New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce – What’s new for minority businesses in New OrleansBy Cheryl Hentz
There are many “new” things in New Orleans: Among them, new construction following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina; a new mayor and administration in City Hall; and a relatively new chamber of commerce for minority businesses – at least the efforts to build a membership are new.
The New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce has actually been around for a couple of years or so, but it didn’t focus real heavily in the beginning on gaining members.
“We’re still somewhat of a new chamber and we really needed to first mature to a point where we were in a position to start building and delivering value to our members,” says chairman of the chamber’s board of directors, Daniel Davillier. “So initially our focus was on getting some wins on the policy front. For example, we were instrumental in driving the policy change at the city council level to have the council adopt an ordinance that now makes it the law in the city of New Orleans that on all city contracts there are goals of 50 percent local participation and 35 percent DBE participation. I think that was a big win.”
They are also working with newly-elected Mayor Mitch Landrieu to revamp the city’s DBE program, as well as develop some bonding and financing assistance programs for small and minority-owned businesses.
“This is important so if there’s a small business that has an opportunity to get a contract or government work and they need a working capital line of credit, or they need assistance getting a bond for a particular project, there are programs set up to assist them with those needs,” Davillier says. “Our whole mission is to try to get Black businesses in the New Orleans region access to opportunities to participate in contracting in both the public and private sector; and to get them access to the resources that they need in order to take advantage of those opportunities.”
Those legislative efforts will be made known to members and potential members so they know that this is the kind of advocacy that they can expect from the chamber.
“But that advocacy also has to be supported by the potential members,” explains Alex Lewis, executive director of the New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce. There are many other benefits to joining the chamber, he says, including many educational and networking opportunities.
“One thing we’re doing is working in partnership with a number of agencies, one being the National Black Chamber of Commerce. They have a year-long series of training sessions, one each month that we made available to our members,” Lewis says. “We also just completed a series of training sessions with the Louisiana Small Business Development Center on financing – things like how to put together a package to take to your bank to get a loan; how to put together your chart of accounts so that when you go to the bank you can take something that makes sense and is acceptable to the bank; and how to write a business plan. That three-part series just ended at the end of April, but we have more planned to do throughout the year.”
The chamber also offers something called a Power Speaker series. They’ve already had former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin come in to speak, as well as a representative from the United States Corps of Engineers.
“They talked about all of the upcoming work with their respective agencies,” explains Davillier. “There’s literally billions of dollars worth of work coming up and we’re trying to give our members direct access in terms of upcoming opportunities and what they need to do to participate.”
Representatives from the chamber have also met recently with someone from the FDIC, in conjunction with the Louisiana Small Business Minority Council and the Capital Access Program, to network and try to bring together various resources available to businesses in the city.
“What we’ve discovered is that there are a number of organizations in existence and all are more or less doing the same thing. So what we’re wanting to do is kind of target who’s best at what so that when I go to my membership I can (direct them to the best possible place for whatever they’re wanting to accomplish). In other words trying to establish where the best resources are for certain things so that we’re not all trying to do the same thing and watering those resources down,” Lewis explains. “They may not necessarily all be members of the chamber, but the goal is to put together a coalition, if you will, of resources so that our members, their members, other groups’ members, can best be served. We’re all talking about and serving the minority community. So if the minority community bands together then there’s strength in numbers that we might not have individually.”
Speaking of strength in numbers, Lewis declined to say how many members the chamber has currently, but says by year’s end he’d like it to be 200 members strong.
“We just formed a membership committee and we’re preparing something that lists the various benefits of participating in our chamber and then we’re going to have some meetings designed to encourage more businesses to join,” Davillier says. “Between the Power Speaker series, programs for bonding and financial assistance, the other educational opportunities and the networking opportunities, I think we have something good to offer to our members.”
There are also benefits on a smaller scale that can help members save money. For example, email marketing is a big thing these days and chamber members can get the use of Constant Contact – a leading email marketing firm – at greatly discounted rates.
“Our members can also get office supplies at Office Depot at discounted rates. So we’re trying to put together more of these kinds of things so there are tangible benefits as well as intangible ones that members get through the seminars and other networking opportunities,” says Lewis.
If you would like more information on joining the New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce, you can visit their web site at http://67.23.1.14/cms/joomla or call Alex Lewis at 504-251-4278.
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