Project 8 is a problem
The Competent Leader Manual has 10 projects. Â Project 8 deals with Motivating People. Â Members are required to do three of five roles, at least one of which has to be from the first two roles named. Â These two roles both require the member to conduct campaigns or chair a contest.
Problem 1
Chairing a speech contest is not an eligible activity. Â This is the text of the relevant role
“Membership campaign or contest chairman. Â Your club conducts several membership-building campaigns or contests each year. Â With the approval of your club’s vice president membership, organise and conduct a membership building contest, motivating members to participate and helping the club grow.”
This makes no reference to speech contests. Â It is quite different. Â Unfortunately the wording of the first role is ambiguous until the explanatory paragraph is read. Â Either members and club officers don’t bother to read the explanatory material or they know of the problem and ignore it. Â This role is very badly worded. Â It should be presented as two separate roles
Membership campaign
Membership contest chairman
Problem 2
Members and club officials in most clubs are wrongly claiming credit for successfully completing Project 8. Â They are using the chairing of club, area and division speech contests as fulfilling the requirement. Â It doesn’t, as is perfectly obvious from Project 6 which lists chairing a club speech contest as a separate role from the two chairing roles in Project 8. Â Have a look at at the 6 possible roles in Project 6 and see what I mean. Â A club membership campaign or contest and a public relations campaign are there too, separate from a club speech contest.
Problem 3
This problem applies particularly to strong, successful clubs. Â They have very great difficulty in providing opportunities for more than two or three members genuinely to complete either of the first two roles. Â How many membership contests or public relations campaigns can reasonably be run in a given year? Â This is particularly a problem for clubs with effective websites which attract the bulk of their new members. Â I know of several such clubs in WA which have this problem. Â It might sound incredible, but such clubs don’t run traditional member recruitment campaigns because they already have more than enough new members being recruited from the website.
Project 8 is a bottleneck for strong, successful clubs with many members working on the CL award and needing it to progress to the ALB award and finally to DTM. Â .
What can be done about this problem?
I don’t know. Â A new version of the CL Manual has recently been published. Â It contains the same role requirements as the original Manual. Â World Headquarters are not going to publish a revised edition for quite a while which recognises the problem I identify above, even if they agree with me.
Members and clubs which wish to promote the successful completion of the CL award will either have to turn a blind eye to the problem and use speech contests as an acceptable substitute or to find creative ways to conduct membership contests or public relations campaigns. Â But read the manual. Â Taking part in such campaigns or contests is not adequate – organising them and motivating other members to take part is the requirement. Â This is an ethical problem for Vice Presidents Education who sign off the completion of Project 8.
What do you think about this problem?
Do you agree with my analysis? Â Have you any creative suggestions for getting around the bottleneck?
Add your comment.
David Nicholas DTM
Member 318284
.
I have a suggestion. Every Area has at least one club that is struggling to maintain membership numbers. As a member of a healthy club, why not chair a public relations campaign for a struggling club in your area? You have more members to help out, more resources and can earn your CL project 8 by helping another club in need.
Martin, that is an excellent idea.
Besides being a constructive way to meet the requirements, it is a positive approach to building up our District to be.
David, I agree with the analysis and am currently Project 8 away from my CL. I have chosen to run a membership contest over a month to see who can bring in the most visitors. Easy contest to run. There are many different ttypes of membership contests or PR exercises you can do in your club; some may be able to be done as a team so more than one toastmaster can achieve the goal. Just think outside the box.
John
What you are doing is good.
However, I don’t think it can be done so that more than one Toastmaster can achieve the goal. It’s the team leader who gets the goal for motivating members of the team. I don’t think co-chairs count
I was made aware of the problem several year’s ago by the Area Governor. Up until then, we had been interpreting it incorrectly and using the club contest chairing role as the acceptable fulfilment.
After we became aware of it, I made a list of suggested projects, including:
1. Promotional stall at markets; enrol help from members
2. Encourage members to place copies of the Toastmaster with contact detail, in doctor’s waiting rooms etc
3. Print promotional posters with contact details and enlist members help to distribute on shopping centre community notice boards etc
4. Promotional display in library, ask members for help
David and WA Toastmasters,
I would like to provide the definitive response to the question around Project 8 of the CL Manual.
The Project 8 assignment in the CL manual is quite clear to toastmasters in the USA but has been more difficult for us to interpret here in Australia. Toastmasters in the USA are familiar with what the term “membership contest” means, but it is not a term that we commonly use.
In the USA, toastmasters refer to the 3 membership campaigns, the Smedley Award, Talk Up Toastmasters and Beat the Clock awards as “membership contests”. In summary, the aim of the Smedley Award is for the club to add five new, dual, or reinstated members between August 1st and September 30th, the aim of the Talk Up Toastmasters Award is for the club to add five new, dual, or reinstated members between February 1st and March 31st, and the aim of the Beat the Clock award is for the club to add five new, dual, or reinstated members between May 1st and June 30th.
Each club therefore has 3 opportunities every year for a member from their club to complete this assignment by taking on the role of “membership contest chair” for one of these contests, and the role is that of assuming leadership of a small group, or committee, of club members to run the membership campaign (and it is a good idea to include the VPM as a member of the committee) with the aim of having their club achieve the membership target in the timeframe in which the “contest” runs.
The committee that is chaired by the membership contest chair should develop a plan that includes strategies to enable the club to “win” the contest by achieving the award for their club and empower club members to participate in the campaign. There are many activities that such committees can organise to attract club members within the contest period.
It is a good idea for the membership contest chair to assign one of their committee members to evaluate their role at the time that the committee is being formed, and when the contest is completed that member should then complete the evaluation in the CL manual.
Further details of these “membership contests” are provided on the Toastmasters Members website at the link: http://www.toastmasters.org/Members/MembershipBuilding/MembershipContests.aspx
The important thing from this time forward is to ensure that all clubs understand and correctly interpret this CL Project 8 assignment in future.
Bruce Hill
District Governor
District 73
Toastmasters: Achieving Greatness Together
Thanks for this Bruce. It’s very illuminating. I hadn’t noticed the MembershipContests page before. As I read Project 8 that gives 3 club members the opportunity to chair such club contest committees. There is still a problem for clubs like Victoria Quay where the website continues to attract as many members as we can handle satisfactorily in the club. Additionally we have more than 3 members working to complete their CLs so they can apply for their ALBs for which they have all the other qualifications. Several of them want to go on to DTM. This may seem a problem limited to only a few clubs, but it is real for strong weekly clubs which generate many more opportunities in a given year than other clubs.
David and WA Toastmasters
Members of a strong club could, with the agreement of the Executive Committee of another club, run a membership contest or membership campaign for that other club for their CL assignment. The reason why permission from the Executive Committee of the other club should be sought is to ensure that by doing this they are not impeding a member of the other club from completing this assignment towards their own CL. However, I would recommend in this situation that the committee that is formed include members of the club being assisted.
I feel sure that there may be some clubs who would not be using all 3 contests towards CL awards for their members and who would value having a toastmaster from another club assist them in co-ordinating the campaign.
Bruce
Thanks for this Bruce. It’s very illuminating. I hadn’t noticed the MembershipContests page before. As I read Project 8 that gives 3 club members the opportunity to chair such club contest committees. There is still a problem for clubs like Victoria Quay where the website continues to attract as many members as we can handle satisfactorily in the club. Additionally we have more than 3 members working to complete their CLs so they can apply for their ALBs for which they have all the other qualifications. Several of them want to go on to DTM. This may seem a problem limited to only a few clubs, but it is real for strong weekly clubs which generate many more opportunities in a given year than other clubs.