Tag: clubs

Build More Clubs?

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Do you think your part of the world simply cannot support any more Toastmasters clubs, that there’s too many clubs already, and new clubs just take members away from existing clubs?

Well, if you live in Bahrain, New Zealand, Qatar, or Singapore, you might be right.  Anywhere else in the world, you can look to those four countries for an example of being able to build even more Toastmasters clubs.

Looking at just the 27 countries with at least 60 clubs (the minimum for a district), Bahrain has the most clubs per capita, with 74 clubs for 1.5 million people — a club for every 19,895 people.  New Zealand follows with a club for every 20,174 people, then Qatar at 23K, and Singapore at 25K.  (Smaller numbers mean higher density, more clubs for the population.)

At the other end, we have Indonesia, with 71 clubs for 276M people, or one club for every 3.9M people, followed by China at one club for every 2.3M people, and India at one club for every 1.4M people.  And no great surprise, this is where much of the growth is happening!

The United States, the home country of Toastmasters, has one club for every 48K people, and Canada has one for every 34K people.

If we look outside the countries with lots of clubs already, we have Sint Maarten (in the Caribbean) with 12 clubs for just 43K people — one club for every 3,616 people!  Many other Caribbean islands have almost as amazing numbers, with Montserrat at one club for every 4,992 people, Bonaire at 5,026, Curacao at 6,818, and more.

Zooming in to the U.S. state and Canadian province level (where 52% of the clubs are), the District of Columbia is in the lead for club density, with 97 clubs for 713K people, or one club for every 7,349 people.  (This may be in part due to people living outside the District, but working in and joining clubs in the District.)  The first actual state is Hawaii, with 68 clubs for 1.4M people, or one club for every 21K people, followed by Manitoba at 22K, British Columbia at 24K, and Minnesota at 27K.

The states and provinces with the lowest density (and biggest growth opportunity) are West Virigina with just 3 clubs for 1.8M people, or one club per 591K people, then Newfoundland with 2 clubs for 529K people or one club per 264K, Puerto Rico (15 clubs) at one club per 218K, and Kentucky at 156K.  If West Virigina had the same number of clubs for 1.8M people as is the national average, that would be 33 more clubs!

California has the most clubs (1,261 clubs), of course, with one club per 31K people, and Texas (593 clubs) has the next most, at one club per 49K people.  The Canadian province with the most clubs is Ontario (513 clubs), at one club per 30K people.

So, the next time someone tells you there’s no room for more clubs – consider the examples you can find in the rest of country, the rest of the world.  Grab a map of your locality, plot out where the existing community clubs are, and identify gaps between them where there are people who would benefit from a new Toastmasters club.

For more details on your country and state or province, see the attached spreadsheet.

Large community club spin-offs

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I’ve been involved in building many new clubs, both community and company, and they tend to take rather different paths.  Company clubs are relatively easy to build, but also easy to lose (e.g., management changes priorities for time and/or funding).  Community clubs can be a challenge to build, but given a good start, tend to stick around a long time.

One technique I’ve seen work well for building community clubs is to grow an existing club so large that it can spin off a new club.  This method allows you to gradually grow the “new” club from within the existing one, and every guest sees what a good strong club looks like.  The more traditional approach with a community club might start with a handful of people (which can result in difficulty producing a good meeting), and then new people sign up largely on faith that it will eventually charter.

Once a club reaches 40+ members, spinning off the new club is mostly a matter of paperwork; the hardest part, the membership building, is done!  Things to decide are which members go into the second club (needs to be a good mix of new and old), club officers, and a new club name.  The only money is the $125 club charter fee.

Selling this to the club can be quite an exercise in leadership though.  The biggest concerns I would discuss are:

  • Club officer workload: How does the VP-E schedule 40+ members, finding a big enough room, collecting dues from so many, etc.
  • Meeting speech slots: Even in a weekly club with 5 speeches per meeting, that’s 250 slots a year, divided by 40 members, means each members gets to speak an average of six times a year, once every two months!
  • Leadership opportunities: A second club means the members now have 14 officer positions for practicing leadership instead of 7.
  • Lost membership: Many large clubs have a remarkably high member turnover rate, since they are unable to schedule members to speak often enough, and they can feel like a small cog in a big machine.
  • Members must feel welcome to visit back and forth between the two clubs regardless of which club they’re formally paying dues in.
  • Clubs may meet no more than once a week: It’s not in the club constitution and bylaws, but WHQ has issued statements that a club may not regularly meet more often.

I believe that the highest recognition of a club’s quality is that it is so successful, it spins off new clubs (perhaps regularly!).

Which clubs are eligible for this process?  You can find a list for your district on the page below, the last bullet at the bottom (select your district number from the menu):

http://mikeraffety.com/reports.shtml