Have you ever wondered what it takes to start a new cub?

A little help from a few friends will go a long way to achieve this. Identifying the potential for a new club starts with looking around your community and your workplace. Does a Toastmasters club exist there? Are there enough people available to have a sustainable club? Can you get at least 20 of these people to sign up and pay to become members? These are some of the questions that guide you to get started.

Once you have identified this potential club, you’d need to get in touch with the new clubs team on newclubs@toastmasters74.org or contact the Club Growth Director, Njabulo Thela, DTM on marketing@toastmasters74.org . We will help you to determine the viability of the club and provide guidance with the exciting launch model. The key in executing the model is to keep the energy high and get guests to participate. If they participate, they are more likely to join.

We have had a number of club launches since the start of this year with varying degrees of success. These are a brave step forward to starting something that previously did not exist and giving more people the opportunity to realise the benefits of Toastmasters.

Starting a new club is not only an awesome adventure; it is also a key part of the district mission which is to build new clubs and support all clubs in achieving excellence. It is an important aspect in our quest to get #BacktoBase by 20 December 2019 by getting the number of paid clubs in District 74 to at least 218.

While we’ve had numerous club launches, I’ll take you through the journey of two of these. I1 Solutions was spearheaded by Jacqi Dickason who had been a Toastmaster before and saw it fit to bring the joy of Toastmasters to her highly technical team at work. A lot of communication took place between the club sponsors and Jacqi before the launch which gave her comfort on how everything would work out and to share the required documentation for getting the club started. Getting confirmation of the financing model for the club made it easier to get buy-in from the company. It was then a matter of showcasing the value of Toastmasters to get people signed up. Transformers Toastmasters played a big role in supporting the launch as they came out in numbers – help from a few friends. The club charted at the end of September

Ignite Toastmasters had a role player briefing meeting a week before the launch event. This face to face meting helped everyone understand the objective of the launch event. Another briefing took place on the day of the event – mainly as a recap. The event went well, however, did not have a large enough turnout to get 20 members signed up on the spot. The club is working on getting to 20 members through having exciting themes in their events.

Whilst these are just two examples of launch events that have taken place, I know that there are a lot of teams throughout the district working to widen the reach of Toastmasters and I salute all of these members as #EveryMemberMatters.

I encourage you to seize the opportunity to take #onestepforward by getting involved in launch events happening around you. May we work together to achieve the district mission.