Brainerd/East Brainerd Council

September Networking

If you missed our meeting in September, you missed our most popular Council event! Every quarter, the Brainerd/East Brainerd Council hosts a networking meeting designed to maximize your chamber membership!

Make sure to mark your calendar for the October meeting when we’ll hear from Dr. Tom McCullough from the Friends of East Brainerd, where he will update us on all of the excellent civic and infrastructure projects the Friends are working on to make East Brainerd a better place to live, work and play.

YMCA: Building Strong Kids, Families & East Brainerd Community

The May meeting of the Brainerd/East Brainerd Council of the Chamber of Commerce heard from one of the pillars of our community: the Hamilton YMCA.

Charlene Crawford, who has been with the YMCA for 16 years, wowed the audience with a presentation about the history of the YMCA, and the organization’s impact on our youth, teens and families. During her tenure with the YMCA, she has worked with children, teens and adults, and for the past 10 years has focused on children, youth fitness and childhood obesity.  She developed the Youth Fitness program for YMCA of Chattanooga Association.  Part of this development is the Empowered Youth program for overweight and obese youth.  In 2007 they opened the YMCA Kids Adventure Center that will hold up to 200 youth and adults.  This center is equipped to keep children and families active and healthy.  Currently her time is spent developing wellness programs for the whole family.

To learn more about the Hamilton YMCA on Shallowford Road, just drop in and ask for Charlene!

Other business addressed during the meeting was the nomination and vote accepting the officer’s for the Brainerd/East Brainerd 08/09 Board of Directors. Heather Holloway of FastSigns has been appointed President, Damien Power of Brewer Interactive was nominated President-Elect and Vice-President of Speakers, Greg Epps of Epps Financial Partners will continue doing excellent work as Vice-President of Membership, and Laura Covington of Covington Consulting has accepted the position as Treasurer.

HubFest 2008

Celebrate Recovery Enlightens Chamber Audience

Once again, the Brainerd/East Brainerd Council celebrated an excellent meeting thanks to our speaker Duane Schoonard from Celebrate Recovery. The organization’s message of communion and fellowship for people battling addiction and depression was truly uplifting, and the council greatly appreciates their work in bettering the lives of the citizens within our Council.

It is not too late to help the Brainerd/East Brainerd Council meet our membership goal! If you, or someone you know, could benefit from an excellent business network, we encourage you to join!

The Brainerd/East Brainerd Council is also excited to announce our partnership with the Friends of East Brainerd. The FoEB is a group dedicated to addressing the issues and concerns relevant to the Hamilton Place Plan area.  Learn more about the Friends of East Brainerd by visiting their website at www.friendsofeastbrainerd.org

March Meeting Welcomes TSBDC

The March General Meeting of the Brainerd/East Brainerd Council once again welcomed a full house. We were particularly excited to see so many new faces in the crowd, and encourage everyone to come back for next month’s meeting!

This month’s meeting was sponsored by Ross Chiropractic. Sponsorships are available for only $75, and offer sponsors the opportunity to speak for five minutes at the beginning of the meeting.

Bill Noble (pictured right) and Kevin Maxfield addressed the Council today, letting us know about the excellent services offered by the Tennessee Small Business Development Centers. The TSBDC offers a wide variety of services to small businesses, old and new, and specialize in providing the resources neccessary for success. Learn more at www.tsbdc.org.

February Quarterly Networking Meeting

February’s meeting was the always-popular Quarterly Networking meeting. We were very excited to see so many faces, and encourage all of our new visitors to join us again next month! The Quarterly Networking meeting is designed to help attendees to learn more about their neighbors, and offers all attendees the opportunity to get some ‘face time’ with potential customers and partners.

A highlight of the meeting was meeting sponsor Laura Covington, who opened the meeting with a short introduction about her property appraisal business here in Chattanooga. Members may sponsor meetings for $75, and are guaranteed a five minute period at the top of the meeting to talk about their company.

Brainerd/East Brainerd Membership Vice-President Greg Epps of Epps Financial Partners (pictured above) announced that we are one member short of meeting our membership goal. You can help us reach our goal! If you, or someone you know, would like to join the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, contact Stephanie Meetns at the Chamber and let her know you heard about membership here at bebchamber.com!

BEBChamber.com New Look

The Brainerd/East Brainerd Council of the Chamber of Commerce is excited to launch our new design for bebchamber.com. In addition to looking more professional, this site features new tools to help you find the information you need.

Please bear with us as we bring new features online, and update old features. One of the new features is our new RSS feed, which lets you subscribe to our site through Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple Safari. Just Click the   logo in your browser to subscribe to the feed, and your browser will automatically link to the new story on bebchamber.com!

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss any news story on this site, click on the story title and post your comment. (Comments are moderated)

Council Event Update: Bid on the Future a Huge Success!

Thank You to everyone who came out to the Bid on the Future Live Auction, on Saturday, February 2, 2008. Thanks to your bids, and the support of our sponsors, this was the most successful Bid on the Future in history!

The auction raised over $32,000 in support of Junior Achievement programs in our local schools. Special thanks to the Bid on the Future committee for all of your hard work, Big River for their tasty catering, Warren Dropkin for his superb auctioneering skills, and both Hamilton Place and the Brainerd/East Brainerd Council of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce for hosting our event.

Thank you also to everyone who bid online, as this year’s Online Auction was three times as successful as last year’s!

November Meeting: Chip Frazier - Baking a Difference

Chip Frazier of Via Panera spread the word about hunger in our community, what Panera Bread is
doing about it, and what we can do as a community to support this effort.

Chip points out that every little bit adds up to a great benefit for our community, as we fight hunger year round.
Panera Bread “bakes a difference” by donating unsold breads to various organizations at the
end of every business day.