We’re deep into membership renewals season

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We’re deep into membership renewals season and with online meetings looking like they’ll be our only option for a little while yet, many club committees are wondering how they can use the platform and harness the technology to find new members and continue to grow their clubs.

The good news is that many of our District 91 clubs are growing.

Since online meetings began, Society Speakers Club in London has increased their membership by 50%. Seven new members have joined since the start of the new Toastmaster year and the club have bagged themselves The Smedley Award, which is given to all clubs who sign-up at least 5 new members between August 01 and September 30.

We caught up with Society Speakers’ Club President, Dan Magill to get some hints and tips around what we can be doing to grow our club membership during these challenging times.

Dan, congratulations to Society Speakers for winning The Smedley Award. What’s the secret to your success? 

Thanks. I think first and foremost, for us as a club committee, it has been about not chasing membership goals and recognition to the point where it maybe starts to become a self-defeating policy. It can be tempting in these strange times for clubs to become a little obsessive over attracting and signing up new members, but when that over-eagerness starts to come across in club meetings and engagements with potential new members, it can become a little off-putting.

Some clubs say they are having trouble attracting new guests into the online environment. How has that worked out for Society Speakers?

We have been very lucky with regard to first-time guests coming along to online meetings. Although, in truth, it has probably been less about luck and more about the outstanding work both the current club committee and the previous committees have done in promoting the club.

Since I’ve been a member, we’ve always had a fantastic Meetup page and club website, which emphasises how Society Speakers is more than just a place to develop public speaking and leadership skills.

We have a really fun, friendly atmosphere at the club and we use pre-lockdown phots of us enjoying club meetings and having club socials together.

I think, especially at the moment when people can’t socialise as much as they may like, it makes a real difference for new visitors to our Meetup and website pages to see what a friendly bunch we are. Toastmasters is all about having a friendly, supportive and safe space in which to learn and grow. Nothing can convey that to your prospective new members as much as pictures of existing members thriving in the club environment.

Have you done anything new to attract new visitors since we moved online?

Yes, as a club we held a summer series of workshops, which were aimed at new and existing Toastmasters. We had three workshop presenters on each evening, and they covered a range of really useful topics from, building rapport and adding humour, to the art of storytelling and improving your table topics.

By covering so many different topics in each session, it meant there was something for everyone and we really did see an increase in first-time guests.

I think that by occasionally positioning our clubs as outlets for public speaking education, we can attract a certain demographic that maybe we don’t quite attract when we only talk about practicing our public speaking skills. Obviously, Toastmasters is all about the practice and the experience, but from time to time, let’s step forward and promote ourselves as the experts in our field.

Would you say it’s the speaking skills of your experienced members that attract new members to your club?

Strangely, no. I think new members are most attracted by other new members. It’s always great to see an experienced speaker with lots of outstanding speaking skills on display and think that maybe one day you’ll be able to speak as well as they can. But, in truth, new members take most encouragement from those who are also just starting their journey.

If a nervous guest turns up to your club and sees three DTMs strutting their stuff, I wouldn’t expect they’d go away thinking, “Yes, I can do that too.” They’re far more likely to find the courage to come back and give it a go themselves if they see other ‘newbies’ nervously finding their way through their first speeches.

In that respect, I think it’s always more important to have as many new speakers on your meeting agenda as you can. I don’t subscribe to a club deciding that somebody isn’t ready to be Toastmaster or couldn’t possibly evaluate yet, or anything like that. I think we should encourage (not pressure) new members to take on as many of the roles as possible, as early as possible.

So, let’s say you’ve got the interested first-time guests into your meeting and you’ve got a nice mix of experience and inexperience on the agenda; what tips can you give us for converting those guests into new club members?

Every member is different and will join for their own personal reasons, so the best you can do is simply your best.

Make club meetings fun and try to involve everyone. We try to make the warmup session at the start of each meeting more of a game than a simple speaking exercise. We acknowledge and speak to guests at the start of the meeting and try to involve as many of them as possible in the Table Topics session. We’ve tweaked the way we run Table Topics since moving online. We now have ‘on the spot’ evaluations directly after each speech, which gives so many more people that chance to be involved and keeps things fresh and engaging at a point in the meeting where people can be starting to become a little less focussed.

Most importantly of all though, is to respond to your prospective member’s questions and enquiries as soon as possible.

If you see a new club contact request, respond to it right away. If a guest at your meeting says they’d be interested in finding out more, take their details and send them more information that day. It’s so easy for prospective new members to visit lots and lots of online clubs before they make their final decision and if your club is taking too long to respond to them, they’ll more than likely move on and try somewhere else.

Thanks, Dan! There are lots there for our clubs to think about.

Do you have any tips and tricks you could pass on to our clubs?

Get in touch

Set your voice free with Beyond Toast

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Ever listened to a podcast or the radio and thought I could do that? Now’s your chance as the Beyond Toast podcast is looking for guests. Set your voice free.

Beyond Toast is a podcast where Toastmasters/Public Speakers/Lovers of language are invited to discuss food in an engaging and light-hearted way. It is inspired by the challenge of adequately conveying the strong emotions typically evoked by the senses, particularly taste, through speech.

The discussion is wide-ranging but framed around food and the central role it plays in our lives, family and relationships. If you have ever eaten, you have all the expertise you need. If you enjoyed the experience enough to talk about it to friends, then you have the makings of a perfect guest.

Each episode fuses a discussion with a guest with selected examples of poetry and prose and typically lasts for ~25 minutes (perfect for the short commute). It is distributed weekly via popular podcast platforms.

It is a great opportunity to stretch yourself, develop your skills and take your Toastmasters journey in a fun and interesting new direction. If you are interested check-out an episode and if you are keen to take part contact the show at info@beyondtoast.uk

Back to school for Toastmasters

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Back to school is a usual September activity for many whether a parent, student or a Club member! September is a time for new challenges and opportunities.

When was the last time you brought a friend to a meeting? When was the last time you entered a Speech Contest? When was the last time you took on a Club project?

As a Club officer myself (Sergeant At Arms) I had a busy summer, from running a Zoom course for my members who were tempted to take the leap and be the Zoom Master of a meeting, to proposing a fully costed plan for running a hybrid meeting when it becomes possible.

Witnessing the start of our Club Contest is always inspiring and an experience one will never forget. If your Club still needs to run its Autumn contest, jump in and experience it, you will not regret it!

I remember fondly when at school, university or starting a new job, the exhilaration of doing something new, meeting new people, creating new friendships. As a Club member, we get to do all of this, at every meeting! So why not invite a friend, colleague or other-half to the next meeting and share with them why you are a member!

Now that we are primarily meeting online, being local is no longer a restriction, and I took advantage of visiting other Clubs around the globe from the Middle East to the Americas. And every time, I gained a new idea, better understood cultural identities, and got energised from the experience.

As a member, I love that we have been able to recruit members in my Clubs from other continents and bring this once in a lifetime opportunity to all my Club members, this is enriching and this is what brings us all together.

Your vote counts

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Every year, Toastmasters International holds its Annual Business meeting, this year online on Friday 28th August 2020 at 12 pm GMT. Every Club in the World has a voice and can impact the future of the organisation. On 22nd July, Club Presidents and Secretaries will have received a notification to assign the Club Proxy and make the Club vote count. Delighted to see many Clubs this year have elected to vote directly and experience the International Convention and Business Meeting. 

The vote this year is on Proposal A and B, as well as the election of 7 International Directors, including our own Region 10 (Europe).

Our District Trio (Arnaud, Helena and Rupa) have interviewed all 23 candidates to cast an informed vote and help shape the future of our organisation. We encourage all Club members including anyone who will be attending to learn more about the process and the election. Here are useful information to better understand what and who we are voting for as Clubs.

  • Proposal A and B are changes to our Toastmasters governing documents with direct impact on our administrative and operational makeup

This year the International convention is online and this is also where we get to hear more about the candidates and proposals we will be voting for at Candidate showcase on Wednesday 26th August and Annual Business meeting on Friday 28th August 12pm GMT. If you are a member or Club leader and want to know more about the process there is an FAQ about Proxies and Annual Business on the Toastmasters International website

What Could Go Wrong?

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The Story of the Port in the Storm

By Carolyn Johnson, VP of PR, Chiltern Speakers

March 2020

Our club was burgeoning.  We had had a bumper January of guests, an Open House in February, and March saw our new members standing up front taking the first steps of their public speaking journeys in front of a friendly and substantive live audience.

Our committee had worked hard over the previous months to build a better new member experience.  We lined up the VP of PR and the VP of Membership to attract guests to meetings and follow-up afterwards with a slick sign-up process.  We created a new ‘Hospitality’ role to ensure guests were welcomed and introduced to a member or two so they had someone to talk to and engage with during the evening.  Our President would give each guest a special welcome in his meeting introduction and ask them to say a few words at the end about their impressions.

We focused on celebrating the victories with standing ovations for Icebreakers and awards with photos and social media accolades for best speakers, evaluators and Table Topics.  We laughed heartily with our speaker journey fellows inside the disciplined structure of our Toastmaster sessions and watched each other grow.  Then went to the pub afterwards.  What could go wrong?

The Transition

We no longer have a live venue, we no longer have the lively face-to-face interaction, we no longer have the pub.  We no longer have that excited and slightly anxious drive or walk, to the meeting, we no longer have that post-meeting reward and joy of reflection on our way home.  So what has become of our club in this new world cohabiting with Covid-19?

As soon as it became clear that society would need to head indoors, right as March membership renewal was approaching, we knew we had to create a vision, with an element of certainty, or the club could suddenly end up on a trajectory of contraction we really did not want.  There is no way we did all that work to have it wiped away by a disease!

So we fired up our laptops and downloaded Zoom.  Luckily for our club, we have club leaders who like to explore new avenues and try things out – and this was just what we needed.  Our committee, along with members from other clubs in our Area, spent evenings and weekends working through a trial-and-error system of devising a new Toastmasters online meeting.

Which aspects of a meeting could we retain?  Which aspects are hard to emulate? What tactics could we employ to mitigate the ‘losses’? What could we actually gain?

It became very quickly obvious that this learning experience could be embraced and shared.  New skills mastered that are directly applicable to the fast-tracked remote workplace and the sudden explosion of all generations of people driven online.  We have a new Toastmaster meeting role – that of the ‘Zoom Master’ – skills gained here which can be shown off in work meetings when someone wants a poll, or a team needs a breakout room or a recording for future reference.  Meeting recordings have become a much-valued asset!

And our VP of PR suddenly had a new wave of material to attract new members – our Facebook feed became enriched with new learnings and images of social interactions at a time when everyone was locked down and restricted from human connection.  People could join in at the click of a button on their PC – not just at their local Toastmasters club, but at ANY club!  How to travel and meet people from different parts of the world, whilst sitting in your own armchair? Here was the answer!  Make connections with people in Mumbai, Vancouver, Barcelona? Yes, please!

Oh and it wasn’t all swimmingly successful – the technical issues have had us puzzled a number of times with audio-visual gremlins and connectivity blips, and then there is lighting, positioning, eye contact to get right.  Then came the Zoom-fatigue phenomenon – so we had to get creative with physical actions, visual variety, recorded applause, dressing up, blowing kisses at your Zoom neighbour! (Yes we really did that…)

Suddenly the emails started coming in and Facebook messages popping up – can we come along to your next meeting? Send me the Zoom details!  Prospective new members, former members who had moved away and wanted to check back in and members from other clubs who want to try out new audiences.

August 2020

So where are we now?

Membership is up! Diversity is up! Fun and learning live on!  We have the most members we have ever had at 41, with regular attendance at 25 people or more including 3-4 guests.  Our club came second in the Beat the Clock competition to gain the newest members before the end of June.

Yes sure we have a few members taking a break, and new chatter has begun about when and how we will get our much-loved in-person format back – but the online format has not only taken away, but it has given.  It has given us new and different opportunities – and it turns out that people are willing to embrace them.  It has provided us with a much-loved Port in a Storm.