2022 AGM President’s Report

Being Maclean Chamber Secretary for 3 years certainly gave me a thorough grounding in all things Chamber related which made the segue to President natural progression for me.
It’s been my wish as President to bring the Chamber out into the Community and make us more visible to locals, other organisations, and business, as a Chamber with a real interest in the Community and I’ve been fortunate to have a supportive Executive team that agrees with the vision.
For a Chamber to be successful it must be visible in the Community and promote initiatives that help our businesses prosper. We must also promote our area to be attractive, to be open to investment and encourage visitors.
We will continue to work closely with CVC and State government to bring confidence for business to invest knowing there is a strong future in Maclean and surrounds. We appreciate the role we have been asked to play within Council since the latest election. If our Chamber and Council remain strong and successful, it will project confidence for business to come, grow and build services here.
This year we adopted a $1,800 pa budget for cash sponsorship for appropriate local organisations, to support highly advertised recreational events that bring visitors to our area and provide a fun environment for the Community that will also help our businesses thrive.
The Highland gathering and Nash Crofton’s Maclean Tunes events are beneficiaries of this so far.
Also,
December 21 we co organised the Christmas event and late-night shopping in River Street. We plan to do it again this year and perhaps it will become an annual festival for Maclean.
Between the 3 organisations involved it was a mighty effort to pull together in about 4 weeks and was very successful.
May 22 was the Maclean Thank you Day organised by Chamber and Carrol Issacs from St Vincent De Paul disaster recovery program.
We were thrilled with the result and number of services from all over the state on display, with give aways, information and people to learn from.
Certificates of appreciation were presented to the Emergency Services, Disaster and Local organisations, and Community Members that worked so hard to help during the recent disasters. Let’s hope they are all past us now and we can look forward to a near normal end to 2022 and onward.
We continue our work advocating for our Business Members, keeping them informed on a range of issues, most recently relating to financial assistance packages and grants, what to apply for and where and how to apply.
Regular email updates from CVC, Business NSW, TAFE and literature from various others including invitations, workshops, courses and business assistance for Members.
It is pleasing to report Maclean Chamber is in an extraordinarily strong position, we are a group of 68 financial members and growing, from a diverse cross section of local business, and our financial position is also pleasingly healthy.
The Executive team are well placed within the Northern Rivers Region of Business NSW and have representatives that attend meetings regularly. We also work closely with CVC and value the relationship. It’s a refreshing change that Council is keen to involve all the Chambers in the LGA in many ways including regular meetings and advisory committees.

• REDS – Regional Economic Development Strategies.
• EDTAC – Economic Development & Tourism Advisory Committee.
• New Look CVC Round Table.

The Chambers are encouraged to attend many other meetings and events at any given time, and I always prioritise attendance at these on merit such as:
• Business NSW Regional Advisory and Northern Rivers LCC Mid-Year Forum.
• Regular Zoom meetings.
• The Destination NSW Tourism Symposium was an excellent event held in Grafton on Thursday July 28th. Congratulations to CVC and Destination NSW organising teams on such a successful event.

We have regular catch-up meetings with the CVC Culture, Community and Industry Team and it’s not difficult to communicate with the Mayor, General Manager and Senior staff if requested through the proper channels.
Being part of this allows us to have our say at State and Local Government level on issues that affect our Community and Businesses.
We will continue with a range of opportunities for Member to attend events and stick to 3 formats, Members General Meetings, Breakfast’s, and Business after Hours Networking.
The amount of work any Chamber can do 100% depends on having a strong Member base to allow us to finance overheads, events, meetings, consumables, and advertising among others
So, your continued support of the Chamber flows back to yourselves, Community, and other local organisations.
To make a strong team, our Chamber needs 3 executives + the 4 positions as a good number to ensure sufficient attendance at important Executive meetings, share the workload. and Chamber has a broad cross section of representation to grow our position and continue strong relationships with our Associates and, most importantly, to represent and assist our Members.

Our 2022 team is:
Christine Tyler – President, and Acting Secretary,
Peter Gordon – Vice President,
Joanne Worboys Treasurer.
Executives: Graeme Nicholson, Grant Kaczorowski and Brett Sharrock.