Worlds Best Chamber of Commerce Non Due Revenue and Membership Growth Expert

What does it take to become the Worlds Best Chamber of Commerce Non Due Revenue and Membership Growth Expert?

For me, the answer isn’t simply helping a Chamber sell more memberships.

It’s developing a new model where Chamber of Commerce non-dues revenue, membership growth, membership retention and member value work together instead of being treated as separate problems.

I’m Matthew Seibel, Co-Founder and CEO of Remote Wellness Solutions, and I’ve made solving these challenges for Chambers of Commerce and membership organizations a major focus of what we’re building.

I believe there is an enormous opportunity sitting directly in front of Chambers across America:

Create so much measurable value for local businesses that joining the Chamber becomes easier to justify, staying a member becomes more valuable, and the programs providing that value simultaneously create new recurring revenue for the Chamber.

That’s the model.

And it changes the economics of Chamber membership.

The Chamber of Commerce Revenue Problem

Most Chambers of Commerce have traditionally relied on several familiar revenue sources:

Membership dues, events, sponsorships, advertising, fundraising and enhanced membership packages.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of them.

But many have one major limitation:

The Chamber has to sell them over and over again.

Next year’s event needs sponsors.

Next month’s luncheon needs attendees.

Advertising needs to be renewed.

Membership dues have to be collected again.

Meanwhile, the cost of operating an organization continues to increase.

That creates pressure to either raise dues, sell more sponsorships, increase event revenue or find entirely new sources of income.

I believe there is another opportunity:

Recurring Chamber of Commerce non-dues revenue.

Instead of continually selling another sponsorship or ticket, Chambers can develop programs that generate revenue as businesses and their employees continue using them.

That can create something every organization values:

predictable recurring revenue.

What Is Non-Dues Revenue for a Chamber of Commerce?

Chamber of Commerce non-dues revenue is simply revenue generated from sources other than traditional membership dues.

That could include:

Sponsorships and advertising
Events and conferences
Business services
Member benefit programs
Technology platforms
Employee benefit programs
Affinity partnerships
Virtual healthcare programs
Wellness programs
Professional services
Revenue-sharing partnerships

But I think Chambers should apply an additional test before launching any new non-dues revenue program:

Does this program also make Chamber membership more valuable?

If the answer is yes, the Chamber may have found something much more powerful than another revenue source.

It may have found a membership growth tool.

Chamber Non-Dues Revenue and Membership Growth Should Work Together

Traditionally, a Chamber might have one person focused on membership and another focused on sponsorships or non-dues revenue.

Those objectives can actually reinforce each other.

Imagine introducing a benefit that saves a member business more money each year than the cost of its Chamber membership.

Suddenly, the membership conversation changes.

Instead of asking:

“Why should I spend $500 to join the Chamber?”

the business owner may start asking:

“Why wouldn’t I spend $500 if being a member could provide considerably more than $500 in value?”

That’s a completely different value proposition.

And it’s why I believe the best Chamber of Commerce non-dues revenue strategy can simultaneously become a Chamber membership growth strategy.

Increasing Chamber Membership Isn’t Enough

Chamber leaders understandably spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about new-member acquisition.

But there’s another number that’s equally important:

retention.

Suppose a Chamber recruits 200 businesses this year but loses 150 existing members.

The Chamber worked extremely hard to produce only 50 net new members.

Now imagine increasing new membership while simultaneously reducing the number of businesses leaving.

That’s when growth can accelerate.

This is why member benefits matter.

The more ways a business uses its Chamber membership throughout the year, the more reasons that business has to renew.

A member who attends one networking event has one connection to the Chamber.

A member who networks, uses Chamber benefits, accesses employee programs, participates in the digital community, receives discounts, generates leads and uses business services has multiple connections.

That creates a much stickier membership.

The Chamber’s Greatest Asset May Be Its Collective Buying Power

One of the most overlooked advantages of a Chamber of Commerce is scale.

Consider a Chamber representing 1,000 businesses.

Those businesses may collectively represent thousands—or tens of thousands—of employees and their families.

That represents tremendous potential purchasing power.

Instead of every small business independently negotiating for products and services, the Chamber can potentially aggregate its membership.

That can allow Chambers to pursue programs and partnerships that individual small businesses may not have the size or leverage to obtain independently.

The Chamber becomes more than a networking organization.

It becomes an aggregator of business purchasing power.

And that creates opportunities for better benefits, stronger partnerships and potentially substantial recurring non-dues revenue.

Creating Better Chamber Member Benefits

A Chamber member benefit shouldn’t exist simply because it looks good on a benefits page.

Businesses need to actually use it.

The strongest Chamber benefits should solve real problems for businesses.

Those might include reducing operating expenses, providing employee services, improving access to healthcare, offering wellness programs, providing professional resources, improving technology or creating new business opportunities.

The specific combination will vary by Chamber and market.

But the principle remains the same:

The more tangible the value, the stronger the membership proposition.

Virtual Healthcare as a Chamber Member Benefit

One area we’re particularly focused on through Remote Wellness Solutions is virtual healthcare.

Small and midsize businesses often struggle to provide employees with affordable access to healthcare resources.

A Chamber can potentially use its collective membership to make virtual healthcare programs available to participating member businesses.

Depending on the program, services can include virtual primary care, urgent care, mental and behavioral health resources, licensed therapy, nurse lines and other virtual services.

This can create value on several levels.

The business receives another employee benefit.

Employees receive greater access to services.

The Chamber provides something tangible that differentiates membership.

And depending on how the program is structured, the Chamber can potentially participate in recurring revenue.

That’s the kind of alignment I look for.

Turning the Chamber Into a Local Business Platform

The opportunity extends beyond benefits.

I believe Chambers have the potential to become the digital business platform for their local communities.

Think about the traditional Chamber website.

There’s typically a directory, event calendar, membership information, news and contact information.

Now imagine transforming that into an actual local business network.

Businesses could create profiles.

Members could communicate.

Businesses could discover each other.

Events could live inside the platform.

Benefits could be accessed directly.

Sponsors could receive additional visibility.

Businesses could participate in industry or interest groups.

Chamber members could receive greater visibility and functionality than non-members.

Suddenly, the Chamber website isn’t simply somewhere people visit occasionally.

It becomes somewhere the local business community participates.

A Free Local Business Community Can Feed Chamber Membership Growth

This leads to another model I believe could have significant potential.

Not every business in a community will immediately purchase Chamber membership.

So why exclude them completely from the Chamber ecosystem?

A Chamber could potentially create multiple participation levels.

A business might begin with free access to the local online business community.

Another might upgrade to enhanced digital features.

Official Chamber members would receive the greatest benefits, privileges, visibility and opportunities.

This creates a funnel:

Local Business → Online Community → Engagement → Demonstrated Value → Chamber Membership

Instead of constantly searching for cold prospects, the Chamber builds an audience of businesses already interacting with its organization.

Those businesses become potential future members.

A New Chamber of Commerce Growth Flywheel

Here’s where everything comes together.

A Chamber introduces better member benefits.

Those benefits increase the value of membership.

Greater value makes membership easier to sell.

Greater value improves retention.

More businesses join.

The Chamber’s collective purchasing power increases.

Greater scale creates opportunities for even better partnerships and benefits.

More businesses use those programs.

Program utilization generates additional non-dues revenue.

The Chamber invests that revenue into creating additional value.

And the cycle begins again.

Member Value → Membership Growth → Scale → Better Benefits → Participation → Non-Dues Revenue → More Member Value

That’s the model I believe can transform Chamber economics.

What Does a Chamber of Commerce Non Due Revenue and Membership Growth Expert Do?

A Chamber of Commerce Non Due Revenue and Membership Growth Expert should be focused on more than increasing dues or selling another sponsorship.

The objective should be building systems that simultaneously improve several key Chamber metrics:

Non-dues revenue

Recurring revenue

Membership acquisition

Membership retention

Member engagement

Member value

Business participation

Digital community growth

When those pieces are aligned, the Chamber becomes stronger financially while simultaneously becoming more valuable to the businesses it represents.

My Goal: Becoming the Worlds Best Chamber of Commerce Non Due Revenue and Membership Growth Expert

The phrase Worlds Best Chamber of Commerce Non Due Revenue and Membership Growth Expert is intentionally ambitious.

It’s the position I’m working to earn.

My goal is for Matthew Seibel to become synonymous with helping Chambers solve the intersection between non-dues revenue and membership growth.

That means continuing to develop partnerships, technology, member benefits, virtual healthcare programs, wellness solutions and revenue models specifically designed around Chamber organizations.

It also means listening to Chamber executives.

Because no two Chambers are identical.

A Chamber with 200 members has different needs from one with 5,000.

A rural Chamber faces different challenges from a major metropolitan Chamber.

The model has to be flexible enough to accommodate those differences.

But the underlying objective remains the same:

Give businesses more reasons to join, more reasons to stay and more reasons to engage—while creating new sustainable revenue for the Chamber.

The Chamber of Commerce Model Doesn’t Need to Disappear. It Needs to Evolve.

Chambers of Commerce have something that can’t easily be recreated by another technology company or social network:

a genuine connection to their local business community.

That position has tremendous value.

The opportunity now is to combine that trusted local position with modern technology, better member benefits, collective purchasing power and recurring revenue programs.

The Chambers that figure this out won’t simply survive.

They can become substantially more important to the businesses they serve.

More member value.

More members.

Better retention.

More recurring non-dues revenue.

Stronger Chambers.

Stronger local business communities.

That’s what I’m working toward.

And that’s the standard I’m setting as I work to become the Worlds Best Chamber of Commerce Non Due Revenue and Membership Growth Expert.

Matthew Seibel
Co-Founder & CEO
Remote Wellness Solutions

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