When the Cherry Creek Chamber of Commerce board shrank by more than half, canceled its signature annual event and closed its offices, a core group of people held things together by working it like their primary job.
Except they did it for free.
Now, four years later, the chamber is out of debt, hosted a turning-point luncheon last year with Mayor John Hickenlooper and hired a part-time executive director.
“We are successful because of the members,” said Christine Des Enfants, executive director. “We are cautiously getting back on our feet.”
There is still no office, and calls to the chamber are routed to Des Enfants’ cellphone.
But today the chamber has 215 members and a $110,000 annual budget. It hosts several regular events, including business networking, mixers, speakers series, technical workshops and a Women of Cherry Creek group.
The mission is to “help business and community prosper,” Des Enfants said.
Four years of recovery
This year is the chamber’s year of stabilization and 2009 is billed as a year of growth, said Des Enfants, who also runs Jupiternetwork, a business management firm, with her husband.
The chamber board hopes next year to bring back a signature annual event, though members are not sure yet what it will be.
This is a plan that was not part of the initial recovery strategy just four years ago after the death of a board member left the group reeling with financial debt stemming from the annual Taste of Cherry Creek event. Overhead and salary expenses had the organization $80,000 in the hole, and it was bleeding membership.
“We were having board meetings once a week; there was a lot of discussion around the table on what do we do,” said Yolanda Marshall, chairwoman of the chamber board and vice president of commercial banking at First Community Bank in Cherry Creek.
“We couldn’t walk away”
“A lot of people said let’s walk away, but the small group of us who stayed, we couldn’t walk away from the community, the creditors and our obligation to see it through,” Marshall said.
That meant doing what they had to do to pay off the debt, return to zero liability, build up cash in the bank and move forward.
They canceled the Taste of Cherry Creek, laid off the staff, closed the office and became a working board, said Des Enfants, who was a board member.
They fielded calls, tried to keep members, held roundtable discussions about the status of the chamber, passed a special assessment on members to raise funds and created new programs.
Dean Savoca joined the board three years ago in the midst of the debt payoff.
“I do performance consulting,” said Savoca, who runs SynergyLife. “I thought I could contribute.”
He hosted a board retreat encouraging a focus on the group’s vision and programs, instead of the looming debt. It’s a process he calls appreciative inquiry.
Still, even with the forward movement, the board is taking it slowly.
“We are still prioritizing,” Marshall said. “We want to make sure that everything we are doing is done properly.”
Elizabeth Aguilera: 303-954-1372 or eaguilera@denverpost.com
