The Vancouver Board of Trade (VBOT) is back from the brink.
And well ahead of schedule, according to its president and CEO.
Iain Black called fiscal 2013-14 “a very big year, a historic year” for the VBOT. The former tech company turnaround expert and minister of labour and small business in Gordon Campbell’s provincial Liberal cabinet bases that evaluation on recently released board of trade financials, which show the organization maintaining a two-year winning streak begun in fiscal 2012-13, when the VBOT posted the most profitable year in its 127-year history.
Fiscal 2013-14, Black said, followed that high-water mark with an even better showing. The board eliminated its deficit three years ahead of its business game plan, posted a 2013-14 surplus of just over $784,000 and is projecting a $257,000 surplus for 2014-15.
Aside from financial good news, the VBOT added 1,006 new members.
All of the above is welcome news for an organization that was seriously in the glue when Black took the helm in late 2011.
His mandate then: reinvention, rejuvenation and a return to relevancy for current and prospective members.
The three Rs were badly needed because, as Black pointed out, the board – down to 3,800 members, burdened with a $1.6 million deficit following cumulative losses of approximately $2.4 million over four years and faced with a six-month window of survival – was, to put it mildly, “in pretty tough shape.”
The VBOT turnaround began with a board restructuring in January 2012 that trimmed staff from 35 to 21 and kick-started an overhaul of the VBOT’s organizational skill set.
As it had with many businesses, the 2008-09 recession hit the VBOT’s bottom line hard. But the board was also a victim of a dated business model, which, like a lot of similar organizations, had it wrestling with irrelevancy in the marketplace, especially among upcoming generations of entrepreneurs and businesses.
Retooling the organization should not have been tough for an old hand in the tech turnaround trade, but as Black pointed out, a not-for-profit, or “not-for-loss” as he likes to call it, is a different corporate animal than a commercial enterprise. Especially today, because “the business model of chambers of commerce and boards of trade that date back to the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s don’t work today. Business people of my generation and younger … they are not joiners; they don’t join organizations like our parents and grandparents used to.”
So Black sees the VBOT’s recent success at signing up new members, especially in programs like its Company of Young Professionals, as a significant achievement in bucking the declining membership trend facing chambers of commerce and boards of trade all over North America.
Achieving that success does not come cheap. While revenue from the VBOT’s programs and services jumped to $6.2 million in fiscal 2013-14 from $3.4 million the previous year, expenses in that category increased to $4.2 million from $1.9 million.
And the VBOT still has a long way to go. For example, from a membership perspective, as Black pointed out, the board, with just under 5,000 members, is still “punching below its weight” based on memberships per business licences in Vancouver.
His VBOT membership target: matching larger centres like Toronto, where membership is closer to 10,000.
“The chamber movement has to evolve from the way it currently is,” Black said, “and I believe we have determined the formula that is resonating with both the existing and future business leaders.” •
