Nipawin and District Chamber of Commerce discuss finances, building, and next steps at AGM

The Nipawin chamber changed its constitution regarding what would happen if the chamber were to dissolve.

Previously, the organization’s assets would be transferred to the town and fall under its general funding.

Now if the Nipawin chamber were to dissolve, its assets and funding would be transferred to the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce.

Marlon Zacharias, president of the Nipawin chamber, said the change is to ensure the organization could be re-established in a few years if it were to ever dissolve.

“If anybody ever decided to come back and re-open the chamber, there would be no funding made available to them, except for what they could get from the local businesses again,” Zacharias said.

In what Zacharias called the worst case scenario, the organization’s assests would be held indefinitely in a trust until someone attempted re-establishing it.

Financial State

The Nipawin chamber saw a surplus in 2018, with over $3,000 in revenue over expenses – over double what its budget projected – and sat at the end of the year at over $80,000 in net assets. The chamber’s year-end net assets grew by over $3,000 from 2017, but revenue over expenses were down by more than half.

While business is steady, Zacharias hopes to increase membership.

“We have seen a little bit of a decline with some of our membership,” he said. “There’s always going to be an increase and a decrease year to year. We have lost a couple of members through various reasons, but we’ve also been gaining member through new business, outside investment and memberships.”

Membership revenue for the Nipawin chamber was a little under $35,000 in 2018, nearly $3,000 shorter than the budget projected and down nearly $4,000 from 2017.

Zacharias said the budget should be balanced for 2019, in part to the Town of Nipawin assuming visitor information services from them.

“On paper, our budget was always balanced,” he said. “However, what was happening was we had to cut in a lot of places and use funding from other programs to help cover the loss that visitor services incurred.

“We spent a lot of time with people coming in and out the door looking for services and tourist information. Every year we had to spend a lot of time getting that information from different areas and communities and bringing it into Nipawin. Now we’ll be able to change the focus and look more along the lines of advocating for our business community, advocating for Highway 55, entertaining ministers, and spending time with the governments to get money to help grow the economic activity.”

The Nipawin chamber received $14,000 from the town for running visitor information services.

Discussions with the Town – Fate of the Building

Earlier the Town of Nipawin declared the chamber’s building and activities were not in line with the Central Park land zoning requirements. Therefore, the organization will need to relocate.

Zacharias said the Nipawin chamber is in communication with the town to see if they would be interested in purchasing it.

“We do see it as the best option,” he said. “The building is a visitor services building. It looks like a tourist centre. For us to move the building on a new location, we would still have that visitor services look, and it would make it hard for us to separate ourselves from that.”

Selling the building to the Town of Nipawin would open the door for the chamber to move closer to the downtown core.

“It does look like there is going to be, in the future, an opportunity for us to work together with that group downtown,” Zacharias said. “It is going to take some time to rebuild that relationship with some of our business downtown and to get back to that strong downtown promotions with the chamber.”

–

aaron.schulze@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @SchulzePANow

by Aaron Schulze

Nipawin and District Chamber of Commerce discuss finances, building, and next steps at AGM

What's Trending