This week marks the end of the Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce Turkey Days. On Friday, all of the tickets and stockings that have been distributed around town to participating member retail outlets will be gathered up and placed into the drawing for a Christmas Turkey. The Turkey drawing will occur on Saturday December 19th at 10:00 am at the Independence Park (600 West 100 South) next to the Vernal Middle School.

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The Chamber Luncheon will be cancelled for the 29th of December.  Everybody is busy in between Christmas and New Years and we thought that we would provide members more time for their own activities.  Please mark your schedules so that you don't come to the luncheon and find that it is cancelled. 

The Tag Line contest for the Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce ends on December 28th at 5:00 pm.  A tag line is a simple phrase that capsulates and incorporates the vision and mission of the Chamber.  The current Tag Line is "Good for Business, Good for the Community".   If another Tag Line is submitted that is superior to the current one, the Board of Directors will award the author of the Tag Line $50.  Get your creative juices flowing and line your pockets with an additional $50. 

Trees for Charity raised over $87,000 and funds were distributed to 42 different families, organizations, and charities. The Tree View was well attended with approximately 3,500 viewers and the changes made this year netted an additional $7,000 for charity. The Children's Choice Tree was "Racing for Miracles" by the Miss Uintah County Scholarship Pageant (pictured above). The Peoples Choice went to "Christmas Elegance" by Uintah High Theatre.

The Trees for Charity Committee, headed by Guy Collett from Beehive Homes of Vernal, did an outstanding job putting together an extremely successful event given today's economic climate. The committee made two changes to their operation that yielded positive results. The first change was a stream line to their Gala Auction by prerecording a 30 second information video (Donated by Dale Allred and the staff from VTV Channel 6) for each charity that was played on a continuous stream to inform the public and donors about the charities. This allowed the auction to proceed faster and keep the flow of "bidding" moving because the auction wasn't stopped to explain each charity. With the "stop and go" removed from the event, Travis the auctioneer was able to smoothly complete the auction of 50 trees in under 2 hours. Another change netted large dollar results for the event's bottom line. The committee decided to allow those participating in the Tree View to donate to the charity of their choice by providing envelopes for viewers to utilize. In times past, you had to attend the Gala Auction in order to participate financially. Now, anybody viewing the trees could participate and there were over 3,500 people viewing the trees. This little change netted over $7,000 that were distributed to Charity. The whole committee did an excellent job and provided a vital need for the community.
 

The Chamber staff would like your input on the following two questions, Is less-more? and Is variety the spice of life?  Regular Tuesday luncheons have been the hallmark of the Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce.  But, due to changing times and needs of the membership as well as staff time commitments, we have to ask the question, if weekly chamber luncheons are serving the needs of our members or if there is another way that may serve more members.  The staff would like to get feed back on the following proposed changes.  We would like to reduce the number of weekly luncheons to one or two luncheons per month.  Perhaps less luncheons would be easier for membership to calendar and attend.  We would also like to add one breakfast gathering and one evening gathering per month instead.  We would like to do less luncheons and add more variety in the format of our chamber meetings.  We would propose to have the first Tuesday of the month be a Breakfast Gathering, the second Tuesday of the month be a luncheon, the third Tuesday be an evening gathering, the fourth Tuesday be another luncheon or special event. 

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Since the Chamber has gone Hi-Tech and implemented expanded internet capability for it's membership, some of you may be wondering how to take advantage of it for your businesses.  If you say to yourself "All this technology is Greek to me", then we have a solution to help you.  One of our new chamber members, Ted Munford with Techris Design Inc. is a specialist in all things computer and technical.  He is one guy that I know can truly say "It's all Geek to me".  Ted has two interns from Uintah High School that are learning the art of high technology and the Chamber has recruited them to help all of our members break the technological barriers and set up their web presences by optimizing their new "traffic catcher sites" with the Chamber website. 

 

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