At least three other candidates are running for 2nd VP next year, as Mike mentioned in his Saturday lunchtime entry during the convention.  Whether you plan on supporting Mike or not (I’m not supporting or endorsing anyone yet), his website will provide very useful information for anyone who wants to learn more about how Toastmasters International works.

One of my clubs also eliminated the printed agenda since the end of 2008.  It was more because the agenda can change radically a few days before the meeting.   What we have is a big blown-up version of a printed agenda along with the description of each role, covered in plastic to write a marker over so it can be erased and used again at the next meeting.

At a previous discussion here, many who commented did not seem receptive to this idea, especially as we don’t even have printed agenda for guests to take home.  On the other hand we give the guests a kit that includes a description of all the meeting roles.  And our club is now over 30 members with more than 15 new members since July after hovering around 12-18 the last few years!

It was Michelle Wee, last year’s Club President, that came up with this idea of no more printed agendas.  Her employer encouraged employees to limit their use of paper and she thought it could be something we try.

My own International Director, Mike Raffety, disliked this idea as mentioned in his reply:

Personally, I think a printed agenda is very important.  It gives people a place to write notes, and something to take with them.  I’ve saved agendas going back nearly to the beginning of my Toastmasters involvement, and I would be sad to see any of my clubs abolish them.

I don’t see 20 sheets of paper a few times a month as being significant, compared to the benefits of having them.

Side note: What’s on the BACK of your agenda?   Use that blank space — DCP progress, officer list, list of web sites, upcoming meetings, mentor/mentees, etc.

Well there were several years in which the Arlington Heights club went through a dry spell in which very few members signed up for roles and many who did pull out the last minute for whatever reason, leaving another role blank.  In that situation, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to show a guest an agenda with only a few names listed and many roles open – it gives the guest an impression that there is something wrong with the club and may rather join a club that has more participation from its members.

As far as back of the agenda as Mike mentioned, we did adopt that when I was the VP of Education for the Arlington Heights club a few years back (and it was Mike at my officer training who told me of this idea).  It is still a good idea, but it was during that dry spell in which many members didn’t really care about upcoming events whether it was the club contest or the district conference, or the web resources and the Toastmasters Promise that were also listed in our previous agendas.  If we provided something for years that most members and guests didn’t see any value of, that’s a message indicating it isn’t working and we should try something different.

My advice to clubs regarding meeting agendas would be to go with what works with your club, not necessarily what every other club does.  If you’re struggling with getting the guests to join your club, consider looking at the meeting agenda among the plenty of areas your club can improve on to get new members.

For publicity, we have a flyer for the event which we encourage members to post in a variety of places, such as eateries like Panera Bread and Potbelly’s.  We have a press release (with the help of the wife of our VP of Membership) that we sent to the local papers, not sure if they will be posted or published prior to the meeting.

As far as an online presence, we did update the club website to show the event, then afterwards we revert back to promoting the regular meetings.  In a June entry that I put in about becoming the VP of Public Relations, I mentioned “Find local websites to put a link to our club website” as one of the things we need to work on for PR.  Rich Hall, our current Club President, replied that he already implemented that for a while and has continued to do so for the Open House.  Here are some places Rich posted that can be easily accessed by our local folks:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/nwc/eve/1488832094.html

http://arlingtonheights.org/forum_posts.asp?TID=96976

http://eventful.com/arlingtonheights/events/does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-/E0-001-026627961-8

http://chicago.kijiji.com/announcements/arlington-heights/does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-arlington-heights-toastmasters/?ad=923600

http://www.adoos.us/post/9958333/does_public_speaking_make_you_nervous_arlington

http://www.when.com/arlington-heights-il/events/show/89450421-does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-arlington-heights-toastmasters

http://www.freelistingsonline.com/?view=showevent&adid=2335&cityid=-14&lang=en&date=2009-12-09

If you belong to an open club, we encourage you to look at posting your club information and website at these places as well as your local-only event websites.  As Rich mentioned in his reply, it moved our club to the top of our local Google search.  It probably was a major reason why we’ve been attracting plenty of guests in recent months leading to the 15 new members!

The reason why the website was stagnant for years was that District 30 depended on two members to be webmasters for a long time, one of whom has been in that position the last 9 years!  So when the district leadership finally came to their senses this year and get someone new, they had difficulty getting the old webmasters to let go of their work and let the new webmaster take charge.  It appears now that the new webmaster is now in control and hopefully she will keep the website up-to-date.

Rather than just discussing here why there’s more to publicity than websites, let me tell you of my experience with another organization regarding publicity.

About this time last year, I picked up a brochure at a driving range about a singles group for golfers, the American Singles Golf Association, something that interests me being a golfer and nowhere close to getting married. For whatever reason, I never looked further into joining the group that year (probably not different from some of you who took a while to join Toastmasters). At the beginning of this year, I thought a little bit about joining ASGA when I saw a flyer in a golf dome I frequently practiced about an event the local chapter was putting together there. Along with the date and time of the event is the URL of the local chapter, so I contacted a couple of people in the group about the event and not only did I attend but I joined the group right away! If it wasn’t for the flyer I don’t think I’d be motivated to join the group.

The main point I’m giving with this post is that particularly for community clubs, websites don’t mean much if you don’t publicize it through other means such as flyers, press releases, ads in newspapers and other media, etc. You need to find a wide range of ways to get people to be aware about Toastmasters and your club and by just working on the website you are only targeting a small portion of your market and neglecting the rest.

BTW, if your club wants to work on improving the club website, there’s freetoasthost.org, which you can easily put together a club website for both publicity and member resources, even have online sign-up sheets for the next few meetings. Unless someone in your club works on websites as a hobby or a job, you’re basically wasting your time.