Aynor Chamber of Commerce Board Meeting, March 13, 2025 at the Aynor Town Hall
Attendees: Emily Griffin, Sandy Davis, Paulette Johnson, Ryan Graham, David Dorman
Absent: Jamel Davis, Tray Andrew, Keb Johnson, Jill Dudley, Sammy Joe Lewis
Board Membership Updates
Paulette Johnson has joined the Chamber board. Her previous experience on the Chamber prior to its most recent dissolution and her marketing and technical background provides the Chamber real added value.
Online Presence / Marketing
Paulette provided updates to the board on previous marketing and social media efforts along with some of her capabilities to assist. She has secured the website domain and she still has access to the Aynor Chamber’s Facebook account.
Paulette encouraged the group to be thinking of Chamber Membership benefit opportunities to help excite the business community around becoming a chamber member.
Paulette agreed to begin working on some online membership sign up and payment links for businesses who might be interested or able to join easier with our online presence. Full website build will likely take some time, but with our membership drive underway, she is working to stand up a quick temporary online presence until our complete website is ready for prime time.
Chamber Membership Drive
The main purpose of the meeting was to launch into our 2025 membership drive. Ryan had taken the 2024 Town of Aynor Business License List and provided a recommended Chamber membership category for each business based on the categories and fee structure from last meeting. He also divided the list into 2 groups: Local and Non-Local businesses. Local businesses were those who’s offices were located in the 29511 or 29544 zip coded.
We agreed to take this list and divide it up amongst the board members so a board member could reach out to all local businesses on the list. We stepped through each business one-by-one and assigned a board member responsible for each business on the list. For all non-local businesses, we asked Paulette to draft a membership email along with supporting details to encourage our “out of town” business to join our chamber.
Each business on the list was then assigned a board member, and the list will be distributed electronically to the board as soon as reasonably possible.
Ryan provided updated hard copies of the 2025 Membership Application and Invoices to board members present.
Each member agreed to push through their list of businesses over the next 2 weeks and report back at our regularly scheduled meeting on March 27th. At that time, we will decide what our next wave of recruitment efforts might look like.
Chamber Business Details
David updated the board that he had indeed secured our previous mailbox number from the Aynor Post Office. It had not been reassigned to anyone. Our mailing address will be PO Box 175, Aynor, SC 29511
Ryan provided updated bank documents requiring signatures of the President (David), Vice President (Sandy), Treasurer (Emily), and Secretary (Ryan) as signators on the Aynor Chamber Operating Account at Anderson Brothers Bank.
Ryan reminded the group of our 501(c)6 status and that it would likely be mid-late summer before we heard anything back from the IRS.
Upcoming Meeting Dates
Team discussed and agreed, again, that we should use March/April to perform a membership blitz during the months of March and April. The following upcoming meeting date as were agreed to.
- March 27th: March Meeting – Focus on Membership Drive and Discussion on Bylaws [@Aynor Town Hall]
- April 24th: Board Meeting – Want to invite neighboring chamber (Conway, Loris, Marion) leaders to join us to share their experience. [Location TBD]\
- May 13th: Full Membership Meeting [@The Rock]
We discussed attending an upcoming council meeting during public input to share with council where we are.
Open Action Items
- Jamel – Follow up with his contact in Tim Scott’s office on help with our 501(c)(6) reinstatement status
- Ryan – Contact and invite Conway Chamber leaders to our April 24th meeting to provide some feedback
- Emily – Contact and invite Loris and Marion Chamber leaders to our April 24th meeting to provide some feedback
- Ryan – Follow up with Keb to determine his interest on the board
- Team – Membership drive and recruitment