The Clinton Chamber of Commerce: Myths & Misconceptions

Patch: Who and what is the Clinton Chamber of Commerce?

Cavanagh: It’s run by a Board of Directors. It’s a corporation. It has bylaws and the bylaws say there are 15 members of the Board of Directors. They’re all volunteers from the community. My job as executive director is to carry out the day to day operations of the Chamber. I’ve been doing it for a very long time [22 years], and it is like running a small business. You need to have a plan.

Patch: How many serve on the Board of Directors, and how does one join the Board?

Cavanagh: The history of Clinton is such that it started out in 1983; it was a part of the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce and it broke away with a group of businesspeople from Clinton who decided that their needs would be better met if they had a much more local chamber of commerce.

The Clinton Chamber of Commerce has its own set of bylaws for Clinton and say that there’s an annual meeting and, at the annual meeting, one year seven members of the Board of Directors will be elected or reelected to their term and the next year eight, so the Board never expires all at the same time.

When there is an opening – somebody steps down for whatever reason – we make an announcement and anybody can step forward and say that they would like to be on the Board of Directors, somebody explains the responsibilities to them and then, if it’s an appropriate match – by that I mean we need to have all types of businesses represented. We wouldn’t want to have 10 bankers and four of anything else; we need to represent as many different segments in the business community as possible.

Patch: What types of activities does the Chamber organize?

Cavanagh:  Fifty percent of my time is spent with small business enhancement/development, and the other 50 percent is geared toward tourism, but there are lots of ways to combine both of those things because tourists who come to town spend money, hopefully, in those businesses.

On the side where we’re talking about fostering business, we do everything from workshops [available for Chamber members and non-members].

This past year we worked with seven other chambers of commerce and offered a huge and very successful conference for small businesses at Water’s Edge. There were probably 12 different workshops that local businesspeople could choose to participate in – each one geared toward another aspect of growing their business. That is going to become an annual event.

We also do our annual expo and that is coming up in March. That is a business-to-community show. In other words, if you have a small business in Clinton or one in a cottage industry and you don’t have a front door in a visible place - you can rent a booth from the Chamber of Commerce and set yourself up in Town Hall. We do the advertising and the local residents are invited to come in at no charge and get to know the businesses that are in their own backyard.

We do at least one breakfast a year and have a speaker each year.

We work with SCORE, which is a fabulous organization of volunteers and it is exactly what it sounds like – people in the community who have some business acumen that they are willing to share at no charge with anybody who needs some help (hopefully before they are in trouble with their business). People who are setting up a business, they are a great asset to people who are just going into business. They are also very helpful to people who are looking to enhance their business in some way.

There are a lot of fingers in the pies. We are open to new ideas always.

And that doesn’t count our regular activities like Business After Hours, which is networking, networking, networking because that is key to business, more business, more business.

Non-chamber members as well as chamber members pay a modest fee to come in and have a good time. They eat, drink and be merry and, hopefully, learn about other businesses and what they have to offer. Those we do about once a month.

Patch: What activities for the town sometimes go unnoticed?

Cavanagh:  I hope not too many! I don’t know that any go unnoticed but some get confused. For instance, many people think that the Chamber of Commerce is a town hall organization but we are separate.

If town hall is closed for a holiday or a furlough day, there are a lot of people who think the Chamber of Commerce is closed. It is, of course, if it is a holiday. That’s a misconception.

We are separate from the town and retain our own website. We work with them whenever we can but we are separate.

We do a series of summer concerts at the gazebo. I’ve been doing them for 20-something years and they were here before I was. They’re fabulous and they’re sponsored by local businesses. They’re free and it’s one of those events over the course of the summer that we hope tourists are coming to and enjoying as much as residents are enjoying. Anything that brings them into the community makes them a little more likely to spend some money.

There’s sometime confusion - people will thank another department in the town for putting on the concerts and, no, it’s the Chamber of Commerce. We get them set up, we find the money, and we make them happen.

Same thing for the Coast Guard Band. Next year will be its 21st performance. It’s free. It’s at the Morgan School. It’s always standing room only and it’s put on by the Clinton Chamber of Commerce and is sponsored by a local businessperson who makes it happen.

One of our other biggest events is the Liberty Bank Bluefish 5K Road Race, which is not associated with the Bluefish Festival. It’s a separate activity and it’s always the third Saturday in August. This year will be year 14. It’s our biggest fundraiser and we do it in conjunction with the Shoreline Community Women. We couldn’t do it alone.

We have scholarships, a very large scholarship program called the Robert DiBona Scholarship. That grew out of the Chamber of Commerce and has its own board of directors but it is a chamber-based scholarship that we’re very proud of.

The other activity that we oversee, that I describe as we’re the umbrella organization for, is Christmas in Clinton. We don’t make it happen in a vacuum. They have about 15 civic and nonprofit groups but I’m the one who makes the press release happen and takes care of some of the functions of that.

Patch: Why should and how does a business join?

Cavanagh: Because the programs work. It takes money to make things happen, and we are supported either by fundraisers that we do or by the fact that people pay dues to belong. The membership application is found at www.clintonct.com, and dues begin at $135 per year.

The biggest reason for a business to join is to support the work that we do. The other side of the coin is that our job is to help continue to make their business better, so any way that we can do it we do it.

My mission statement is to make Clinton a great place to live, work and play, and that is my job.