Members Can Pay FULL YEAR DUES

If your club wants to offer members to pay their dues for a full year, you can do it! Contact Toastmasters international with the member's name and number, and they will turn on the web functionality let you pay that member's full-year of dues.

Membership Building, Retention Webinars

Naomi Lewis announced that she's set up a series of webinars with a club membership building expert. Lance Miller is a DTM and 2005 World Champion of Public Speaking.

All webinars are on Monday evenings at 8pm.

Make sure someone from your club leadership team can attend.

• October 6 : Leadership for a Championship Club
• January 5 : Building a Championship Club
• April 6 : How to Promote and Market a Club

District Participation Challenge

The Lt. Gov. Ed. is running a contest from July 1^st until October 31^st to encourage club members to take advantage of every speaking opportunity available. ("Non-traditional" prizes to the top three TM will be awarded at conference.) TM's will get opts for speeches, 2 for leadership roles, and 25 for completed manuals. 

Email LGET(a)District66.org with title of speech or leadership project, date, club and area. For every speech or leadership manual completed, email name of the manual, date, club and area (has to be submitted to TI to be valid).

Fall Conference Location, Dates Set!

The Fall conference will be November 7th & 8th in Roanoke, VA. Early bird hotel rates are $89.00 per room and $84.00 per room for 5 or more members attending. Please share the district 66 website with your club (http://district66.org/conference.jsp), and more details will be forthcoming.

Sept. 3 Area Conference Call Minutes

With dues coming due in the next month, we discussed some of the things we can do to retain members. Here are some of the things call participants mentioned they're doing to support member retention:

• direct contact (phone calls, emails) with members through the VPM or mentors. 
• sending around a questionnaire to ask members about their education goals. 
• special meetings and events to bring in new members and add value to existing ones. 
• walking members through a process to set-up their own 6-month goal plans, which could be used by VPE throughout the 6 months to keep up with the member, and which can be referenced at the next dues period to help the member see their benefits/accomplishments. 

We ended on this food for thought:
All of our clubs are facing similar retention and membership building issues.

What can we as an area do to pool resources, time to help everyone tackle this issue of membership retention?

In time for the October 8th call, think about challenges, questions, or ideas that we as an area might be able to work on.

Division D Contest Announced

Division D Contest
Saturday, October 18
Regent University (Virginia Beach)
2-4pm Winners from the Area 42 Contests will advance to the Division level on this date. All are invited to be audience members, and we are also looking for Toastmasters to volunteer to help with ballot counting, timing, judging, and other roles. Contact your Area Governor if you're interested in helping out.

www.douglas-gutscheiin.com.de besuchen

8 Members Should Pay Dues by Oct. 10

Dues aren't due for over a month, but that doesn't mean you have to wait to start reminding your members to pay. 

To meet the Distinguished club requirement, you have to have 8 members paid up by October 10.

Sponsor Members!

The district will be giving awards at the end of the year for individual members who sponsor the most new members. Awards tbd.

What can we do to help sponsor members and bring in guests?

Half by Half

District is encouraging clubs to meet half of there education goals by Dec. 31

Publicity Contests for Clubs Announced

Clubs should submit their websites and newsletters to the district 66 Public Relations officer.

Winners will be announced at the spring conference, and winning clubs will receive gift certificates to the TI website.

Give updates to the PRO

Our district public relations officer wants to hear from clubs about open houses, member recognition, and more.

Toastmaster of the Year

District gov. suggesting clubs do a toastmaster of the year program. More here http://www.toastmasters.org/outstandingtm

Area Contest Announced!

Wednesday, October 1: 7pm-8:30pm

Contestants and Judges Arrive by 6:30pm

Hampton Public Library 

4207 Victoria Blvd, Hampton

Each club may advance 2 contestants for each contest: Humorous Speaking and Evaluation.

In addition to contestants, we need each club to bring 4 volunteers to help judge, time, and facilitate the contest.

Contest rules, roles, and more can be found in the Toastmasters 2014 contest guidebook: http://www.toastmasters.org/interactivespeechcontestrulebook

Map to the Contest

View Hampton Public Library in a larger map

Create a Safe Environment, Officers Should Step in if a Member is Too Harsh

Remember Toastmasters is meant to be a Safe Environment where we can learn from each other. Don't embarrass members by saying, "You said 48 ahs, and I counted every one of them."

Instead, say, "You said some ahs and ums. Come up to me after the meeting if you want to know the count."

Facilitator of Leading the Club to Success, said: "If you have a person in your club who think it's their role in life to tell us everything we're doing wrong, someone in leadership needs to go to that member and say 'Slow your role.'"

5 Principles of Motivation

Tips for motivating members of your club:

• Understand what motivates the individual 
• what do they want?
• what do they value?
• what stands in their way?
• Focus on the benefit to the individual
• frame your ask in terms of what the member will get out of it
• Make expectations clear
• when you ask for help, ask specifically
• identify what success will look like
• Recognize members
• have celebrations when members achieve educational awards
• praise members when they take on additional responsibility
• Be a leader
• lead by example

How to help new members set goals

Craig Stevens (Creating a Quality Club) recommends setting these targets with members:
- attend 75% of meetings in first 6 mo
- give 1-3 speeches
- Set expectations

("When we think about speeches, what do we think about? President Obama giving the state of the union... we're aiming for the summit... We're not President Obama. We're not giving the state of the union.")

Tips for helping new members

The audience of the Creating a Quality Club session at leadership training this morning were asked what are some things they should do to address guest and new member needs:
- give guests introductory materials
- get guest emails and send them a personalized follow-up and invite them back
- make an acronym cheat sheet
- create a new member welcome packet
- assign mentors to all new members
- train and bring in new mentors every 6 mo
- post member testimonials online

Session leader Craig Stevens adds:
- have new members bring their welcome packet to next meeting so someone help orient them
- have mentors work in a personal development plan with new members (1328)
- brainstorm speech topics together

Quoting former international director: "If you get out of toastmasters everything you can get out of toastmasters, you'll never get out of toastmasters."

Why do members leave:
- time constraints
- personal issues
- job transfers
- new interests or commitments
- meeting length

"The longer the meeting duration the more likely a member would not renew sure to interest, motivation, or encouragement."

Toastmasters isn't about public speaking

Craig Stevens dropped a bomb at officer training this morning. Toastmasters is NOT about public speaking. It's about personal and professional growth through learning public speaking and leadership.

Start Club Success Plans by August 1st

The Club Success Plan is a roadmap to help your club achieve Distinguished status this year. 

Officers should schedule a time to meet by August 1st to start charting the course towards club success in 2014-2015.

For more information, on what a Club Success Plan is or for a simple template check out these resources online:

• http://www.toastmasters.org/1111_dcp
• http://www.toastmasters.org/clh

Traveling Toastmaster Program is back!

Traveling Toastmasters is an incentive program meant to encourage you to visit other clubs and attend district events, such as contests, open houses, and training.

The individual with the most points will get FREE registration to the fall conference. There are also prizes for the club, area, and division with the most points.

Submit your visit through this form:

Http://esurv.org?u=travelingtoastmasters2014

Schedule Club Speech Contests by Sept. 12

This fall are Humorous Speech and Evaluation contests.

Please schedule those as early as possible. I will aim to schedule our Area Contest by the end of September and will get that date to you in before the end of July.

If you need more info about how to run a contest, refer to the Toastmasters 2014 contest guidebook: http://www.toastmasters.org/interactivespeechcontestrulebook

Summer Officer Training Announced

Remember 4 of your club officers will need to complete summer (and 4 more will need winter training) to receive credit toward Distinguished Club status. Here are the two trainings offered this summer:

• July 19 at 8:30a -- Regent University (1000 Regent University Drive, Robertson Hall Building, Virginia Beach, 23464) 
• August 2 at 8:30a -- ODU Work Center (600 Butler Farm Rd, Hampton, 23666)

Greetings!

My name is Janet Krenn, and I'm your Area 42 Governor for 2014-2015. 

I've been a Toastmaster since 2009. In that time, I served as my club Treasurer, Sgt. at Arms, VPM, and President, and I 've served my district as a Club Coach. I'm looking forward to working with our Area Clubs to become a Distinguished Area in 2015! 

I invite our Area Club Members to post comments or contact me via the contact form in the right column of this page.