The first meeting of the new term for club officers was held on Thursday July 3rd, 2008 at the Original House of Pancakes (Central at Park, NW corner).
Attendees: Andrew, Marvin, Gene, Paul, Stephen J and me (Chuck).
We currently have 26 active members in the club and we all agreed that we need to be continually recruiting new members because of the natural turnover that occurs.
The club was recently awarded the President’s Distinguished Club award. The officers all agreed that continuing to work toward that goal will help keep the club fun and interesting because members will meet their goals too.
As President, Andrew would like to focus on new members this term. He said that the last 4 new members came to us because of the web site. There was some general discussion about improvements to the website that might make a difference. Ideas included: this blog, photos, a sign-up page (squeeze page in Internet Marketing lingo) and a ‘How to Join” page.
Andrew further wants to be sure we officers are all responding to email from Toastmasters HQ and the Area/District. We just need to be sure we are including them in our activities and responding to their requirements in a timely manner.
Gene, VP of Public Relations, reviewed his chart of “Detractors”. These are the items he has been tracking each week to help the club understand how well organized we are. The detractors include: having an agenda for each meeting, including speech titles on the agenda, having three speehes each meeting, and starting and ending on-time. During the 5 weeks of zero detractors in a row we gained four new members.
Gene would also like to get everyone to update their biography on the web.
Paul, VP Membership, is working on ideas for a new visitor’s packet, a membership drive (contest?), using the Toastmasters Magazine, and using post cards and other mailings to all guests and attending members after each meeting. We need to keep active members happy too.
Stephen, Treasurer, reported that the treasury is approximately the same size as it was 6 months ago (a normal cycle for us). When our previous secretary left there were a couple receipts not found but the amounts are very small and we decided not to worry about them.
Stephen proposed that we replace the Successful Club Series ($45.00) since the one we currently have is outdated and pretty-well worn out. This expense was approved.
Marvin, VP Education, has updated the Club Scheduler so that the on-line schedule for each meeting is up to date until August 5th. There was a discussion about someone giving a speech explaining the club website and the changes we are enacting. Marvin will work on scheduling such a speech.
As VP of Education, Marvin wants to put more emphasis on the CL Manual (Leadership) and Member retention. There followed a discussion of the Fall Speech Contest. This contest has two elements Tall Tales (4 to 6 minutes) and Humor (5 to 7 minutes). We decided to hold the Club contest on August 5th at the normal meeting time and place.
We ended the meeting with a discussion of setting up this Blog. The Blog is controlled by the Club Secretary. Comments on Blog posts may be made by any active member by logging in. All comments will be monitored by the secretary.
We ended on-time. Zero Detractors.
