The group has brought forward the date of its AGM where executive members will vote on a way forward.
West Vic Business chairperson Mark Clyne said financial and membership constraints forced the group to look at changing the model.
“As an executive, we’ve got to make a financial decision,” he said.
“Do we go down a different path – do we have it as a volunteer-based model where some key executive can give some time or answer questions or what have you, or do we need to scale it back a little bit?
“During the COVID-19 era, we were funded to service the Wimmera, as opposed to just Horsham, so we had to expand to be able to take care of that – all those grants have changed. The whole economy has changed.”
Mr Clyne said he had been chairperson for more than four years – when he was supposed to serve only a two-year term.
“If we don’t get some executive or some people to actually join the group and step up to be on the executive level and willing to share the load, we’re unfortunately not going to have enough people to run the group,” he said.
“The general public in our region as a whole don’t understand that our population is getting older. Our population is in decline. We’ve got less people who are able to fill spots.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Lions Club or our group or footy clubs. There’s physically less people of that age willing to take on those roles, and they’re busier.”
The group has been in existence for about 20 years, but Mr Clyne said the business landscape and funding opportunities had changed in recent years.
“This also highlights to groups like council or Regional Development Victoria that if there’s not any potential funding available, these groups are going to disappear, so if you rely on them for advocacy or council historically has relied on the group to give input and feedback as to what’s happening in the business community, well that option won’t be there,” he said.
“So they’ll have to find it, or source it, or spend money, or engage a consultant, which will cost them a lot more than being able to engage with a local group.”
Mr Clyne said sourcing information from the internet meant many businesses did not need to access West Vic Business services, and cost-of-living had impacted membership numbers.
“We rely heavily on memberships. There’s only so many businesses within the region we can draw upon and not everyone is a member,” he said.
Mr Clyne said the group might need to look at offering business breakfasts and networking nights to deliver value back to its members.
He said there was plenty of opportunities for businesses in the region, with several large-scale operations set to open, making the role of a business group even more important.
Mr Clyne said improving the region’s liveability had been a focus in order to boost business.
“Liveability was a problem our businesses were having – keeping existing staff and attracting new ones, and that all comes down to liveability of the region,” he said.
“Moving forward, we’re going to have a lot of jobs in our region and a lot of opportunity, but we’ve still got to make sure the area is liveable on multiple fronts so those people are attracted to coming here.”
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