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Williamstown Website Seeking Town Funds
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
12:16PM / Thursday, October 27, 2016
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Board of Selectmen on Monday heard pitches from two local nonprofits that promote the town — one that already receives financial support from the town and another that would like to.
 
Representatives from the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce and the website Destination Williamstown told the board what they are doing to help bring business — especially tourist business — to the Village Beautiful.
 
Following on the heels of last year's report of the town's Economic Development Committee, the two groups stressed how their missions help achieve the goals stated in that report.
 
The Chamber already gets about half of its operating budget from a portion of the town's rooms and meals tax revenue that town meeting alots to the business group.
 
"Our annual budget is about $90,000," Chamber President Jason Dohaney said. "Our hope is that half comes from members and half comes from the town. Both can be volatile. When you have Van Gogh at the Clark, the town portion is phenomenal."
 
Destination Williamstown, an events-driven page promoting things to do in and around town, launched in 2014 as a labor of love of its volunteer board of directors.
 
Currently, its budget is $45,000, with a little less than half going to the salary of the site's curator, DW board member Merritt Colaizzi told the Selectmen.
 
Ninety-five percent of that operating budget comes from annual fund-raising, with Williams College being the "cornerstone" of the group's funding stream, Colaizzi said.
 
Ideally, Destination Williamstown would like to see the town play a role in supporting the site's work, Colaizzi said.
 
Going forward, the DW board said hypothetically it could generate about a third of its budget — $15,000 from three or four large "presenting sponsors," another third from community leaders, $2,500 from grants and the remainder, about $15,000, from the town — if the town was so inclined.
 
"This is building off the Economic Development Committee report," Colaizzi said. "The concept might be that the town supports the marketing efforts of Destination Williamstown. Some people have told us, ‘I don't want to give you money. The town should be paying for that.' "
 
Colaizzi immediately acknowledged that the idea might not fly with town voters.
 
"This is a total trial balloon," she said. "It might be a lead one."
 
Town Manager Jason Hoch told the Board of Selectmen the notion of getting Destination Williamstown on the town's books is in its infancy, but the non-profit could, in theory, receive a portion of the rooms and meals tax receipts, as the Chamber of Commerce does already. Or DW could receive money as a line item in the operating budget.
 
Chairman Andrew Hogeland indicated the town needs to be prudent where it spends tax money. Combining DW with the Chamber and the recently created Williamstown Cultural District, Hogeland said there are at least three avenues for town promotion.
 
"It sounds like the three entities have slightly overlapping agendas," Hogeland said. "If we're going to be handing out money, we want to make sure that the relationship [between the three] is efficient."
 
Selectwoman Jane Patton asked if Destination Williamstown and the Chamber of Commerce were considering some sort of merger.
 
DW's Barbara McLucas said the two groups, whose missions clearly dovetail, have discussed an "alliance," but those talks have not been held for more than a year.
 
Meanwhile, both the Chamber and Destination Williamstown continue their independent efforts to promote Williamstown.
 
The Chamber of Commerce, whose big annual local events are Holiday Walk in early December and the Fourth of July Parade, provides support for local businesses through networking and education events, Executive Director Emily Watts said.
 
In recent years, the Chamber has followed a regional approach to promotion by forming affiliations with groups like Berkshire Visitors Bureau, 1Berkshire and the Bennington (Vt.) Chamber of Commerce, she said.
 
The Williamstown Chamber also has purchased ads on the websites Boston.com and BostonGlobe.com, Watts said.
 
Locally, it joined a recent effort to expand the BerkShares program into North County. Watts told the board that the local script is accepted at 500 businesses in South County. In the northern part of the county, the goal right now is to get 15 to 20 vendors on board.
 
"Part of having a local currency is that you can spend it," Watts said. "Our mission is to keep people here and keep them spending here."
 
Destination Williamstown, though just a few years old, already has a strong track record, Colaizzi told the board.
 
Since the site launched, DW has had 95,000 unique visitors and 348,000 page views. The duration of the average visit is 2 minutes, 13 seconds, and the average number of pages visited per session is 2.75, Colaizzi said.
 
The site has been recognized regionally and nationally and is well received by town residents — who were not initially the target audience but who have come to use Destination Williamstown to find out about events in the area, she said.
 
Selectmen Jeffrey Thomas asked why, if the site is beloved by local residents, the directors of Destination Williamstown were cutting back on their expectations for fund raising in their projected future budget.
 
Colaizzi explained that the DW was not founded with the intention that it would be sustained through donations indefinitely.
 
"This is not a membership organization," she said. "When it started, we said, 'Let's have a three-year plan and then re-evaluate. That's where we are now.
 
"We've had great support, but I don't know if we can go to the same well every year."
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