Anoka Area Chamber of Commerce: Manufacturers Cohort: 2017 Partnership Subscription Renewal
 

Chamber Background
The City of Ramsey is a member of the Anoka Area Chamber of Commerce (http://www.anokaareachamber.com/).  The Anoka Area Chamber of Commerce has a rich history of success in catering to the needs of retail, food, and professional service industries.  The Chamber specializes in events, marketing, and networking.


Manufacturing Group Background
A few years back, the Chamber identified the need to better serve the large "manufacturing" sector physically located in the Chamber's service territory.  Commonly, the Chamber's standard "events/ marketing/ networking" opportunities do not provide significant value to manufacturers.  NOTE: the Cities of Ramsey and Anoka share a roughly 1,000 acre business park that includes over 10,000 jobs--most of said jobs are manufacturing (or related to manufacturing).

With this in mind, the Chamber began a new "sub-group" known as the "Manufacturer's Coalition" about three years ago.  Here is a link to their website: http://www.anokaareachambermanufacture.com/).  The mission of the Manufacturer's Coalition is to: become a catalyst for strengthening community manufacturing; accelerating transformation into a more efficient and powerful engine of innovation, job creation and economic growth.

In summary, the Manufacture's Coalition is a group of leaders from local manufacturers that meet periodically to discuss/ address issues unique to their industry (they create the topic list).  In some cases, meetings are purely the exchange of best practices/ discussion led by the Chamber... and in some cases, the Manufacture's Coalition asks the Chamber to implement and develop a service/ product to help the group.  Currently, the #1 topic the Manufacturer's Coalition is addressing is workforce.  Lastly, the Manufacturing Group (via chamber staff) has routinely facilitated outreach with Legislators, businesses, and school districts to drive initiatives developed by this group.  Several success stories exist.

Although the Chamber does receive some funding for the Manufacturers Coalition via subscriptions from manufacturing businesses, this initiative needs financial support to keep running.  The purpose of this case is to consider continued support of the Manufacturers' Coalition by donating $5,000 for the 2017 program.  These dollars would be utilized for "facilitation/ operation" expenses related to the Manufactures' Coalition (meetings/ website/ communications/ etc.).  NOTE: the City supported the program in 2016.

John Letourneau of the Anoka Chamber will be in attendance of this meeting to answer questions.

Attached is a summary of accomplishments in 2016, and a workplan for 2017.

2017 EDA Budget

Considering Ramsey's limited internal resources (staff time) to pro-actively and effectively address large/ regional issues that effect our manufactures, the Anoka Area Chamber Manufacturers' Coalition provides the City an efficient opportunity to get involved.  Staff would support sponsorship of this program again in 2017--as it appears this group is making good strides/ had several successes in 2016.

With the above in mind, staff would suggest an EDA discussion in 2018--to evaluate the effectiveness of this investment.  Staff would like to wait until 2018 for that discussion, as the program is still fairly new, and still getting up on it's feet.  Staff would like to have one more year on the record, to allow for a more robust evaluation.

 

Consider supporting the Anoka Area Chamber Manufacturers Coalition in 2017.