Chamber Overview
It was in the early 1970s; Ray Wulfenstein spearheaded the creation of a Chamber of Commerce, along with several other community leaders. In fact, Ray was elected to serve as the Chamber’s first President in 1975. The Chamber incorporated in 1981.
Presently, the Chamber is located on the second floor of the Nevada State Bank Building on Highway 160. We are open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Chamber is governed by a seven member Board of Directors.
Our Mission Statement: To progressively support our community’s growth and welfare. PVCC endorses, promotes and provides valuable resources to its membership, sponsors economic and workforce development to advance the community-at-large; and presents opportunities for tourism.
Our membership base hovers around the 500 mark. Our office performs many different services on behalf of the membership and our community-at-large. It might be important to note that the first place visitors are most likely to visit happens to be our office. We actually get over 5,000 visitors per year. Many of them are staying with friends and family and want to know what they can do during their visit; next are heading to Death Valley and seeking information about where they can stay and what else they can do. We also receive people who are looking for relocation information. We speak with many community residents who want information about a business. And, lastly, we speak with residents and visitors who are seeking information about starting a business.
We post local and county board meeting agendas and other organizations’ announcements on bulletin boards located in our office.
Remarkably, our telephones seem to ring non-stop. We answer dozens of questions daily regarding everything you can imagine: Where’s the DMV? Do we have a hospital? Where’s the court house? Do we have a radio station? Is there a book binder in town? How do they get in touch with the brothels? We are asked for hotel names and numbers; do we have zoning? Can we recommend a realtor? And so on. We give out innumerable phone numbers daily.
We also mail out relocation and visitor packages to people all over the United States. We work closely with the Nevada Commission on Tourism and we handle mailings for Nevada Silver Trails publications. We reply to information request cards from various magazines and the Nevada Silver Trails toll free number. It is almost a full-time job just keeping an inventory of publications for distribution. It was interesting for us to learn just recently, that Pahrump gains the second largest leads from Nevada Magazine. Virginia City generates the most, just about 40 more than Pahrump!
Our office strives to reach out to our membership and community-at-large in every aspect of a community’s makeup. We work with the education community, the public sector, state and federal legislators, the health community and more. We partner with Nye County School District; the Pahrump school system; Nevada Outreach Training, Great Basin College, and the JobConnect.
The Chamber offers insurance programs and identity theft programs exclusive for chamber members. We publish a monthly newsletter, the Vision, a monthly Chamber News page in the Pahrump Valley Times, and we promote Pahrump in Nevada Magazine and other state and national publications. We prepare Welcome Bags for different occasions.
We act as a referral service and sometimes even as a Better Business Bureau helping people resolve issues with local businesses. We assist members with the groundbreaking of new businesses and Ribbon Cutting Ceremonies.
We maintain the Tourist Information Kiosk located at the corner of Basin Avenue and Highway 160. We provide publications to the hotels and RV Parks, as well as businesses for tourist informational purposes. We also administer inventory and stocking of a Pahrump brochure distributed in over 20 locations on Interstate 15 in Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California.
For our members, we hold monthly luncheons featuring informative guest speakers, as well as, After-Hours social mixers. Both monthly events afford our membership the opportunity to network with the rural Southern Nevada business community and local/county/state government representatives. The Chamber sponsors and hosts several community-wide events throughout the year.
We recently re-launched our website. We expanded our information to include many more local, county, and state resources. We keep a monthly community events calendar (available on our website, as well); we are connected to other chambers of commerce and convention and visitors authorities throughout the U.S. The work on our website is far from complete; we continue to make improvements and make updates daily.
We are an organization that provides many services to our community-at-large, actually for free. We are able to do this through our membership and income derived from our magazine, events, and grants.
Talking about our magazine, the Pahrump Valley Magazine is an annual publication providing a number of resources to its readers. Of course, it highlights the town of Pahrump and our chamber membership. It satisfies those seeking information on relocation, tourism, and community businesses.
We thank our membership and the community for their support making Pahrump a great place to live and work.