Organizations Coming Together For Your Business

Cultivate Lancaster is an initiative of the Lancaster Chamber Foundation. Cultivate Lancaster is overseen and managed by a Steering Committee, which is made up of member organizations. The initiative’s structure allows partner organizations to have meaningful input and buy-in into the strategies and activities of Cultivate Lancaster, while Cultivate Lancaster has the necessary administrative support from its host organization. The Steering Committee collaborates with the Lancaster Chamber on staffing and marketing activities. Most of the efforts of the initiative are accomplished through working “standing committees” and have specific goals and activities outlined in the 2023-2025 Strategic Plan. Currently, Cultivate is made up of six committees, who report to the Steering Committee. These committees are Programming, Funding, Marketing, Events, DEI, and Measurement & Tracking. A list of committee members and their purposes is below. 

Cultivate Lancaster’s standing committees are open to participation from Cultivate Lancaster’s member organizations who include: business support organizations, municipal representatives and staff, professional services providers, small business owners and representatives, and other interested community members. The Steering Committee and Financial Services Committee have specific membership based on their specific goals. 

The initiative is financially supported by memberships, sponsorships, and grant funds for special projects. Find out more about how you can become a member or sponsor of Cultivate.

Cultivate Lancaster Committees

Steering Committee

Cultivate Lancaster’s Steering Committee acts like an organizational board and is tasked with hiring and firing staff and vendors, overseeing that strategic plan goals are being met, and appropriating and managing the budget. Membership to the Steering Committee is open to organizations who meet the membership requirements.

Programming Committee

Cultivate Lancaster convenes a Programming Committee for the explicit purpose of regularly gathering practitioners and programming decision makers in the same room  to share activities and programming updates with each other. Current committee membership includes:

DEI Committee

Cultivate Lancaster’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee works to ensure that DEI is infused as a core value across Cultivate Lancaster goals and activities. Current committee membership includes:

Funding Committee

The Funding Committee performs the specific task of investigating and collaborating on ease of access to capital for small businesses. This task may involve sensitive conversations on financial data and cannot always be open to the public. For this reason, this committee will be made up of staff members from organizations who administer state and federal financial programs for small businesses. Current committee membership includes:

Marketing Committee

The Marketing Committee performs the specific tasks of providing a sounding board to Cultivate Lancaster as well as actively engaging in the distribution of information across Cultivate Lancaster. This committee is made up of representatives from the marketing departments of Cultivate Lancaster members. Current committee membership includes:

Events Committee

The Events Committee ideates and implements Cultivate Lancaster’s regularly scheduled events. The purpose of Cultivate events is to facilitate networking and connection between business support organizations and small businesses. Current committee membership includes:

Measurement & Tracking Committee

Cultivate Lancaster convenes a Measurement and Tracking Committee who manage data collection efforts by Cultivate, assess data collection practices of participating organizations, and align an improved metric for collecting data moving forward. Current committee membership includes:

Initiative Documents