Federation Joins Raleigh Chamber!
The Federation has joined Raleigh Chamber! The mission of Raleigh Chamber is to “build a thriving regional economy, enhance the community’s quality of life, and strengthen member businesses.” To learn more about what this means, we talked to Mark Goldhaber, JCRC Government Affairs Liaison and the chair of this year’s Inter-Community Seder.
Q: What does a Chamber of Commerce do?
Mark: It has multiple roles. They work on trying to create a good business environment that attracts businesses to the city they are in. They tend to work closely with local governments, colleges, transportation, and other entities because it matters for building a robust economy and community. Raleigh Chamber provides a lot of details about their mission on their website.
Q: Why would a nonprofit join a Chamber of Commerce?
M: It’s an important network to tap into. If the businesses get to know us, they might be willing to support our community work and social services. I met with a bank the other day, and my contact said that they supported Jewish for Good in Durham. They didn’t even know we exist! I think the JFS social services and Camp JCC could be supported by local companies. Being part of the Chamber is a way to get to know a lot of these folks.
From my point of view, the business community is so much more involved in important social issues, that it seems to me like we needed to try to connect with them. All of us are concerned about antisemitism and the recent spike in incidents. Almost any company of any size has a Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) committee or someone on staff concerned with it. The Chamber has a group of over 100 members that are involved in DEI issues. Antisemitism seldom makes that list, so I think our engagement allows us to position antisemitism as something companies have to think about.
Mark Goldhaber at 2022 Inter-Community Seder
Q: How did the idea come about for the Federation to join?
M: I got the idea while starting planning for this year’s Inter-Community Seder. The Chamber is such a force in the Raleigh community, and I thought they were essential for reaching influential people. It may be a multi-year effort to engage, but they talk to all the Raleigh City Council and Wake County Commissioners—people we want to know about us. If we can get the Chamber’s support, and the Chamber says they are going to push back against antisemitism in Raleigh, that’s important. It not only impacts large numbers of employees, it makes a big difference with elected officials regardless of party.
Q: What does the Federation have to look forward to as a new member of Raleigh Chamber?
M: They have a lot of different programs that we can benefit from. They have networking and sources of expertise. They have all kinds of info on media, healthcare, and other things that we can draw upon. There’s so much expertise within the different areas of the Chamber. Because we are relatively small compared to other organizations, we can use their resources on health and wellness, and business networks that we can look into when we need vendors. They are a good place to go to.
One of the things that resulted from joining is that we will be involved in dialogue on antisemitism. On January 26th, we are speaking at Courageous Conversation, a program run by the Chamber’s Triangle DEI Alliance. We will be discussing how local businesses can be supportive of the Jewish community and fight hate.
Q: What do you want people to understand about this?
M: To me, the most important thing is that they are an important network. They are an entrée into the corporate community. We need to be engaging with businesses and corporate leaders so they know our issues. We may find natural places where we can partner together. We certainly have lots of people who have a natural desire to focus on community issues, and a lot of businesses care about those same things. There’s so much potential here.