First, a bit of background. You may or may not know that we recently started offering our residential-utility initiative. The program helps residential account holders both lower their current utility rates, and then guarantee those rates for a set period of time. We also offer "green" power packages.

Well, Electric Advisors has been doing the same thing for commercial account holders (business owners, commercial property owners, etc.) for more than 4 years now. On the commercial side, we act as a broker for several power and natural-gas suppliers, which means we can "shop" a company's energy needs among that network to secure our clients the best deal for them. As with our residential program, there's no extra charge for our services.

Our years of experience in commercial utility-rate negotiation is one of the many reasons why you should use EA as your facilitator in choosing an alternative utility for your electricity and/or natural-gas services at home.

To that end, we've recently launched an affinity program for various chambers of commerce, industry-specific associations, and philanthropic groups in DC, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Generally speaking, these agreements allow EA to become the preferred energy provider for members of these groups -- both commercial and residential.

We used to conduct these programs only on the commercial side of the utility "equation," if you will. But with our recently launched residential initiative, we can now serve both businesses and the individuals who belong to these types of organizations. We can also offer our services to a member company's employees -- think of it as an added benefit that an employer can offer, at absolutely no charge to the company or its employees.

What's really nice about our affinity program is that all sides truly win: the members win through reducing/guaranteeing their utility rates, the associations win through a revenue share with each deal signed, and EA wins with new clients being served. Truly, no one loses out.

We've had such an agreement on the electricity side with the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington for more than a year now. More recently, we signed our first chamber -- the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce. And just last week, our second chamber came on board: the Olney Chamber of Commerce.

Besides revenue sharing, there are many other ways that chambers and non-profits can benefit from our affinity program. And as of now, we are speaking with other chambers and business-related non-profits about bringing them on-board. This concept is about ready to really take off in the mid-Atlantic.

Know of a group that could benefit from an affinity partnership? Please contact me, Vice President of Business Development Bob Woods, by either e-mail or by calling me at 240-482-8276. You can also use the Contact form on our About page to drop me a note (scroll to the bottom of the page for it).

This is just one of the ways we are spreading the word about utility choice to the residential market. If I recall correctly, only 6% of residences in Maryland have selected an alternative utility supplier. That means we've got a lot of work to do. Hopefully we'll have some fine associations and non-profits to join us along the way.