Greater Rochester Chamber is proud to serve as the voice of business for the nine-county Greater Rochester/Finger Lakes region.
Every day, we work on behalf of our 1,300+ members to move the needle on the issues that matter to our members and ensure that our region stays on the cutting edge as a hub for business and innovation. Read more about the difference we've made in our community this year.
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Membership | Advocacy | HR Services | Communications | Events & Trainings | Talent Strategy | Recruitment & Screening
Membership
Greater Rochester Chamber's 1,300+ members are the foundation that enables all of our work. The investment of our members in our organization and our region fuels everything we do to help businesses and non-profits grow in this community. Since 1837, we have been proud to power business through resources, knowledge, problem-solving, and unlocking opportunities.
This year, we were proud to grow our membership with businesses of all sizes and across industries. Greater Rochester Chamber's membership base is reflective of the broader business community in our region and is made up of over 80% small businesses. Additionally, our new partnership with the Monroe County MWBE Certification program has enabled our membership to be more diverse than ever and further represent the makeup of the broader Greater Rochester community we serve.
In my role as Director of Membership, I am lucky to get to know so many of our members personally. Hearing your stories of overcoming adversity to grow, succeed, and make our region better is inspiring. Your wins are our wins – we grow together.
To our members, thank you for your commitment to growing Greater Rochester. As you read the rest of this page and see our collective impact as an organization, know that without your steadfast support, none of this would be possible. For organizations looking to join a community of like-minded, driven businesses, please reach out!
Advocacy
Advocacy can take many forms. To us, it means breaking down the barriers impeding business success. Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce of serves as the primary advocate for the Finger Lakes region's business community. In 2023, our efforts in supporting the region's industries were extensive and wide-reaching, ranging from making connections and offering letters of support to directly meeting with legislators, and everything in between.
We are proud to have helped hundreds of businesses in 2023 in securing support to grow and expand their business, navigating government agencies, procuring permits and licensures necessary for their success, and advocating directly to decision-makers through meetings, memoranda, letters, phone calls, and advocacy days.
We also utilized our network and relationships to help many small businesses this year, whose success is so critical to our regional economy. We provided impactful assistance to members on over 120 occasions through direct advocacy and formal submissions, and in many cases helped businesses get off the ground or stay open. These efforts span various areas and include direct engagements with over 35 different organizations across New York State, including:
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To learn more about Greater Rochester Chamber's ongoing advocacy efforts and current policy priorities, please see our Advocacy Agenda. Our advocacy is a collaborative process with our members and our policies shift based on what matters most to you. If there is anything Greater Rochester Chamber can do to help, please reach out.
Human Resources Services
People are at the core of everything we do and are critical to the success of our 1,300+ members and the entire region. Providing support to ensure that organizations can take care of their people, remain in compliance, and compete in today’s marketplace is a crucial part of our mission to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and create opportunities. Since 1887, we have been proud to provide services and support to HR professionals and businesses throughout the nine-county Greater Rochester/Finger Lakes region.
From micro-businesses to some of our region’s largest employers, our focus is on providing the data, information, and programs businesses need to compete in today’s marketplace. We know that each day is different for those with human resource responsibilities, so we must be ready to respond accordingly. We’re always listening so the topics we select for our briefings and the benchmarking data we publish often come directly from feedback and needs shared by our members. We also closely monitor state and federal labor law changes to ensure members are up to date and in compliance.
In addition to the work that our team of three does to directly help employers, Greater Rochester Chamber is a connector and convener. We create opportunities for HR professionals to connect with each other and create a community for them to come together, solve problems, and find ways to attract and keep the talent in our region. The impact that this connectivity outlet has is immeasurable, but its importance cannot be overstated.
Consider us an extension of your team. We’re here to help - no question is too small. Whether you are a HR department of one or twenty, we are happy to do anything we can to ease your burden, answer your questions, and help your team and organization succeed. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to learn more.
Communications
Greater Rochester Chamber is an information hub for tens of thousands of business professionals in the Greater Rochester region. Each year, we strive to tell the story of our organizaion and its members to underscore how Greater Rochester is a thriving community for businesses and people to call home. Making sure organizations in our community know how we can help remove barriers to success is critical to ensuring the success of our organization and region.
Across our main Greater Rochester Chamber LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram channels we are proud to have over 32,000 followers, not including the 20+ other accounts managed within our organization, representing different brands, programs, and initiatives. With the speed of information, we must we provide timely messages to our audience and meet them where they already are. We encourage you to follow us to get updates from Greater Rochester Chamber directly on your phone.
In addition to our social media channels, we maintain a robust directory of resources on GreaterRochesterChamber.com, ensuring that our work is documented and easy to find for anyone looking for help. Our website serves as a portal to connect to all of the products and services, offered by our team. From sharing news updates, event registraion, digital resources, and member directories, our website has it all. We invite you to take the time to dive in and explore everything it has to offer.
We also understand the importance of using our network to help tell the stories of our members and community partners throughout Greater Rochester. We do this both on our website through our Member News program, Community Calendar, and Voice of Business blog, and through our Member Advertising program. Connecting members to each other is a central tenant of our work, and our member advertising program provides an affordable and effective way to do that for members with advertising budgets of all sizes.
Our goal is to create a two-way dialogue and find synergies between organizations and create meaningful change for the region. To make sure you're hearing the critical things your business needs to know to succeed, please reach out if you're not receiving our emails. We're here to help and answer any questions you have.
Events & Trainings
events hosted
Chamber Academy trainings
Success in business is no accident. That’s why we offer a wide variety of programs, seminars, workshops, and social events designed with your business in mind. Greater Rochester Chamber is proud to be known regionally for our high-quality events and programs, largely thanks to the commitment of our partners and sponsors. We know that we’re stronger together, which is why our department works to find opportunities to bring people together to learn, grow, celebrate, and make connections. Our events and programs connect with thousands of people each year from all around the region.
We offer events in ten different event series each year, host nine in-person signature events and conferences, and offer eight training classes, including custom training options, and a 10-month virtual leadership training, and DEI leadership cohort offerings. No matter what you’re looking for, we offer something. From our member location behind-the-scenes tours, volunteer opportunities, trending topics, legislative events, tech related informative events, legal insights, professional development events, virtual networking opportunities, in-person social events and more, we’re here to help you move the needle, personally and for your organization. We are also committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) through initiatives such as our DEI Leadership Award and MWBE Awards program. These efforts aim to expand opportunities for historically underrepresented communities, reflecting our dedication to driving positive change both personally and organizationally.
When planning all of this content each year, we rely on our members. We need you to share what you want to attend – what you want to learn about, who you want to hear from, and how you want to hear it. And, we depend our members to share their expertise with their peers. Our small team of three at the Chamber can’t be experts on everything we need to share, so we lean on our innovative and thriving members to share and spread their knowledge. Everything we have accomplished this year, we have accomplished together – so thank you for showing up, and for sharing.
That being said, if there are gaps in our content you want to see filled, please reach out. We are here to serve you, and what matters to you matters to us. I hope to see you at our events soon!
Talent Strategy
Greater Rochester Chamber takes our role as regional lead for talent strategy as part of the ROC2025 coalition seriously. We offer a variety of programs and services to recruit, retain, and engage employers and workers throughout the Greater Rochester region and throughout the country. It was clear from the beginning that this complex and multi-faceted issue would have to be approached from several angles. Three years in, our work has just begun – but we are proud of the progress we have made.
The programs we have created and the work that we do is a direct result of conversations with key community stakeholders. We’ve conducted surveys and focus groups, held conversations with active board members and other CEOs and HR Managers, and formed a Talent Strategy working committee. We listened to the concerns of our region in order to develop programs and services that were designed specifically to meet the needs of our community. A central tenant that emerged from these conversations and has shaped our focus was the need to develop, engage with, and provide support for hidden talent pools, historically unrepresented in workforce development efforts.
As the numbers above illustrate, we’ve engaged with thousands of individuals and helped connect them to meaningful employment opportunities. What these numbers can’t show is the collective impact these efforts have had on our communities, through the ways that the individuals served have shaped the lives of other people. It is worth celebrating the collective economic impact of these programs, such as $2.1M added to the Greater Rochester regional economy through remote worker salaries in addition to the 39 other trailing family members now working in our community, but talented people and their stories are at the core of our work.
As mentioned above, this work is collaborative. We want to know what your issues are and identify ways we can help. Please, don’t hesitate to reach out and start that conversation.
Recruitment & Screening
Beyond TalentEdge
Beyond TalentEdge
Thriving businesses need top talent – and that’s what we’re here to help with. This year, we placed 885 employees into meaningful careers in the Greater Rochester region. That’s 885 individual people who we opened doors for and created opportunities for them to advance their professional and personal lives. And, for the organization, that’s 885 qualified individuals placed into open roles, taking the burden off of HR professionals and hiring managers and enabling organizations to move the needle on their goals.
In addition to the placements we made through temp-to-hire and direct hire services, our organization helped so many other companies in our community with their talent management needs through payrolled services, onboarding services, and on-site management. Our whole goal at Beyond TalentEdge is being a consultative partner in addressing your talent needs, forming a true partnership. We are proud of the impact we’ve had on our clients through tailored services designed to address unique challenges and help meet specific goals.
This year, we were out in our community more than ever at job fairs and other community events, to really meet the people we work with. Our goal is to go beyond being a staffing agency, and really form relationships with clients, employees, and other organizations. We look forward to meeting even more of you in the future. I also wanted to personally thank our 40 new clients this year, as well as all of our other clients for trusting our team to find the people who make your organization work.
No matter what role you need to fill, I encourage you to reach out. From advanced manufacturing to healthcare to your next CFO, we have the in-house expertise to deliver the talent you need, when you need it.
Great companies thrive with great people. We are proud to work with over 500 small, medium, and large companies from around the country to reduce their risk when hiring. In 2023, we ran over 126,000 screenings – which is over 126,000 opportunities for employers to reduce their risk by finding out critical information they need to know about new hires and current employees alike.
In 2023, we expanded our services to be able to provide more clients from around the country with security and peace of mind in hiring. We welcomed new clients here in Greater Rochester, as well as in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Mexico. Authentica is proud to be a national brand, but we remain authentic to our local, personalized approach.
Authentica offers world-class services with best-in-class technology and reporting – but our team and personalized service are our real differentiators. Each day, our customer-centric team of seven is in constant contact with employers and employees to provide customized solutions and the easiest experience possible.
I’m eager to continue to provide background screening solutions to customers throughout the country in the years to come and to continue to provide consultation to our clients to navigate the complex world of hiring.
To help protect your peace of mind and reduce your risk, please reach out today.
Greater Rochester Chamber is proud of our impact throughout the Greater Rochester region.
Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce powers business through resources, knowledge, problem-solving, and unlocking opportunities. No matter what your business does, Greater Rochester Chamber helps you connect to success.
