As we work to increase our membership, how do we keep our current members?  Your Vice President of Education's job is making sure your club offers an experience that helps them grow.

Start new members right to retain them.

• Find out their needs.  Your VP of Education should talk to your new members.  Not every member joins for the same reason.  Some may join to over come a fear of speaking.  Others may join to polish the skills they already have.  They may have been elected chairman of a service or professional organization and want experience running a meeting.  You won't know their needs unless you ask.

• Schedule them soon but don't overwhelm them.  The sooner they start to participate, the sooner they will feel like a part of your club.  You don't want to overwhelm your new members by scheduling them for tasks they aren't ready for.  But, if the wait too long, they may get cold feet.

• Assign a mentor for them.  This is a person who can help them prepare their first speeches.  They also answer simple questions like “what type of joke is appropriate?” and “how do you work the timer?”

• Find out how their needs have changed.  They are probably working on different goals then when they joined.  Conduct a membership survey and find out.

• Encourage them to set new goals.  Many members complete their CTM and decide they've finished and quit.  About their ninth speech, let them know about both the advance Toastmaster and the leadership programs.

• Encourage them to give manual speeches.  If members quit improving, they will quit attending.  We improve when we work toward a goal.  They can repeat manual speeches they've given before or they tackle new projects.  But, it's the need to work toward improving if they are going to improve.

• The advanced manuals are harder to schedule.  Our members need to feel it's acceptable to present projects that don't fit into the standard CTM speech time.  Advanced manual times range from 2-4 minutes to 20-30 minutes.  The advanced manual The Discussion Leader projects fit better into a table topic time slot than a speaking time slot.  The advanced manuals Technical Presentations and Professional Salesperson both have team presentations.  Fortunately it's part of the speaker's job to assemble the team before you schedule the meeting.

• Schedule for variety to maintain the interest of your more experienced members.  In addition to the standard speech contests, schedule speaker/evaluator exchanges, theme meetings, hot seat meetings and all poetry meetings.  Be creative.  Toastmasters is a place to experiment.  If you need some ideas, there is a list of meeting and table topics ideas at http://www.oocities.org/rick_clements/ideas.htm.

• Assign your experienced members as a mentor.  There are few things more rewarding then helping a new member and seeing them reach their goals.

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