A District in Toastmasters is an organizational unit that will typically cover over a 100 clubs, grouped geographically. The District is best know for running speech contests - as in “I won the District 2 Liturgical Dance Contest.” Your District also will put on a conference twice a year and does boring random administrivia that’s not interesting here.

I almost wrote that it’s important to know what District you’re in, but given that so many Toastmasters don’t know this but do fine anyway, why don’t I just say it’s nice to know. If you’re filling out any forms from Toastmasters they will ask you what District you’re in. Your District probably has a website and/or a newsletter that contain information about happenings around you. And if you’re looking for a club, the District website may contain additional information that you can’t get off toastmasters.org.

How do you find out what District you’re in? If you’re already a Toastmaster, the lazy way is to just ask a club officer. The club president or the treasurer are good candidates because they deal with the most paperwork.

So you’re the president and someone just asked you what District you’re in and you don’t know. Oops! Probably the easiest way is to check out the Toastmasters District map, available here.

So you’re the president who has to lookup the District you’re in because of one of those pesky members, you go to the Toastmasters website, but having bad eyesight you’re not sure which side of the dividing line Kirkland is in. OK, there are a lot of ifs to get us here but being an engineer I have to be thorough. Go to toastmasters.org, click on find a club, and find your own club. It will show up something like below. The underlined District number is mine.