Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 21, 1995                   TAG: 9509210056
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHAMBER CALLS ON OTHER GROUP LEADERS TO JOIN BOARD

More than 40 business leaders are meeting today to develop next year's goals for the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce - a strategy that could include greatly expanding the organization's board of directors.

The chamber, in a bid to reinforce its regional identity, recently decided to open up its board of directors. It is offering board seats to eight other chambers of commerce spread throughout the Roanoke and New River valleys and Alleghany Highlands area, three area business organizations, the New Century Council and Virginia Tech.

The leadership of each organization was invited to join the chamber board in an Aug. 22 letter from Thomas Brock, chamber chairman.

Chamber President John Stroud said the intent is not to make the regional chamber into an umbrella organization, overseeing other groups. "It's a collaborative process," he said. "By all of us being in the room, we can all make decisions."

Brock added, "Today, it is coalitions of groups that basically form the leadership of a community."

Apart from the push for new board members, the chamber is scheduled today to stage its annual one-day planning meeting. The session is scheduled for 3 p.m. at Hunting Hills Country Club.

Chamber leaders normally invite the many chambers and organizations in the area. But because the chamber now is willing to create new board seats, this year's event appears to have greater drawing power, said Rob Glenn, chairman-elect.

The number of people registered for the private meeting is about twice as many as usually attend, Glenn said. Those who show up can get in on the ground floor of the chamber planning process, when the equivalent of a one-year business plan is written.

Those who attend won't be committing to join the chamber board. Rather, each group will take up that question on its own and give the chamber an answer within about a month, Brock said.

Twenty-five people sit on the board of the private, nonprofit chamber, 18 serving three-year terms as representatives of specific industries and seven serving one-year terms as general members.

The chamber is operating this year on an $842,000 budget, 75 percent of it derived from dues paid by its 1,750 members.

Its vice president and lobbyist, Bud Oakey, works in Richmond on behalf of seven area chambers.

The groups invited to expand the chamber board include those chambers serving the combined areas of Salem and Roanoke County; Christiansburg and Montgomery County; Blacksburg; Vinton; Franklin County; the Bedford area; Smith Mountain Lake; and the Alleghany Highlands area.

The Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau, Downtown Roanoke Inc. and the Roanoke Valley Business Council each were invited to send a representative to the chamber board. Of the groups contacted, only Virginia Tech officially had accepted the offer as of Wednesday.

The Botetourt County Chamber of Commerce and Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership already are represented on the chamber board.

The Roanoke chamber is one of the three largest in the state.