Jul 10, 2022 By Trista Thurston 3 min read

The Southwest Communities Chamber of Commerce is branching out.

The chamber is rebranding to fit its membership better and will now be called the Southwest Regional Chamber of Commerce, SWR for short. Executive Director Mandi Pryor said the change has been in the works for about half a year.

In her five years leading the chamber, membership outside its traditional borders, communities such as Bridgeville and Heidelberg boroughs and South Fayette, Scott, Collier and Upper St. Clair townships, has grown significantly.

Now, Southwest Regional Chamber can include all businesses within the region, including but not limited to Allegheny and Washington counties, including those in the South Hills area.

Current membership extends from Green Tree and Mt. Lebanon down to Washington county, so the chamber wanted to emphasize its openness and willingness to include anyone in the region with the name change. However, Pryor said they are still considering the townships and boroughs the chamber has historically partnered with.

“Our events will strike out a little farther,” Pryor said, noting many mixers and chamber events have already done just that.

And the new regionalization will come with additional benefits for members, too, including increased exposure. The chamber is currently working on a new podcast to launch in July. The series will be a great way to profile individual members, feature the chamber’s history, and share other in-depth chamber news and happenings. Pryor said the idea came from the Pittsburgh Technology Council and would be a great way to highlight the community and what people are doing to enhance our region.

With the rebranding, the chamber is also launching a new nonprofit sponsorship program. For-profit companies can sponsor the membership of a nonprofit. Chamber membership helps these organizations get helpful advertising, exposure and networking opportunities.

“We’ve had five new (nonprofit) members since we launched it,” Pryor said. “In everything we do, we try to have a nonprofit scope.”

The program is part of the chamber’s ongoing effort to assist nonprofits and give back to the community. This allows more nonprofits to get involved, too.

The Southwest Regional Chamber of Commerce soft-launched the new branding in March and will roll out new signage, and other refreshed marketing materials in the coming months. The new logo features navy blue and dark gold, giving a professional and mature look to a historic organization. The former logo featured a small stick figure holding up the chamber’s base of operations, 110 years old. Once a West Penn power station, the building was restored thanks to donations and efforts of members and other area businesses 25 years ago. Since the iconic building has always been important to the community and the chamber, there are plans to include it in a more formal version of the refreshed logo.

The idea behind the rebranding is not to ignore the past but to celebrate the chamber’s storied history and embrace the change and growth it has seen in recent years. It’s a theme of the region as a whole, too.