At the Fanning Institute, we are committed to working with chambers of commerce across Georgia to develop effective leaders of all ages and increase community vitality, strengthening communities and creating a better quality of life for citizens across the state.

We assist chambers in a variety of ways, including:

Developing a new quality of community leader

• We partner with chambers to develop broad-based adult and youth community leadership programs based on our Community Leadership Program and Youth Leadership in Action curricula or customized leadership programming to meet a community’s unique needs.

• Our faculty and staff provide technical assistance for leadership programming at all stages, from program design and curriculum development through to program assessment and evaluation.

• We create sustainable leadership programs by providing curriculum and facilitation training for community members, empowering them to lead their programs.

• We help community leaders identify their leadership and communication styles and our faculty and staff provide team building sessions to help leaders build relationships and work better together.

Strengthening the organization

• We help chambers develop organizational capacity through career and professional leadership development programming, board and CEO executive leadership development and executive coaching.

• We work with chamber boards to help them maximize their potential by understanding board members’ responsibilities and how to best balance the partnership between the board and staff through board governance training.

• We help chambers prepare for the future by conducting organizational assessments, leading strategic planning and helping organizations craft succession plans for leadership.

Addressing community issues

• We offer community needs assessments to chambers that can help them identify local priorities.

• Our faculty and staff can help chambers facilitate town hall meetings and community input sessions using focus groups and computer technology to gather feedback from all segments of the community.

• We can train community leaders in conflict transformation and dialogue strategies to engage diverse audiences on difficult topics and we work with communities to provide cultural competency and diversity training.

Our faculty and staff bring years of expertise into communities to help guide an objective, adaptable, client-driven process that is responsive to the community’s needs and desires.

To partner with the Fanning Institute to strengthen your community or chamber of commerce, contact director Matt Bishop.