Membership Building Contests
Membership Building Contests
As the end of the program year approaches, clubs and districts are finalizing their goals for achieving Distinguished status or better. For some members, this may mean presenting the last speech needed to be awarded their CC . For others, this may mean fulfilling a specific meeting role for their CL. For most, it means recruiting new members to fulfill the membership requirement of the Distinguished Club Program. That majority is asking, “What is the best way to grow a club’s membership in the short period of time that is left in this program year?” The answer: conduct a membership building contest!
For the past two years, Deborah Fischer Stout and the other members of the Wichita Downtown club in Wichita, Kansas, have been participating in Toastmasters’ membership building contests. Since 2008, the club has recruited 20 new members. As the club president, Deborah believes the contests play a vital role in the growth and maintenance of her club’s membership. Deborah’s main reason for supporting this method of recruitment is its two-fold outcome: “It allows for people to easily complete a CL project and for the club to grow.” Before her club began participating in all the contests, members would wonder if the club membership goals would be met. Now there is no confusion, because, “We know we will always be over 20 members, or we will always have added more than five new members in a year.”
David Johnson, the VP Membership of Twin City Toastmasters in St. Joseph, Michigan, says his club also conducts membership building contests: “We usually participate in two of the three contests” conducted each year. David credits almost half of his club’s new members to these contests. The club is currently down to 13 members, but David is sure his club’s participation in the upcoming Beat the Clock contest will increase membership and meet the club’s goal.
It’s so easy to invite someone to your Toastmasters meeting - and a contest makes the inviting fun! When a guest sits in on one of your meetings, you can use the following simple suggestions from fellow Toastmasters to draw in potential new members:
- Jean Hogle, DTM, from Roanoke, Virginia, belongs to four Toastmasters clubs: two community clubs, one corporate club and one college club. Because each club has a different target audience, building membership within each club needs to be addressed differently. In Jean’s college club, because of the quarter system and the summer breaks the students and faculty are subject to, they “do an open house at the beginning of each term, which coincides with the membership building contests.” At her company club, the management provides information to all new employees as a part of the employee package. Jean’s two community clubs participate in membership drives when they need more members, and for that they take advantage of the membership building contests.
- Karen Seeman, a DTM with Valley Toastmasters in Haworth, New Jersey, understands that once potential members visit her club, she has to be able to show them the benefits of membership or they will not decide to join. Karen says, “The meetings are the best advertisement. If the meeting is filled with fun, enthusiasm and energy, it has the prospects clamoring to be members. No pitch is necessary.”
Karen says, “the (Welcome to Toastmasters!) DVD of the demo meeting is an incredible marketing tool for both corporate and community clubs.” For corporate clubs, Seeman positions a few volunteers/officers outside a well-trafficked area a day or so before the meeting, such as a cafeteria, and these volunteers play the DVD of the demo meeting on a laptop and collect prospects’ e-mail addresses and phone numbers on a signup sheet. They also hand out the fliers Find Your Voice (Item 99) and All About Toastmasters (Item 124).
She says, “After a prospect fills out the signup sheet, an invitation is sent requesting their attendance at the next meeting, which includes a link to the Welcome to Toastmasters DVD of the demo meeting. That way the prospect knows what to expect when they come to a meeting.”
However you decide is best to strengthen your club’s membership, it makes sense for you to be rewarded for your efforts, and Toastmasters’ membership building contests do just that. For more information about these contests and to see past winners of contests, be sure to visit our Membership Building Contests page.