The annual Toastmasters business meeting is where we elect the board of directors, international officers, and amend our governing documents.

Clubs not assigned to a district (“undistricted clubs”) are assigned to a district director as a proxy option, and so it is possible for districts to get more than 100% of “their” proxies for the business meeting. None did that this year. The percent of clubs represented has varied from 66.1% in 2022, to 70.0% last year, to a new high of 70.3% this year (quorum is one-third).

The districts with the best percentage of club proxies were:

• D90 (northern NSW, Australia), got 100.0%, 127 proxies out of 127 paid clubs.
• D97 (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam), 100.0%, 62 out of 62.
• D70 (southern NSW and ACT, Australia), 99.3%, 133 out of 134 (missing 1 club).
• D20 (Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, Iraq), 99.1%, 105 out of 106 (missing 1 club).
• D74 (southern Africa), 97.4%, 111 out of 114 (missing 3 clubs).

At the other end of the scale, we had:

• D114 (eastern Africa), 21.4%, 18 out of 84.
• D89 (Hong Kong, Macau, Fujian, Hainan and part of Guangdong, China), 25.6%, 22 out of 86.
• D79 (Saudi Arabia), 30.6%, 37 out of 121.

The top quarter of districts achieved or exceeded 86% representation, the top half (median) reached 71% or more, and the top 3/4 beat 56%.

The top regions were:

• Region 13 (southern Asia, India to Singapore), 88.0%
• Region 12 (Australia, New Zealand), 79.8%.

The vast majority of the votes come from clubs (98.7%, two per club), the rest are “at large” members, which is any current or past International Director who is a member in good standing (including International Presidents and officers), and the current District Directors (they each get one vote, regardless of any clubs they also may represent). At-large votes cannot be assigned to someone else (unlike clubs).

Undistricted clubs are randomly assigned a default district director for their proxy, which they can choose to assign the proxy to (they can assign it to anyone, just like all other clubs). That’s why there’s no “U” line in the spreadsheet (and that’s why a district can have more than 100% of the proxies, compared to the number of clubs they have). There is no public listing of which districts the “U” clubs were assigned to.

Of those votes from clubs, the large majority are represented by the District Directors. There’s no way of knowing just how many, but based on my observations over the years, probably 70-80% or more. There’s always people with proxies from a few clubs, but very few relative to what the DDs have.

While there are many more important things for Toastmasters districts to devote scarce resources to (like helping struggling clubs and building new clubs), collecting proxies shouldn’t be that hard to do. A district proxy chair with a committee to call clubs and round up proxies makes an excellent project!

Full details in the Excel spreadsheet here: Proxies-2024

Here’s my post on the 2023 proxy returns.

The annual business meeting is where we elect the board of directors, international officers, and amend our governing documents.  This year, Proposals A and B were on the table to allow WHQ to move to another state and formalizing the audit committee.

In previous years, we’ve occasionally seen a district that collected 100% of the proxies, but this is quite rare.  In 2015, the average was 68%, and this year, it was 70% (quorum is 33.3%).

The districts coming closest to representing all their clubs were:

• D90 (New South Wales, Australia) at 100% (well done!)
• D70 (Sydney, southern New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory, Australia) at 98.9% (missed two clubs, out of 189)
• D49 (Hawaii) at 98.5% (missed one club, out of 66)

At the other end of the scale, we had:

• D85 (north China) at 1.5% (only two clubs represented)
• D15 (Central Idaho, eastern Oregon, Utah, western Wyoming, eastern Nevada) at 9.2% (only eight clubs represented)
• D79 (Saudi Arabia) at 30.0%

It’s clear from the very small numbers that the district directors failed to pick up their votes for district 85 and 15, meaning those clubs who submitted proxies were then unrepresented at the business meeting.  That’s a very rare miss.

The top quarter of districts beat 86% representation, the top half beat 74%, and the top 3/4 beat 60%.

The vast majority of the votes come from clubs (99.2%, two per club), the rest are “at large” members, which is any current or past International Director (which includes International Presidents and officers), and the current District Directors (they each get one vote, regardless of any clubs they also may represent).  At-large members must attend in person, they cannot give their vote to someone else.

Of those votes from clubs, the large majority are represented by the District Directors.  There’s no way of knowing just how many, but based on my informal observations working in credentials, it’s probably 80% or more of the votes.  There were 813 people voting at the business meeting (got a voting device), more than any previous year.  Of those, 102 were District Directors and 176 were at-large members (who often had proxies from a few of their own clubs as well).  That leaves 535 non-DD/non-at-large voters, and they usually seemed to have votes for just one to three clubs, often from clubs in or near the convention city.

While there are many things more important for Toastmasters districts to devote scarce resources to (no, not speech contests, I mean helping struggling clubs and building new clubs), this is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be that hard to do.  A district proxy chair with a committee to call clubs and round up proxies makes an excellent High Performance Leadership (HPL) project!

Full details in the Excel spreadsheet here: proxies-2016 (Sessions 1-4 refer to the 4 times that credentials was open to pick up votes.)

Here’s my post on the 2015 proxy returns.

Annual business meeting proxies are how we do business.  This year, Proposal A was on the table to amend the Toastmasters club constitution, but only 74% of clubs were represented.  One district appears to have gotten every single proxy collected, D70 (southeastern Australia), 100%, even a new club that chartered Aug. 14 (Griffith Toastmasters), very impressive!

This was closely followed by another Australian district, D69 (eastern Australia), at 97% (missed 5 clubs) and my home district, D30 (Chicagoland), at 96% (missed 9 clubs).

Districts with (lots of) room to improve include D34 (Mexico) with just 37% of clubs represented, D52 (southern California) at 39%, and D82 (Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka in India) at 49%.

The top quarter of districts beat 86% representation, the top half beat 75%, and the top 3/4 beat 66%.

While there are many things more important for Toastmasters districts to devote scarce resources to (no, not speech contests, I mean helping struggling clubs and building new clubs), this is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be that hard to do.  A district proxy chair with a committee to call clubs and round up proxies makes an excellent High Performance Leadership (HPL) project!

Full details in the Excel spreadsheet here: Proxies2013

On August 24, 2013, Toastmasters clubs will vote on amendments to the standard Club Constitution that every club must abide by.  It hasn’t been amended since 1994, and is in dire need of updating.  However, this revision is mostly clerical in nature, things that won’t affect club operations at all.  Let’s take a closer look.

The most noticeable change is renaming the “standard bylaws” to “addendum of standard club options”.  This is where the club fills in details like the name, where and when they meet, and the dues.  Some redundancies were also removed, since the old bylaws repeated things already found in the constitution. Continue reading “Toastmasters club constitution: Proposal A, 2013” →

Past International Director Rick Sydor had a few more records to complete the gap in the middle, the list is now complete for 37 years, from 1976 to now (and I’ll add the 2013 recipients as soon as I get them).

My greatest thank you to all these wonderful people who have contributed to the growth of Toastmasters over the years!

Toastmasters International Presidential Citations V3 (PDF)