What Does the Lacombe & District Chamber Actually Do?

We get asked this more often than you might think.

What does the Chamber actually do?

People see our events. The Lacombe Trade Show is hard to miss, and so are the Business Awards Galas. You may have been to one of our breakfasts, luncheons or Business After 5 events.

Those are the public parts of the Chamber. A lot of our work is much less visible.

Our phone rings with all kinds of questions.

A business owner is looking for a grant they heard about. Someone wants to open a business but doesn't know where to start. A company needs a local service and asks if we know anyone. A member has run into an issue with a policy and isn't sure who to talk to.

Sometimes we know the answer. Sometimes we don't. If we don't, we'll try to find the person who does.

We spend quite a bit of time making introductions. After working with businesses throughout the area, you get to know who does what. When someone calls looking for an accountant, caterer, contractor, marketing company or another service, we can often point them toward a local Chamber member.

The same thing happens at our events, just without us making the introduction.

We host breakfasts and luncheons because it gives people a chance to meet other business owners. It doesn't need to be formal. You don't have to introduce yourself to everyone in the room or hand out a pile of business cards.

Have breakfast. Meet a couple of people. Find out what they do.

That's enough.

We also hear what's going on in the business community.

When one business raises a concern, we listen. When we start hearing the same concern from several businesses, we know there's probably a bigger issue.

That's where our advocacy work comes in.

We are connected with Chambers across Alberta through the Alberta Chambers of Commerce, so local concerns can become part of provincial discussions.

We can't promise that a policy will change because we raise an issue. What we can do is bring the business perspective to the people making those decisions.

Another part of our work is helping businesses find information.

Running a business means having to know about things you probably never expected to become an expert in. Grants are a good example. So are employment rules, hiring, marketing, taxes and now AI.

When we keep hearing questions about the same subject, we try to bring someone in who knows more about it than we do.

That's where many of our breakfast and luncheon topics come from.

We're not interested in filling a calendar with events just to stay busy. We'd rather bring in a speaker who can answer questions our businesses are actually asking.

Then there's promotion.

We share member news and events. We recommend members when people contact us looking for local businesses. We run Chamber Bucks to encourage local spending. Our trade shows give businesses a chance to meet customers in person, and the Business Awards give people a chance to recognize businesses and individuals in our communities.

Sometimes promoting a member takes five minutes. They send us something they're doing, and we share it.

It doesn't always need to be complicated.

The “District” part of our name matters too.

Our members aren't all in the City of Lacombe. We work with businesses in Blackfalds, Bentley, Clive, Eckville, Mirror, and Lacombe County.

People don't really do business according to municipal boundaries anyway. You might live in Blackfalds, work in Lacombe and hire a company from Lacombe County or one of it's communities.

That's normal here.

If you're already a member, use your membership.

Call the office when you have a question. Send us your news. Ask if we know someone who can help. Tell us if there's an issue affecting your business. Come to an event when the topic is useful to you.

You don't need to attend everything we organize. You don't need to use every benefit.

Just use the parts that make sense for your business.

If you're not a member and want to know what membership would look like for your business, call us. We'll explain what's included, what it costs and answer your questions.

No big sales pitch.

That's what the Chamber does most days. We answer a lot of questions, introduce a lot of people, organize a lot of events and spend a fair amount of time figuring out who can help with something we haven't encountered before.

It's not always the stuff that makes it onto social media, but it's the work that keeps us busy.