One of the advantages of not being tied to Toastmasters International (TMI) officially is that I can be brutally honest. Most Toastmasters clubs are pretty good, some are amazing, but a few are straight out awful. TMI knows there are bad clubs and tries to help them, but they’re probably not too keen on having members knowing that not all clubs are created equal.

 

My district of about 150 clubs has 5-10 clubs die each year. You don’t need to join the best club in the world or even your neighborhood, but you definitely want to be part of a club that’s not going to be closed down a year from now.

 

Before you go?

Can you find out if a club is any good without visiting it first? No. You may be able to get some clues online. If a club has a well maintained website and can list out oodles of awards it has received and (more importantly) accomplishments of its members, that’s a good sign. But there are plenty of good clubs that don’t have a website. For all I drone on about how Toastmasters is more than just public speaking, one thing it is not in the business of is teaching people how to do websites. We’re Toastmasters, not Webmasters!

 

There is no substitute for going to a club’s meeting and checking it out for yourself.

 

Forget Metrics

I spent a long time thinking about how to explain to a non-Toastmaster what was the basis of a good club until I realized it was pointless. A good club for you is one that has a convenient time and place for you and is one where you feel comfortable. Especially if you’re terrified of public speaking, feeling like the members of the club you’ve just walked in are friends is more important than just about any metric out there.

 

You just attended a meeting. How do you feel? How were you treated? Did the club members greet you? Did they show they cared about you? Could you imagine getting up in front of these folks in a few weeks and talking for five to seven minutes? How did the members treat each other? Were they laughing and having fun or did they sit and stare ahead like zombies?

 

Different clubs also have different personalities. My club is full of smartasses and we’re very laid back. For instance, if someone totally blows their time limit we really don’t care. In other clubs they more uptight. They may disqualify a speaker from the best of the day award if they don’t hit their time limit and use the word of the day, for instance. The club personality isn’t going to change just for you, so even a club with great folks may not be a great fit.

 

OK, Metrics

If you’re not an analytic type you can stop reading now and just go with your gut, the best metric of all. But if you are in accounting or engineering or wish you were, here’s some thoughts on more analytical ways of measuring if the club is any good.

 

Don’t read too much into how long the club has been around. True, a club that’s been around since 1945 is more likely to be around in 2008 than a club that was founded in 2007. That 1945 club may have a bunch of complacent members who don’t care anymore and the club in 2008 won’t be any better than the club in 2007, whereas the 2007 club may have been founded by a bunch of go-getters.

 

A better metric is number of people in the club and number at a meeting. This fluctuates over time, of course. A club with six or fewer members actively attending is in trouble - expect to be sweet talked into joining! On the other extreme, if a club has more than thirty people attending each meeting may be getting so big that it can take forever to get a speaking opening.

 

The most reliable numerical measure is the Distinguished Club Program (DCP). Clubs receive from 0 to 10 DCP points each year based on the number of new members, educational achievements members receive, and completing administrative tasks like paying dues on time. A club that received all 10 DCP points is going to be a stronger club than one that got 2. The only exceptions I can think of is if a superstar club was founded in the last year and hasn’t had time to rack up the points or if the club with 10 DCP points is “Nazi Toastmasters USA.”

 

How do you find out how many DCP points a club has? First you need its club number. You may be able to find this on the club’s website or else you can look it up on the Toastmasters.org search. After that, go back to toastmasters.org and select on the “Club DCP Reports” link. Enter the club # and voilà! Let’s look at how Redmond2828 is doing as of May 2007.

 

 
 

Not bad! We’ve actually got the points for [3] and [4], they just hadn’t shown up yet. Don’t worry if all the AC, CC, etc means nothing to you. Just trust me that more points is better.

 

The Toastmaster year begins in July, so don’t worry if the club you’re spying on has 0 points even into the Fall. By Winter, at a minimum they should have more than two officers trained for June-August and should have both their renewals and officer lists submitted on time. Unfortunately toastmasters.org doesn’t have a mechanism for looking up previous years’ statistics, but if you ask the club you’re visiting how many DCP points they got last year you’ll really impress.

 

Forget Metrics

I can’t emphasize enough though that you’re far better in a club with 3-4 DCP points where you feel comfortable participating than a club with 10 DCP points where you just sit on the sidelines.