Interview with Lindsay Keisler: How the Chamber of Catawba County Turned Their Advocacy Program Around

Lindsay, your Chamber made a commitment a few years ago to re-ignite your advocacy program. Why was that important and how did your membership respond?

In 2019, I held a Board Retreat. Our ultimate goal was to walk away with the top priorities for the Chamber to lead or significantly influence over the next two years.

One priority was to be the lead advocate in Catawba County for pro-business policy on the local, state and federal levels. 

To execute that big vision, we needed to make some changes.

When I stepped into the role as President/CEO, I inherited a government affairs committee. However, it was not active. The roster was full, but most members were disengaged. We would adopt the NC Chamber’s legislative agenda annually as our own. We also hosted some regular legislative events: Legislative Forums, Candidates Forums, and a larger-scale Peelin’ Eatin’ & Politickin.’

But when it came to advocacy – truly being the voice for business, understanding the policies that reflect the interests and concerns of our partners – we were ineffective. Well-intended energy, but not strategic or focused.

I spent a little over a year making changes to get us back on track and my efforts did yield some success.

I sought mentorship from other Chambers doing it better than us and identified two strong business leaders to catch the vision and help lead and engage other leaders in the effort. We turned over the roster and replaced it with an impressive group of local leaders in various sectors.

We did an advocacy survey asking our partners about their top policy issues. We even adopted our first local Legislative Agenda.

However, I still felt we hadn’t leaned fully into the big vision of being the LEAD advocate.

I knew that in order to achieve that big vision, it went beyond my professional expertise and capacity and would require a more significant investment.  Time and Treasure.

I began looking for solutions. I knew our budget couldn’t sustain a full-time staff member.  That’s when I was introduced to Brian and his team.

I was convinced that this would be the only way we could achieve our vision, but I had to convince my Executive Committee and Board to take the risk.  Like any of you would, I crunched the numbers and made a business case.

However, at the end of the day, the success of an advocacy program is difficult to measure in terms of tangible ROI.

If you’ve ever attended Institute, you know one of the key adages for Chamber CEOs: always put a volunteer between you and the problem.

They couldn’t just hear it from me; they needed to hear the buy-in, engagement and reinforcement of the WHY from a peer.

When I gave the final pitch presentation to the Executive Committee, I invited one of the Advocacy Chairs to join me.  He “sold” them and even went so far as agreeing to invest in our first month’s contract fee.

Several years later, how does your membership view your advocacy program?

Every year, we survey our partners. We ask them about the critical issues that impact their ability to be successful. We also ask questions to gather their perceptions of our organization to measure our relevance and perceived value.

These perception questions remain the same year after year to provide us with a benchmark to measure improvement or change.

We asked agreement to the following statement…

“The Chamber of Catawba County is an advocate for pro-business public policy on all levels.”

In 2019, only 74% of respondents agreed.

In 2023, 95% of respondents agreed.

I believe our partners are more informed and engaged in policy issues that impact their business based on regular video and written updates we provide. 

Our agenda is focused solely on the issues that matter to our partners in Catawba County.

We are active and responsive to policy issues that arise and need the business community’s voice. Our elected leadership has acknowledged our role in influencing various issues – from raising the flag around the School Performance Grading Scale to Medicaid Expansion.

Finally, we’ve had other partners value the work enough to invest in it.  Last year, we rolled our Advocacy@Work Partner Sponsorship Levels and were able to successfully cover a percentage of our annual contract fees.  

Another KPI that I’ve cited as being influenced by our A+ advocacy program is the upward movement of our Chamber Investors – those who were investing at our higher tiers have been investing more in The Chamber overall to fuel our mission. 

When you give people the opportunity to write it, they will underwrite it.   Most of our current Advocacy@Work partners serve on our Advocacy Taskforce. They are actively engaged in the work and see the fruit of our efforts.