The Bainbridge-Decatur County Chamber of Commerce has been awarded a Three-Star Accreditation by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The accreditation makes our chamber one of 250 chambers in the country that are accredited out of 6,936 chambers.

This honor shows your chamber’s commitment to being an effective and efficiently run operation while enhancing the business climate of our community.

The process, which began in 2008, was very labor intensive.

The task took more than 350 hours of documentation and research being compiled. This information was forwarded to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for review by them, an independent accrediting consultant and the national accrediting board.

There are nine critical areas that were reviewed in the process: Governance, finance, human resources, government affairs, program development, communications, technology, facilities and benchmarking.

The process looked at everything from our bylaws to an audit of our financials. Our current programs of work, our level of security with technology and even our disaster plan was reviewed by the accrediting board.

We would like the membership and the business community to know that your chamber is dedicated to our mission statement of strengthening business, fostering economic growth, and improving the quality of life for all in Bainbridge and Decatur County.

Achieving the accreditation status keeps us standing out from the crowd and moving ahead.

We would also like to give a special thanks to the staff of the chamber for their work in achieving this distinction. The arduous task could not have been done without Chamber President Evelyn Clay, Membership Manager Diane Strickland and Executive Assistant Ginger Mathis.