Why did Econ Dev Merge with the Chamber?

And doesn't that make it less effective?

(I'm borrowing this from my previous post to expand on it a bit, as it was the topic of two conversations today.)

As a board member of the EDP, I supported merging the EDP into the newly formed Chamber Coalition 4 years ago. But it would be a NEW Chamber Coalition, with a new focus and executive director, to ensure viability and effectiveness of the EDP. We deliberately changed the name of the organization to signal a break from the previous "Corvallis Chamber of Commerce", and to signal the newly combined boards intent to work collaboratively across the community to help represent business.

Viability: The Corvallis-Benton EDP had 1.5 employees, and spent way too much of its meager budget and staff on overhead activities, fund raising, and too little on direct services and the "work" of economic gardening or recruiting. In that environment it was very difficult to be effective, and show a positive return on investment in terms of creating businesses and jobs. In addition, the EDP had "no" resources to develop and maintain a web site, we had no email list or donation management capabilities, we paid independently for accounting phone, internet and rent support. It didn't have critical mass.

By merging with the Corvallis Chamber, we were able to focus almost all of the Economic Development public and private funds on the work of economic development. In the new organization, rent, computers, internet, back end infrastructure (registration systems, web site, accounting, and fund raising infrastructure) are shared services with the Chamber Coalition. Economic Development is saving $1200 a month in rent alone, that can now be spent on salaries for direct services.

It was not without its risks and downsides, but it made sense. Corvallis has too many business organizations, and they don't work together and collaborate often enough.

To mitigate the concerns about the merger, the EDP board and Chamber Board agreed to several important things, and bound the new Coalition board to them:
1. There is clear and transparent accounting of all Economic Development spending from both public and private sources, and the details of spending are reported monthly on a separate P/L. Economic Development does not and has not subsidized Chamber membership activities, and in fact, it is quite the opposite, the Chamber supports economic development.
2. We would maintain a separate Economic Development committee that would work with the Contracts with the city and county, and would direct and aid the work of the economic development director.
3. We would continue our commitment to align Economic Development work with the Prosperity that Fits plan developed by the city, and would continue our commitments to drive those activities where we took a lead role.

I joined the Coalition board for the first time when the organizations merged to keep track of these commitments and ensure that the Economic Development function maintain its integrity and effectiveness, and I think it has done so.