Best Practices
What do you do when you have a small, but dedicated, core group of Toastmasters who do not want to give up on their company sponsored club? You hold a massive membership drive. This is the story of Vons Club 1962 and their remarkable turnaround.
In today’s turbulent society, corporate sponsored clubs have major challenges to maintain healthy, strong clubs, such as restructuring, acquisitions, layoffs, and mergers. Vons was no different. Over the course of a year, as a result of a major merger with Safeway, Vons’s membership dropped to six. Teri Deibert-Nash, the President, and the rest of the committed officers approached me, their Area Governor, for assistance. We decided to hold a massive membership drive, which was fully supported by the upper management of Vons. The planning for this event took over two months. Teri enlisted Tom Keller, the Division President, and Tom Pankow, Vice President of Finance, to fully support the event financially and also give individual speeches on the benefits of being a Toastmasters member. Both executives did an outstanding job.
The membership drive was to be held just after a major internal job fair, which was used to announce the lunchtime event. Employees committed to attending, and they kept in touch with the invited guests to ensure their attendance. The week before the event, we held a “dry run” to work out any potential obstacles.
The membership drive was awesome and went off without a hitch. Six experienced Toastmasters from Division B attended and supported the event. More than 40 guests attended. We used a standard meeting format to show the guests exactly what a meeting looked like. The speeches and Table Topics were clean and well delivered. The food was great. It was a perfect event.
The final results: 14 guests joined on the spot and 4 more signed up as a result of the follow-up by the officers. Vons grew from 6 committed members to a charter strength of 24 within a few short days! This outstanding event was made possible through the hard work and commitment of the officers of Vons Club 1962.
It was the vision and desire of a few committed officers not to let a long-standing
Toastmasters club fold because of adversity. I salute each and every one who
was involved.