A Conversation with Ben Haskew, President of the Greenville Chamber of Commerce

UpstateBizSC:
What is your professional background?

Ben Haskew:
I am a lifer when it comes to working with local Chambers of Commerce.  When I was in high school, my summer job was sorting the mail at my home town Chamber of Commerce in Jacksonville, Florida.    After attending community college and spending a couple of years in the Army, my first job was at the Chamber in the small town of Live Oak, Florida.  In the late 1970’s, I graduated from a program that is offered at the University of Georgia specifically for Chamber executives, one of four such programs around the US.  I have now spent 39 years working for Chambers throughout the Southeast, including stints in Tallahassee and Chattanooga before earning my first major job as the President and CEO of the Spartanburg Chamber in 1985.  I have been at the helm of the Greenville Chamber for 8 years.   

UpstateBizSC:
How has the role that the Chamber plays in the local community evolved over the years?

Ben Haskew:
The Greenville Chamber is in its 123rd year.  Charleston, SC and New York are amongst the oldest Chambers in the country.  Throughout its history, this Chamber has always been a place where the business leadership, as well as those in the public sector, come together.  In the early days, Chambers were organized for specific tasks such as in the early days of Greenville Chamber, as a trade group, showing its support of the textile industry.  Among this Chamber’s long list of accomplishments is helping establish the first airport in the late 1920’s, Memorial Auditorium in the 1950’s, and leading the formation of such organizations as the Greenville Central Arts Partnership, the Convention and Visitors Bureau in the 1980’s. 

Going back a couple of decades, the Chamber was the premier place for networking; now, there are lots of great places where you can network.  Organizations such as Rotary have expanded their networking opportunities, and people can easily organize themselves digitally or around social media.  Rather than looking at these as competing forces, we are looking for ways to be a part of the digital revolution as we continue to carve out our niche in the local market. 

Our world has changed.  Twenty years ago, the local chamber was the go-to place for economic  information, but today, with the advent of the internet, you can access information anywhere with a few clicks of the button.   Hank Hyatt, our VP Economic Development, continues to provide top notch economic research doing a great job of not just pulling data, but interpreting it. 

UpstateBizSC:
How was membership affected in the economic downturn?

Ben Haskew:
We lost about 400 members during this time period, mainly for economic reasons. Many of our members are small business owners who had to make tough decisions during the economic downturn.    Membership is the lifeblood of our organization, so the drop in membership affected our revenue stream and bottom line.  Similar to other organizations, we had to reduce staff and cut costs.  Most non-profits and chambers experienced the same predicament in this economic recession. 

About a year and a half ago, we started to see those numbers turn around and this year we are up 140 members.  We are growing again and our retention rate of members is higher.  Still, we need to be constantly looking for ways to better understand our members so that we can grow our mission.  Today, we have 2,100 businesses who are members of this organization.  We have to continue to stay on the leading edge of providing topics and learning opportunities to businesses and constantly listen to what their needs are.
 
UpstateBizSC:
What are the main areas of focus in the Chamber’s strategic plan?

Ben Haskew:
Three years ago, we addressed the key points in the Chamber’s visioning and strategic planning and came up with this main goal: to build one of the premier business communities in the world. That’s what we get up and think about every day.  In pursuit of this goal, the key metric we are focused on is growth in per capita income. 

UpstateBizSC:
You start with this goal of increasing per capita income at a tough time economically.  Is there any progress in this area? 

Ben Haskew:
We have done okay in that regard through this recession, but there is still progress to be made.  We are confident that if we stay the course, we can outperform our peer communities in this metric. 

We have engaged Clemson University to help us focus our efforts on four key areas that drive increases in per capita income. 

The first is education and workforce.  If we are going to be successful in the knowledge economy, we are going to have to either grow the workforce here, or attract it from elsewhere.  We emphasize high school graduation, education beyond high school and higher education.  29% of our adult population has a college education or higher; we would like to see that number grow to 40% by 2020. 

The second is innovation.  Through our NEXT initiative, we are concentrating on new and existing companies to help them become more innovative.  New companies are engines for generating patents which are critical to building a successful knowledge economy.

The third area is fostering an entrepreneurial ecosystem that marries economic development, higher education and business.  CU ICAR is a shining example of the synergy between all those elements.  We look for that amazing campus to continue to thrive. 

The fourth area is taking care of the business community that is already here.  80% of a community’s growth comes from within.  Expansion of existing businesses brings new investment and therefore new jobs. 

We are a private organization, but we have a very public view about Greenville. We want to see catalytic opportunities happen in the community. 

UpstateBizSC:
Is Southwest Airlines one of those catalytic opportunities?

Ben Haskew:
Definitely!  We felt that recruiting Southwest Airlines to GSP was going to be a transformational opportunity for this region.  We had been labeled nationally as one of the highest airfare markets in the country so we needed to attract a low fare carrier. 

The medical school expansion between the Greenville Hospital System and the University of South Carolina is going to have about a $400M economic impact in this region over a ten year period.  That will be another transformational opportunity.

UpstateBizSC:
What is your relationship between the economic development institutions – the GADC and the Upstate Alliance?

Ben Haskew:
The Greenville Chamber used to handle all of the economic development and industry recruitment.  It is old history now, but the Chamber and the County couldn’t agree on a path forward so the Greenville Area Development Corporation (GADC) was formed.  Around the same time, the Upstate Alliance was formed to be a regional marketing organization. 

None of us have the resources to duplicate effort; we have to be collaborative and we work together very well.  The GADC is charged with recruitment, finding major plant operations.  Our niche is developing the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the region.  We had discussions with local entrepreneurs to help us understand their needs and came up with the concept for NEXT.  

UpstateBizSC:
What is NEXT?

Ben Haskew:
NEXT is a collaborative of small, entrepreneurial technology companies.  Initially, the Greenville Chamber facilitated a forum for discussions with local entrepreneurs and the first thing we realized was… there were more entrepreneurs than we thought!  The idea developed to focus on small, high impact companies and co-locate them in a space that would allow them to collaborate and benchmark their activities.  Generally, the companies that enter NEXT own their intellectual property (IP), have clients outside of Greenville, and therefore have the potential for high growth.  It’s been about five years since we had those early discussions, but there are now 75 companies that meet that criterion with several that are housed in the awesome NEXT Innovation Center. We have branched out to include the companies that have been spawn out of the Clemson’s Advanced Materials Center. 

 NEXT is staffed by our very own Brenda Laakso from the Greenville Chamber.  She started on a half time basis and now is full-time. 

We survey the companies in NEXT on an annual basis and we are proud that overall, there has been a $42M annual economic impact in terms of direct job payrolls.

We are visited a dozen times a year by other Chambers on their inter-city visits and our NEXT is always something that they want to see.  Once they witness its scope, they are truly amazed. 

UpstateBizSC:
What other initiatives is the Greenville Chamber involved in?

Ben Haskew:
We needed to think smart about how we approach public policy so seven years ago we approached eleven other area Chambers with a goal of building a strong Upstate Chamber Coalition.  It started with Spartanburg and Greer, and then it snowballed from there. Working together to come up with a unified business agenda that we can communicate to the legislature has proven to be very effective.  Collectively, we represent 8,000 members. Resources are tight, so the two lobbyists on my staff at the Greenville Chamber work on behalf of all of the Chambers.  The Midlands area has begun to replicate this idea with their Midstate Chamber Coalition.

UpstateBizSC:
Greenville has undergone such an amazing transformation over the past twenty years.  What are few of the keys to its success, its appeal?

Ben Haskew:
For 30 years, we have tried to build one of the great downtowns in America. It’s vibrant and everyone recognizes it as the heart of our community.  It’s a great center for the arts and has an award-winning downtown baseball park. 

There’s also uniqueness to Mauldin and Simpsonville and Greer.  It’s not just downtown Greenville that is making headlines.

We also are starting to be known as a wonderful place for young professionals and young families.  The Chamber has 980 members in our PULSE Young Professionals group.  We wanted to learn from young people how we can attract and retain young talent in this city so we sat down with them and listened.  Young people want to go through programs like Leadership Greenville and to be on a board or a commission; they want to be connected in the community.

Greenville is a city with international companies, global brands.  We are a community that has the reputation of being open.

There’s such a can-do attitude here.