The Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce has exceeded its goal of raising $2.1 million for its HALLmark campaign, which supports job creation among other economic initiatives.

The group announced the news at an investors breakfast Wednesday morning. Investments for the five-year capital campaign have totaled more than $2.2 million, with additional funding still trickling in.

“This is a five-year commitment and I think it says that we have faith in this community; we’re on the right path,” Chamber President Kit Dunlap said to the attendees, who represented some 145 contributing groups. “We do operate this like a business. We have goals. We have measurable goals.”

The campaign kicked off in June. Funding supports the chamber’s goals of creating 1,700 new jobs, attracting locally owned small businesses, fostering relationships between governments and the business community, and implementing the Vision 2030 program.

Several community health care efforts will also benefit from the campaign, such as the chamber’s annual HealthSmart Expo and 5k run.

“One of the things we’ve said is we want to be the healthiest community in Georgia in 2030,” said campaign co-chair Mimi Collins of The Longstreet Clinic.

Paul Chambers, regional director for AT&T and co-chair of the campaign, said there were discussions about delaying this campaign because of economic uncertainty. Securing funding was more difficult than it has been in the past, but chamber members still gave generously, Dunlap said.

“It’s a very successful campaign and one of the reasons I think we’ve been able to do that is because we’ve got a track record that proves that we use the money wisely and we invest the money wisely,” said campaign co-chair David Lee of Jackson Electric Membership Corp.

Brian Daniel, president of Caroll Daniel Construction Co., said the outlined initiatives are a good use of his company’s dollars.

“This is our chamber of commerce providing a vision and programs for economic development to move this county forward within the next five years,” he said. “We, as a business, we support the chamber and all of those initiatives.”

John Addison Jr., co-CEO of financial marketing company Primerica, offered the morning’s keynote address, encouraging the group to face the recession head on and take leadership “up a notch” in the face of hardship. He told the audience that when people’s livelihoods depend on their success, “your best” is not always good enough.

“Challenging times require great leadership,” he said. “It’s easy to run something or be in charge when everything is going great, the economy is ticking, everything’s doing awesome, the world is great, you’re just making money. That is an easy time to be a leader. The time when leadership is most needed is in extraordinary times.”