Services to American Companies

AICC's membership was drawn from American corporations, emerging businesses, professional service providers, business organisations and individuals. Each membership group derived a different kind of value from its association with the Chamber, and the original site maintained a separate page for each.

Large Corporations

For the major regional corporations, the Chamber functioned as an early-warning system on technology. A large utility, health system, telecommunications carrier or manufacturer in the Southeast could see Israeli capability in its category before that capability had a US distributor, a US sales team or a US price. Members sat on the screening teams that evaluated incoming companies, which meant they were often the first American organisation to see a given product at all. Several of the Chamber's Business Exchange editions were built around exactly this — pre-arranged meetings between a corporate buyer and a shortlist of pre-screened suppliers.

Emerging and Smaller Businesses

Smaller member companies used the Chamber differently. For them the value was sourcing and partnership: finding a technology to license or represent, finding a manufacturing partner, or finding a joint-venture route into a market they could not enter alone. Access to member expertise and to the Chamber's proprietary databases of contacts substituted for a business development function most of them did not have.

Professional Service Providers

Law firms, accountancy practices, patent attorneys, executive search firms, commercial property agents, banks and insurers formed a substantial part of the membership, and their interest was straightforward: incoming Israeli companies need all of those services, and the Chamber was where the incoming companies arrived. This was a genuinely two-sided arrangement. The service providers got a pipeline; the incoming companies got advisers who had done the same work before for companies with the same problems, rather than advisers learning on their time.

Individual Members

Individual membership, including a reduced tier for young professionals, served people whose interest was the relationship itself — executives between roles, consultants, academics, and those simply active in Atlanta's international business community. They supplied a good deal of the volunteer effort on which the committee system ran.

What Members Actually Received

Across all groups, the benefit set the Chamber advertised was consistent:

• Access to staff and member expertise, and to proprietary databases, to find potential partners, investors, clients and customers.
• A monthly e-newsletter carrying the latest Southeast-Israel business news.
• Participation on active committees, where Israeli companies were introduced and screened and where events and programmes were planned.
• Notification and preferred fees for events, including the Business Exchanges and a near-monthly programme of seminars, workshops and briefings.
• Business missions to Israel, to visit companies at their home bases and pursue specific objectives.
• A digital membership directory promoting members' services and products to Israeli and American companies.

Getting Involved

The Chamber was explicit that the value of a membership increased in direct proportion to involvement. Its own framing — that committees existed to tap members' special knowledge and networking contacts — put the obligation on the member rather than the organisation, and the members who got most out of AICC were consistently those who did screening work, hosted visiting delegations or helped run an event.

Doing Business in Israel

For members travelling in the other direction, the Chamber ran general, industry-specific and corporate business missions to Israel, and published practical guidance on export documentation, most notably the certificate of origin required for shipments to Israel. Companies looking at that market today would start with the US Commercial Service country commercial guide for Israel, the current successor to the material the Chamber used to distil for its members.

The parallel track for companies arriving from the other direction is described under services to Israeli companies, and the tier structure is set out on membership levels.