Strategic Plan

Mission

To actively promote business success in partnership with the Lake Oswego community.
For the Chamber to be successful in accomplishing its mission, it must stay committed to continuous improvement from four complementary perspectives:

1. As an active advocate for the business community, where the vision, services, and influence of the Chamber directly impact business success.
2. As a champion for strategic economic development initiatives working in partnership with local businesses, the city, the county, the school district, and the greater Lake Oswego community;
3. As an effective partner with local business and community associations and organizations that strive to improve the quality of life in the Lake Oswego community; and
4. As a business organization itself, where leadership, management, and the efficient and effective use of resources are critical to its own success and vitality.

The Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce is an organization dedicated to creating the conditions for business success in the Lake Oswego community. The chamber’s leadership efforts are based upon a simple, yet critical understanding of the dynamic balance, which must be maintained between the economic viability of the business community and the quality of life in Lake Oswego.

Vision

The Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce is an exceptional chamber with a strong commitment
to its advocacy for the success of businesses and for its service to the Lake Oswego community.

Our expectations are high, our leadership is exceptional, and our commitment is strong, providing us the means to realize those expectations. Our Chamber membership is characterized by well-educated, energetic, intelligent, and diverse individuals from a wide range of organizations and businesses. We have strong traditions, programs, and signature events. Our unique business advocacy efforts include the Fusion partnership program, Government Affairs Committee, Business Alliance, Lake Oswego Review partnership, and new Chamber/City Economic Development joint venture. The Chamber also provides outstanding member advocacy and educational programs like the FORGE Educational Forums, the Leadership Lake Oswego program, structured networking opportunities, and the Annual Business and Community Leadership Awards Dinner.

The Chamber’s active advocacy for the prosperity of local businesses is the driving force motivating its planning, its decision making, and its actions. Prosperity in this context is a condition of thriving, realizing success, and progressing in the accomplishment of goals. We seek prosperity as individuals, as organizations, and as a community. Prosperity in Lake Oswego is defined not only by our financial successes but by our quality of life, which is largely determined by the vitality of our institutions, organizations, and businesses. All of the key entities—our community, businesses, our service clubs, our
neighborhoods, the Chamber of Commerce, the city, the school district, the Lake Corporation, the Lakewood Center, the Heritage Council—must thrive if the quality of life in Lake Oswego is to remain strong.
Thus, our prosperity as a community is dependent upon the prosperity of its entities; the prosperity of its entities is dependent upon the prosperity of our community. When our entities work together in Lake Oswego, we create a synergy whereby the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We each must continue to actively support the best efforts of all these entities. True partnership for the good of the Lake Oswego community means communication, cooperation, and collaboration among all of the Chamber’s Fusion partners to advance financial success and quality of life in Lake Oswego. If any of our Fusion partners are unsuccessful, all of the partners—and ultimately the Lake Oswego community—will suffer.

Core Values

The quality and success of any Chamber of Commerce is directly related to the quality and success of its members. In addition to the character, integrity, and abilities of its members, our chamber’s success is also directly related to the nature of its core values and our commitment to them.

1. Business Advocacy. To be a proactive chamber with the will and the influence to be a champion for the best economic and political interests of businesses in partnership with the Lake Oswego community.
2. Community Prosperity. To be an impactful chamber that actively builds mutually beneficial relationships with individuals and organizations who share our commitment to the economic vitality and high quality liveability of our community.
3. Service Leadership. To be a visionary and committed chamber that acts decisively with integrity to support others in am common purpose of service to local businesses and the Lake Oswego community.
4. Strategic Partnerships. To be a relationship-building chamber that forges collaborative partnerships and alliances between the local business community and organizations that impact prosperity, economic development and quality of life in Lake Oswego.
5. Continuous Improvement. To be a results-oriented chamber that is continuously focusing on improving its leadership and management, processes and products, abilities and capacities.

The following business advocacy and support priorities will drive the Chamber’s improvement agenda for 2010-2011: