Offering support to local small businesses is an important facet of the Drumheller and District Chamber of Commerce (DDCC).
To further support local businesses, the Town has collaborated with DDCC to help the Chamber begin building relationships with new businesses opening in the community, and also offered a series of initiatives to help support businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we can offer businesses is really not until their doors are open,” says DDCC Executive Director Heather Bitz. “We’re not like Community Futures, who are able to help businesses with business plan writing, and providing those sorts of supports, when you’re planning your business and getting it up and running; really, the services we’re able to provide as a Chamber of Commerce come after the doors are open.”
Through this collaboration, new businesses will be asked if they would like the Town to share their information with the Chamber. While this will allow DDCC to begin building relationships earlier with new businesses, Ms. Bitz says gaining new memberships is not necessarily the goal.
Memberships have continued to remain stable this year, with a total of 237 memberships and 20 new business memberships.
To help businesses struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chamber began a Shop Local initiative in late 2021, which was supported through funding from the federal government.
This funding allowed DDCC to establish multiple initiatives to support local businesses, including revising the local gift certificate program-formerly called Dino Bucks-into the Chamber Cash program, and producing promotional videos for Chamber members.
“That was all done with grant money that we were able to secure; those monies don’t exist now, and we’re pretty happy with the initiatives we were able to do,” Ms. Bitz says.
A total of 16 businesses took part in the Love Local promotional video initiative, and the Chamber also created its own community video.
These videos were then shared to the DDCC Facebook page and YouTube channel.
According to Ms. Bitz, the videos reached over 22,000 viewers on Facebook and have been viewed 1,364 times on YouTube.
