Salisbury Chamber Of Commerce Press Release

This organization has been a community and regional leader for 92 years. We represent 800 area businesses, organizations and individuals working together to make Salisbury, Wicomico County and the Lower Shore a better place to live, work and visit. This organization has a tradition of service and excellence.

I am Sandy Fitzgerald-Angello of the Pohanka Automotive Group of Salisbury and a Chamber Patron Sponsor. I have been involved with this organization for ten years and the great things it has done has inspired me to seek the position of President of the Chamber this year. Even in the hard economic times, our Chamber continues to be a resource and asset to the businesses of this area.

We strive to be a great fraternal organization and just last month we added the Salisbury University President's Distinguished Community Leadership Award. I want to thank Dr. Janet Dudley-Eshbach for recognizing what she called our "extraordinary contributions to the community and people of the Lower Eastern Shore."

This Chamber is also recognized nationally as a superior organization. I am proud to announce the United States Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday notified us of the results of our five year Accreditation review. Our Chamber has participated in the US Chamber systematic assessment of our organization since 1966. The United States Chamber of Commerce Accreditation Board has awarded the Salisbury Area Chamber Accreditation with four stars. This a great honor. Only 223 of the 6,936 Chambers of Commerce in America have submitted to the difficult accreditation process. The four star level puts us in the top 2% of all Chambers.

Brad our Executive Director can explain the process and answer questions later, but I want to emphasize this is an honor earned by all the people involved in this organization. The Accreditation process looks at everything we do and found us to be doing it better than most.

Some of the people who made this award possible are here today. An Accreditation committee was established by our past president Ernie Colburn last year. Chamber Vice President Tony Nichols of BBSI chaired the effort. The process involved nine areas for review and our committee had a sub-committee for each area. This self-assessment was a major undertaking. We reviewed ourselves against the US Chamber Standard while continuing our busy schedule of events.

Will those who helped with compiling the report please stand. These people and many other who could not be here put many hours into looking at the operations, activities, finances and facilities of our Chamber. Their report was huge and thorough. Many Thanks to all of you!

There report was reviewed over the last two months by a special board at the US Chamber. We were told this year’s report scored higher than five years ago.

The journey to excellence is never ending and requires more than a period complete review. I pledge we will take the recommendations of the committee and the US Chamber and use them to make this Chamber the best it can be.

Just before this meeting our Executive Committee had a meeting to review our mission statement to insure we are relevant in these challenging times. We are planning an upgrade to our website. All while continuing to provide member support, job training, networking events and next week the Delmarva Chicken Festival.

I am very honored to make this announcement, but let me close by repeating, this is a great tribute to our members and staff who work tirelessly to make our community a better place to live, work and raise our families.