Tag: club

The importance of club web sites

Posted on (Updated: )

In my experience, “open” clubs (ones open to anyone interested, no membership qualifications) live or die by a good web site.  A community club lacking a good web site is missing out on guests who may become members.

Clubs have the opportunity to list an official web site as part of their directory information with Toastmasters International.  I validated those listings and for each district, produced a list of clubs where the published web site either doesn’t work, or (for open clubs) there’s no web site listed at all.

Take a look at http://mikeraffety.com/reports.html (about halfway down) — pick your district, and see what clubs have web sites listed that don’t work, or almost as bad, open clubs that have no web site at all.  Encourage those clubs to build a working web site, and I am certain that the guests will show up.

What goes into a good club web site, and frequent updates, is a whole ‘nother issue to talk about another time.

Long-term new club retention

Posted on (Updated: )

How well are we doing with retention of new clubs?  I looked at clubs that chartered in the 2007-08 year (two years ago) three different ways, by club type, open/group-specific, and whether they were advanced.  (Every Toastmasters club has these three different characteristics; yes, you can have a “company open” club, or a “community group-specific” club.)

Of those clubs chartered two years ago, as of last month, we had lost 20% of the nearly-1000 new clubs (how does that compare to your district?).  Out of that, we lost 27% of the company clubs, but just 10% of the community clubs.

Looking at the same clubs a different way, we lost 23% of the group-specific clubs (i.e., closed, or organization-aligned), while we lost just 14% of the open (typically community, but not always) clubs.

Out of 37 advanced clubs chartered that year, we’ve lost just one, 2.7% (it was in Taiwan).

Conclusion:  It does appear that closed/company/group-specific clubs are much harder to retain, perhaps 2-3 times higher failure rate, over that first two years, which is the hardest time for a club.  Club mentors are so important (though I don’t have data to prove that).

Club type          Lost Total  Percent
Company             148   558   26.52%
Community            34   325   10.46%
College               6    33   18.18%
Other/Specialized     3    24   12.50%
Govt Agency           3    32    9.38%
Correctional Inst     1     5   20.00%
Military              1     3   33.33%
Church                1     5   20.00%

Open/group specific
Group Specific      149   652   22.85%
Open                 47   332   14.16%

Advanced
N                   195   946   20.61%
Y                     1    37    2.70%