The Swift Current & District Chamber of Commerce put a bow on 2017 last night at their Annual General Meeting.

The quick meeting witnessed a few changes including Doug Evjen being named the new chair taking over for Brock Friesen.

Along with Evjen shifting into a new role - four new names (Ken Linsley, Leanne Tuntland-Wiebe, Jesse Kitchen, and Bernice Bonneau) were added to the board of directors for 2018.

"Probably a really smooth transition," Evjen said. "Our executive committee really worked really solidly together this year... I think there has been a lot of cohesiveness, there's really any surprises or transitions coming into the seat that we really didn't have a hand in or knowledge of. I think it's going to be pretty smooth and pretty comfortable."

Another change made during the meeting was implementing a new strategic plan brought forward by CEO Karla Wiens that the chamber believe will more up-to-date and effective.

"I wanted to make very sure that we were acting on behalf of our membership, which is what the chamber of commerce is about," Wiens said. "I thought it was very important to get a survey together to find out what are the key issues."

The new strategic plan encompasses four main categories that include membership, communications, administration, and financial. Which in each of the categories there are at least three key initiatives.

It was also a big year financially for the chamber which grew its revenue from 2016 by $51,672 to $206,526 which nearly $41,000 of that growth came from events and projects. While the revenue increased a sizeable amount so did the expenses climbing by $48,534 to $190,422, resulting in a surplus of $16,104.

"That's really due to event planning and a lot of that goes to Karla and Mike [Rogowski]," Evjen said. "They hit the ground running on events. Ticket sales have been up, they've created some new sponsorships for those events. Really just turning over every rock and just having that energy I think just spreads through the community and the membership and they want to be part of the chamber."

Evjen said a lot of work can still be done to grow their membership as they are looking for a 5-10 per cent membership growth within the next year.