"One member made a contact last May at the international festival networking event at the Business to Business Expo that led to a $30 million contract," Chamber Vice President Heidi Ballif wrote in a recent letter to chamber members.

"Your experience may not be as dramatic," she added, "but every day Chamber members are expanding their business through Chamber events, seminars and programs."

Ballif has been pleasantly surprised by the variety of responses she has received "from people in high levels of organizations, small businesses, nonprofits."

For example, after Sabina Zunguze of Beautiful Options USA LLC attended a chamber luncheon with the visiting South African ambassador, she was one of 20 businesspeople invited by the South African government to a business exposition in Johannesburg.

"My company now does business with eight different groups of South African women [mostly rural] who produce high-end crafts," Zunguze said. "This visit has not only raised the revenue of my company substantially but it has availed an opportunity to raise the quality of life for these women, one of the major objectives of my company."

Shannon Young of For Every Body public relations noted that within several months of joining the chamber, she attended workshops about "marketing, Web sites, blogging, networking and other topics helpful in my job as a public relations specialist."

When Matt Wilson moved here in 1988, he didn't know anyone in Salt Lake City's business community. The president of Riviera Insurance Services made the contacts he needed by joining the chamber and participating actively on various committees. "It's fair to say I built my business around the Salt Lake Chamber."

For a big company such as Broadcast International, membership "opens the doors to multiple networking and project opportunities, as well as giving us a voice in ongoing issues related to our local marketplace," said Burt Jepson, director of national accounts.

Chamber membership is up to 1,805 companies; it had slightly more than 1,700 at the beginning of the year. Although it carries the Salt Lake name, Ballif said, members come from across Utah and 21 other states.

"They join for a variety of reasons," she said. "Maybe they're targeting business here, but a lot of times its because of the Business to Business Expo, one of the few left that deals with businesses across the board. The rest of the expos are industry specific."

Besides trying to attract new companies, Ballif said that giving businesspeople a chance to share feel-good stories is another way of trying to retain them as members. The approach is working, she contended, citing an 87 percent to 90 percent retention rate annually.

"Among chambers of our size, that's very high," Ballif said.

mikeg@sltrib.com