Chamber names Campbell as manager

The new manager of the Clarendon Chamber of Commerce has a familiar face and is no stranger to the job she’s been hired to do.

Former Chamber president Bonnie Campbell formally stepped into her new title last Tuesday, September 2, and is keeping regular hours inside the Clarendon Visitor Center at the Mulkey Theatre.

“I think Chamber is doing well and want it to keep growing,” Campbell said. “I think people see that we’re out there doing things to help business.”

Campbell was chosen by the Chamber’s Board of Directors on August 20 following the recommendation of a search committee which combed through several job applications over the summer before concluding that the right person for the job was already on the job.

After spending two and a half years on a volunteer basis, Campbell formally resigned the organization’s president and board member, and she will now get paid a modest amount to keep the office open from 10:00 a.m. to noon and 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Monday through Friday as the Chamber Manager.

“Our door is open,” Campbell said. “And when I’m not here, I have the phone forwarded to my cell phone and carry my black book with me.”

Campbell came on the Chamber board in January 2012 at a time when the organization was at a low point. Eight months earlier, the Chamber had suffered the loss of $20,000 in annual funding from the city’s Hotel Occupancy Tax. With the organization in disarray, she stepped in as president.

“Our first goal was to keep the office open,” Campbell recalls. “We tried at first having volunteers take turns at the office for limited hours, but that didn’t work very well so I started volunteering.”

And so the woman who had spent 12 years in the 1960s and 1970s as an assistant administrator and office manager for Clarendon’s former Adair Hospital before spending 10 years as a real estate broker and company owner in Tennessee, found herself running the office of the Chamber of Commerce and working to restore its reputation.

“We worked at improving our image,” Campbell said. “We grew Chamber membership, and I think the merchants feel better about the Chamber.”

Those gains came through the reorganization of the Chamber and several new initiatives that Campbell helped put in place. In 2012, the Chamber Board first revised the organization’s outdated bylaws, and then an entirely new set of bylaws were approved by the members of the Chamber on April 24, 2014.

Over the last two years, the Chamber also started hosting quarterly “Business After Hours” networking socials for its members, developed a new website, and worked on a “Business Spotlight” initiative. The Chamber also relocated from its old office in the Newhouse Building to its present location at the Mulkey Theatre through a partnership with the Clarendon Economic Development Corporation.

Last year, the Chamber Board also hosted its first Christmas Bazaar with great success, and plans are coming together for the second bazaar to be held this year on Saturday, November 22.

Now with expanded hours, Campbell hopes to do more for the Chamber and its members.

“I feel good about the Chamber,” Campbell said. “We’ve got a good board, and I want to see us focus on members and member participation.”

In addition to sending out information packets about Clarendon, fielding phone calls, and greeting visitors, the Chamber has several new projects that Campbell will be working on for the next several weeks.

A community calendar of events is being developed, and people are encouraged to inform the Chamber of activities they have coming up in order to help spread the word.

The Chamber plans to start a regular e-newsletter next month that will be distributed to Chamber members by e-mail, and the Chamber wants to do more to promote its members within the Visitor Center by offering a display rack for members’ business cards.

The Chamber is also getting more active in the realm of social media with a revised and updated Facebook page.

Another activity on the horizon is one that is called for under the new bylaws – an annual membership meeting. Different from the annual Chamber Awards Banquet, this meeting is for Chamber members only and will be held at noon on Friday, November 7, for the purpose of electing three new directors to the Chamber board and giving members an annual update on Chamber activities. The location of that meeting will be announced soon.

“I think we’re moving in the right direction,” Campbell said, “and I’d like to see more people come visit us at the office.”

For more information about the Chamber of Commerce, call 874-2421, go by the office at 110 S. Kearney, find the Chamber on Facebook, or visit www.ClarendonChamber.com.