What should we do with an extra day? That’s a question that first entered my brain in 2000.

I was with the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce at that time. I had been there for five years. I had seen how much good a strong vibrant well led chamber of commerce could do for its community, its members and the local economy.

But on February 29, 2000, I sat there and wondered how the Chamber might mobilize the community to use this extra day to do something….but what?

Fast forward to 2015, I’m at the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, and I saw an opportunity to discuss this idea. 

That fall, we convened a meeting with a bunch of local leaders. People from the nonprofit sector, the for-profit sector and some local philanthropists.

We reminded them that 2016 was a Leap Year. We suggested we find a way to use this extra day for something good. I kept calling it the “extra day initiative.” 

There was interest. People liked the concept. That’s why they showed up. But what should we do or what could we ask our members and people in the community to do with their extra day. 

Bo Goliber, from Fingerpaint, at some point in the discussion, shouted out “Leap of Kindness Day.” 

Everyone said brilliant.

As the representative from GLOBALFOUNDRIES suggested, we then had to figure out how an individual by themselves or a company with 3,000 employees could both participate. 

How might we scale this idea of a Leap of Kindness Day? 

That led us to contact larger local nonprofits to see what we could do to help them. They told us. We need food, clothing, personal care items, money, etc. Setting up a collection drive was reasonably simple for our larger members and they organized drives to meet these local needs. 

Others came to us with their own ideas. Espey Manufacturing wanted to thank our US Navy Sailors with Stewart’s gift cards. The Hampton Inn and Suites, in Saratoga Springs, made breakfast for the Lake Avenue Fire Station. Polyset brought breakfast and lunch to first responders in Clifton Park. The Ballston Spa BPA collected non-skid socks for a local nursing home. 

As we started sharing #leapofkindnessday with our members and our community, other chambers of commerce took notice.

In 2016, we had 52 chambers of commerce in 30 states that asked us if they could share our Leap of Kindness Day idea with their members and communities. We said yes.

Its 2020 now. Four years later. This is another Leap Year. And so we’re again leading the effort to promote Leap of Kindness Day in Saratoga County and beyond. 

New acts of kindness have been announced. 

Customers at Curtis Lumber, for instance, have already bought more than 500 2x4s that Curtis Lumber will be donating to Habitat for Humanity on February 29. 

The Clifton Park Halfmoon Library is collecting funds from patrons for CAPTAIN Community Health Services. T-Shirt Graphics is selling hoodies for just $8 online. All purchases will be donated to the Racetrack Chaplaincy who will give these to backstretch workers.Two website development firms offered to help Kelly’s Angels with a special request. There are collection drives for food, clothes and personal care items already underway. 

This year, we already have more than 160 chambers of commerce in 41 states, Canada and Ireland joining us in celebrating Leap of Kindness Day.

Now, you don’t have to organize a collection drive to participate. Every individual can do something kind for someone else. Make a donation on February 29 to your favorite local charity. Send a thank you note to someone that changed your life. 

February 29 this year is a Saturday. Take your family or friends out for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and TIP big. 

Here in Saratoga, we had the chance to invent Leap of Kindness Day. And the impact is humbling to say the least as more people every day share what they plan to do not just in Saratoga County but across the world. So we ask, what will YOU do with your extra day on February 29, 2020? 

For more information on how you can get involved and make a difference, visit: www.saratoga.org/foundation/leap-of-kindness-day-2020.

When Theresa Agresta, the owner of Allegory Studios and CultureTalk, became the Chair of the Saratoga County Chamber’s Board of Directors earlier this year, she wanted our Chamber to do more than ever before for small business owners.

As a small business owner herself, she had a sense that business owners would value an opportunity to meet up to share their concerns, ideas and challenges privately with one another. 

So we established a new Business Owners Council and invited owners to meet up with one another once a month, at the Chamber.

We then invited local experts to these meetings to talk about employee benefits, cash flow projections, how to manage charitable giving, new sexual harassment training laws, developing sales goals, etc.

The creation of this new member benefit is a big accomplishment for the Chamber in 2019. 

This Council now meets on the first Tuesday, of every month, from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Chamber. 

Our goal will be to increase participation and to continue to bring in speakers on issues of relevance to local small business owners.

This accomplishment is a direct result of the leadership being provided by volunteers with the Chamber, like Theresa Agresta. 

On January 23, 2020, our Chamber will host our 102nd Annual Dinner. We will honor Theresa Agresta and other volunteer leaders for their service to the chamber and this community. 

Our Annual Dinner is also a time for our members and the community to celebrate all of the Chamber’s accomplishments from 2019 and to look ahead to 2020.

Now there is no way we can celebrate every accomplishment.

But there are three that demonstrate how our Chamber changes things for the benefit of our members and all of the communities we serve across Saratoga County.

For starters, we built a Field House for the benefit of US Navy Sailors and their families stationed in Saratoga County, on the US Navy’s Naval Support Activity Center base, in Saratoga Springs. 

The funding came via a grant secured by former State Senator Kathy Marchione. After working with local Navy leaders to determine what to build with these funds, the Chamber hired Munter Enterprises to build this 7,700 square foot facility. 

Now US Navy Sailors stationed in Saratoga County have a first-ever safe, secure, on-base, indoor location to play volleyball or basketball; to host graduations, movie nights, and educational workshops; to drill and to prepare so that they can succeed in all of their missions.

In 2019, we created the Saratoga County Institute for Management in collaboration with SUNY Empire State College. 

With the support of the Saratoga County Capital Resources Corporation, we were able to offer scholarships to small businesses and nonprofits so they could participate in the Institute’s classes. 

From scratch really, we had to create new curriculum, secure expert presenters, oversee the 21 classes, and support the participants and their employers who sponsored them. 

Graduates of the Institute will be better leaders within their organizations thereby helping these companies and nonprofits to succeed, grow and thrive.

In 2019, our community came together like never before to create ONE online community calendar. To get this done, we had to collaborate with Mannix Marketing, Discover Saratoga, the Saratoga Springs DBA, Skidmore College and the Saratoga Springs City Center. 

Now with one online events calendar in place, event organizers can enter information on any one of our seven top performing local websites and that information feeds to all of them. 

The goal is to make it easier for event organizers to promote their events and for people to find them.

And if you’d like to learn more about the many other accomplishments we had in 2019, we invite you to visit www.saratoga.org or to attend our Annual Dinner. 

Crowdsourcing Kindness

February 29th is the reason we have the Olympics and the Presidential Election every four years. Because the calendar is actually 365.25 days, we need it to keep the calendar aligned with the earth's rotation around the sun. 

February 29th is a quadrennial oddity that ought to be in the pantheon of great holidays but is vastly under-appreciated. So it occurred 20 years ago to Todd Shimkus, president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce. He filed the thought away, determined some day to do something creative with it. 

Many will remember the great Saratoga Lip Dub, a mass of Saratogians marching down  Broadway to Congress Park to a medley of songs by Train, whose drummer Scott Underwood is a native of Saratoga Springs. That was a classic Shimkus production that brought together hundreds of organizations and thousands of people and produced a YouTube video that generated 90,000 views. 

Shimkus saw in February 29th the potential for doing something similarly compelling and motivating, a catalyst for some form of collective action. 

But what? 

With 2016 approaching, Shimkus convened a small creative group in 2015 to brainstorm. It was Bo Goliber, director of community relations and philanthropy at Fingerpaint, who came up with the idea, Shimkus recalls. 

"She just blurted out, 'Leap of Kindness Day.' 

It was perfect. And so it was that the Chamber launched a campaign to imbue February 29th with new meaning, a special call every four years to perform an act of compassion, appreciation, or altruism. 

The First Leap of Kindness Day was celebrated not only in Saratoga Springs on Monday, February 29th, 2016 but in 50 communities in 30 states around the country, thanks to the support, logo, and #leapofkindnessday hashtag provided by the Saratoga Chamber to other local chambers that embraced the idea. 

"We had thousands of posts from all around the world of people that did something kind," Shimkus recalls. "Here in Saratoga, companies made breakfast for their local fire companies, crossing guards got coffee, teachers got apples, flowers were delivered to residents of nursing homes, and donations were made to local non-profits." 

The Saratoga Chamber also created Leap of Kindness cards to be mailed to those who have made a difference in your life, imparting long overdue thank you's. 

"Two months later, 'Are you going to do it again?' was the top question people would ask me," Shimkus says. 

Of course. The website for Leap of Kindness Day 2020 is already up,  an organizing committee has formed, and a potentially massive outpouring of kindness eight months from now is metabolizing. The 2016 initiative just won the National Chamber of Commerce Award at the National Association's Leadership Conference. 

"As a result, we've already doubled the number of chambers across the US and Canada expected to participate in 2020," says Shimkus. 


Bringing Together The Best and the Brightest

Shimkus has worked as a Chamber of Commerce executive in three regions over the past 23 years. 

"What I love the most about this work is that we have the opportunity as Chamber executives to bring the best and the brightest together to take action to overcome any challenges our communities are facing or to take advantage of any opportunities for improving our quality of life," he says. 

"The Chamber is uniquely positioned to convene because we have members in the private, public and nonprofit sector," he continues. "They have all joined the Chamber in keeping with our mission to ensure that the region we represent is a great place to live, work and play." 

"That connection and engagement means that we're uniquely informed as to their needs and capabilities. So when we convene a group for an event such as Leap of Kindness Day, we're typically inviting people we know can act and are passionate about doing so." 

"The fact that we are connected and engaged with leaders across these three sectors also means that we're uniquely informed as to their needs and capabilities. This means when we convene groups we are typically inviting people we know can act and are passionate about doing so. 

"We've built roads, visitor centers, parks, trails, parking garages, and helped hundreds of businesses to get started," he continues. "None of this was possible without collaboration and it was the Chamber's role as convener and expert facilitator that has made a huge difference." 


Focusing on Employment

Shimkus says he came into chamber work because of some of the advocacy he had done as a volunteer. "The local chamber in my area needed someone to do government affairs work, so they hired me." 

When Shimkus came to Saratoga nine years ago from Glens Falls, he found a large chamber with "a lot of resources and good people."

"It was an opportunity for me to use what I'd learned in my prior two roles and put it to use in a bigger community and a bigger operation. Saratoga is unique in its large proportion of locally independently stores and restaurants that make it a great year-round destination and especially prime in the summer."

"We have a few chains, but it's mostly independents who depend on local residents to patronize and support them. We need local people to be involved in the local economy, not just visiting these establishments, but buying." 

Shimkus never buys from Amazon. Instead he frequents local establishments to the max. 

"Saratoga is one of those special places where people want to live. We need to make it more of a place where people also want to work. If you're not growing, you're dying. I think we're one of the top ten most vibrant small cities in the country, but the challenge is: How do you stay here? That's what we're trying to figure out now." 


Generating Change

"Getting people to think about change in the first place requires creativity," Shimkus observes. "Saratoga is a special challenge because everyone who lives here thinks it's a great place to live, work and play just as it is now. We have to challenge people to see beyond their own self-interest and their own experiences."

When Shimkus approaches a problem, he always strives to achieve a maximum of diversity. This begins with the Chamber's Board of Directors, which recently expanded from 24 to 27 members. 

"This allowed us to have more diverse voices from our membership: small firms, large firms, and members from the private, public and nonprofit sector. Members from all over Saratoga County and from firms in a range of economic sectors. They've had different experiences and are asked to be vocal as we seek to determine the best new policies and programs to advance to improve our community."

"We've done the same with our employees. We have different spheres of influence and difference passions. We don't agree on everything and that's fine. We're invited to think creatively and to take risks. We've failed but when we do we learn from this. We've also had tremendous success and when we do we celebrate. 

"Our creativity also is based on the fact that we travel often and study what other communities across the world are doing. We've invented new initiatives but we've also adapted great ideas from other places to help our local community here. In this way, creativity is not just inventing something new but often something new here." 


Advice for Young People

Asked the single piece of advice he would give to a young person embarking on life after high school, Shimkus thinks for a moment and says, "Learn to become more resilient."

"Resilience is the ability to overcome or to adapt to any trauma or challenge. resilient people can climb any mountain or, perhaps more importantly, climb out of any hole. We can all learn to be resilient. It's a process not an outcome." 

"I'm not talking about a capacity for going at life's challenges alone," Shimkus emphasizes.  "The most resilient people tend to have support systems with at least one person who can be trusted and provides love and support. Tragedy, trauma and challenges can be large or small but they are inevitable in life. So those who can continually become more resilient, are likely to be the ones that will really change our world and make the lives of those around them better."  

I don’t know who the 2,000 people were that took part in this survey. But let’s assume that it was a valid poll and the results are accurate.

The poll determined that the top three New Year’s Resolutions for 2019 are: 
1. Diet or eat healthier
2. Exercise more
3. Lose weight

So if these results are accurate, there are lots of people out there with resolutions or personal goals related to health and wellness.

The trouble with resolutions, however, is not making them. It is keeping them.

Sure everyone wants to eat healthier. Who doesn’t want to exercise more or lose weight. 

Once again, we’re told perhaps 60 percent of people make a resolution but just 8 percent keep them.

So what can we do to make this the year that our own health and wellness matters.

I’m told that writing down a goal with a way it can be measured and a time by when it will be accomplished helps. You can post this goal somewhere so that you see it every day or every week. This might help make sure you are scheduling time to get it done.

Sharing such a goal or resolution with others also improves the likelihood you’ll succeed. 

Maybe the people you tell your goal or resolution to will give you advice or feedback that helps you. They might even decide to do it with you. And if they do join you, then you’ll have someone to share your success with when you do get it done.

So now if you made a resolution or wrote down a goal that involved diet or eating healthier; exercising more; or losing weight. We can help too!

No, the Chamber does not have a miracle diet or weight loss program. Sorry.

But we do have our fifth Annual Health and Wellness Week coming up February 3 through February 9.

Sponsored by The Adirondack Trust Company and MVP Healthcare, our Health and Wellness Week involves a range of local health and wellness organizations hosting FREE classes, workshops, and workouts for anyone that wants to try something new to achieve their health goals.

Want more details? Please take a look at the list of free activities on our Chamber events page at www.saratoga.org or give us a call at 518-584-3255. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as we’ll be promoting every one of these free events and more as we get closer to that week.

Here’s a sample: Our Health and Wellness Week already has opportunity for you (and that friend or family members who has that same goal) to try the Pure Barre; Metabolic Meltdown; Vent Fitness Studio; Purebred Athletics; Custom Fitness; or a session on Mindfulness at One Roof; or you can get ready to save someone’s life by taking a CPR training course at the Clifton Park – Halfmoon EMS. 

We’ll be adding additional events and opportunities to eat healthier, exercise more and to lose weight in the next couple of weeks. 

We purposely set up our Health and Wellness Week five years ago to help people achieve their health and wellness resolutions.

Our hope then and now is that people will look at this list of FREE activities and pick at least one to try. 

And if you like what you try, perhaps you’ll become part of the 8 percent who keeps your resolution in 2019! 

SARATOGA SPRINGS – The mysterious man you may have noticed creeping across the fringes of city neighborhood lawns in the pre-dawn hours last weekend has been identified.  

“I cooked up an idea that I thought would be a little bit of fun,” admits Todd Shimkus, who in his weekday role serves as president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce. “It actually turned into a lot of fun.” 

Shimkus and city resident Susan Halstead have engaged in a traditional April Fool’s Day duel that dates to Halstead’s time as chamber chairperson. At that time, Halstead contacted board members about a special Executive Session being called to inform them that Shimkus was embezzling funds. “He was on a golf course in Florida and his phone just started blowing up,” Halstead laughed.

“April Fool’s Day is her favorite day of the year and she is ruthless,” said Shimkus, who hatched his plan several weeks ago, by ordering political-style lawn signs to announce Halstead was running for mayor.  “I thought adding “A Vision for The Future,” was pretty funny,” Shimkus said, referring to the word-play that points to Halstead’s ownership of a local vision center.

“I identified friends of hers in the city and at five o’clock in the morning I got up, drove around and put signs in their yards. I didn’t tell anybody what I did and then (on Facebook) pretended to be in Virginia for the day.” 

Shimkus eventually fessed up, a day later. “She texted me and had a sneaking suspicion that it was me.” In November, city voters will head to the polls to elect a mayor for the next two years. Halstead was asked if she, after all, was considering tossing her hat in to the political ring. “De-fin-ite-ly NOT,” she said with a laugh. “It was a Todd Shimkus April Fool’s Day prank. And he paid me back big-time.”