November 2012 - District 73 Toastmasters

SOUTHERN CROSSMEMBERSHIP RECRUITMENT -KEEPING YOUR MEMBERSINTERESTEDWe all know that over time, membership ofa club has its ups and downs. We arehappy when we see guests join andmembership grow but sad whenmembership drops away.The reality is that there comes a time inthe life of all clubs when the smooth roadof membership becomes bumpy. Membersloose interest, they may stop coming tomeetings, they may stop working onspeech manuals and leadership goals, orin some circumstances they may just dropout of the clubs altogether. I believeToastmaster clubs are prone to the sameeffects of the “real world”, economics,logistics, lifestyles, politics, and variationsin quality and performance. The negativeimpact caused by the loss of membershipto a club is like comparing it to the loss ofexisting customers to an on-goingbusiness. To survive, the business needscustomers but it is easier to retaincustomers than obtain new ones.There are usually several reasons formembership decline, family and workcommitments, unsuitable meeting times,members change jobs and some evenmove interstate, they may leave afterachieving a set goal or they may just looseinterest, in some cases there arepersonality clashes within the club. Allthese are normal for most clubs but whenyou have more apologies than attendees itis time to take note.What we need to do is focus on thepositive, all clubs are good, it‟s just thatsome may need a little more help thanothers.When membership starts to fall off, one ofthe first reactions of club leaders is topanic about the potential death of theirclub but this need not be the case, what ismost important at this time is finding waysto rebuild the club, because it is far easierand less expensive to rebuild a club than itis to start fresh.Many times when we talk aboutmembership building programs we thinkabout new member recruitment butretaining our current members is anessential component of a club‟s overallmembership growth.Unlike Membership Recruitment thatconcentrates on gaining new membersthrough such things as PR andSpeechcraft, etc. Membership Retention isa continuing process and to be fullyeffective a good Membership RetentionProgram should start from the first time aguest walks into your club and continuethroughout his or her membership life. Inother words, don‟t just get them interestedin joining but get them interested instaying.Over the last six months in my role asLGM I have heard several people describesome clubs as Bad, Poor, Weak,Disastrous, Dying and even Good asdead, these are words that can conjure upmany misconceptions.One way of looking at MembershipRetention is to think of it as a programdesigned to minimise the gap in the ratioof its membership. But MembershipRetention is more than just a set programor activity; it is part of a complexPage 6 Edition 93