other chambers are doing is incredible! The Greater Seattle Business Alliance was the largest with over 900 members and still growing... which is simply amazing to me. Granted, they have more population than Austin, but not ten times as many people! I really hope we can model some of what they've done, as well as the chambers in San Diego and Phoenix, among others.
However, I do think that there's at least one thing that the Austin chamber can be the best at... and that is have an amazing website! I'm currently in the process of rebuilding the site, and based on some of what I heard at the conference, I'm going to build in a lot of functionality. We may not be able to compete on size because of our smaller population, but I bet we can beat them in website success!
Also, The majority of the other chambers pay a website company to manage their website. This is insanity to me. Besides being a way to give back to the community, being the webmaster for our local chamber is a real vote of confidence in my company. I would jump at the chance of providing website services to another chamber... and let them spend their limited funds supporting the LGBT business community, not filling the pocketbooks of a member business.
I feel the same way about charitable organizations. In fact, Site Street's initial business focus back in 1997 was to support non-profit organizations. Our very first customer was a Catholic convent in Northern California. Since then, we've donated services to religious, educational, and political organizations. I do not volunteer very often... my time is better spent working on websites rather than stuffing envelopes or knocking on doors.