Guthrie Chamber hosts $1000 Giveaway

The Guthrie Chamber of Commerce completed a successful giveaway contest on September 1, seeing 19-year-old Guthrie alum Logan Hand receive the $1000 prize in the final drawing that was streamed live online through Facebook.

Brittany Timmons, President and CEO of the Guthrie Chamber, talked with the News Leader about the success of the contest. “It definitely exceeded our expectations. My goal was 400 submissions. We had 1,100 submissions, so I would consider it a success. It was really fun to watch the receipt submissions come in and see how much local spending is happening right here in our community.”

To enter the contest, entrants simply submitted their receipts online for purchases made locally between August 1 and August 31, through a form on Google Docs. Those submitted receipts were converted into entry tickets for the contest. Every receipt for money spent at any Guthrie businesses was good for one entry, regardless of whether the business was a Chamber investor. Entrants who submitted a receipt for a purchase at a Chamber investor business were afforded two entries instead of just one. Also, the Chamber did not use this as a fundraiser; they provided the money from their own budget for the giveaway with no sponsorships, strictly to boost Guthrie’s local businesses.

Timmons said this was designed to support any of Guthrie’s industries, not just retail storefronts. “We tried to think outof- the-box, like it didn’t just have to be your typical retail shops. It can be where you get your haircut. It can be where you get your car serviced. It can be a store that you purchase something, it can be where you eat, it can be where you get coffee, or where you get fuel. So that was kind of fun to promote various industries, but all for the same purpose, to promote local spending.”

Timmons also spoke on the volume they saw. “Obviously, there’s lots more spending going on than this, than what we could actually track. But over $60,000 was submitted to us.” That included one receipt for a large job with a local plumber that totaled several thousand dollars.

Timmons came up with the idea after seeing similar initiatives be successful in other communities nearby. She reached out to her contacts in those places to see how it was working for them. “They said they were getting really great responses. They just wanted to do something to support their Chamber investors and encourage local spending.”

She also credits the recent success and growth of the Chamber in enabling this to build on itself. “The Chamber has not been in a position where we could just give $1000 away. Due to the growth of the Chamber and the amazing support we have from our Chamber investor businesses we were able to do that,” she said. “So I basically went to the [Chamber of Commerce Board] and said I want to do this in Guthrie. August is a slow month from what I have heard from various merchants, and so I thought, ‘what better way for us to promote local spreading and to get people in?’” She said she would like to consider doing another similar event, perhaps in the late winter-early spring timeframe next year, which tends to be a slow period for local businesses. “It’s also something that we could possibly grow, it could be something that we reach out and ask for some sponsorships to help cover the funding for it and then also give those sponsors some recognition where it’s a collaborative event,” she stated. “So definitely something we would like to do in the future as well.”

Timmons will keep looking at new ways to promote local spending with the Chamber and she spends a great deal of time looking for new ideas to promote it. “The Chamber would like to stress how important it is to spend as much money as possible locally. The more tax dollars that are spent here, the more Guthrie can do. The better for our schools, the better for our future infrastructure, the better for all of us if we keep spending money here locally.”