Toastmaster Member Engagement and Retention with Rebecca P. Murray, DTM

My name is Nirmala Kumar and I am the Division F Director. I would like to welcome everybody to this court session. Thank you everyone for being here. This is a very, very exciting session, as you're probably aware. With that, I would like to introduce Rebecca. Why do you want to join Toastmasters? Was it to gain experience, increase your confidence, learn a new skill, Let your answers soak in for a moment, and if you care to, please share your answers in the chat. We would love to hear from you. The next question: What keeps you going in Toastmasters? Is it to become a more effective presenter, to collaborate with members, or to develop your leadership skills? Again, We'd love to hear your answers if you can post it in the chat. Why we joined Toastmasters and what keeps us connected to Toastmasters can shift over time. Tonight, we look forward to hearing many more of your thoughts and ideas as we explore member engagement and retention strategies to keep your club rocking. Our facilitator for tonight's meeting is a 13-year Toastmasters veteran. She is a member of 3 Toastmasters clubs, the vice president of education at 2 advanced clubs. While she has earned many educational and leadership awards and accolades, what keeps her in Toastmasters is primarily the opportunity to create and refine her presentation skills. She uses this in her professional life as a speaker, facilitator, and trainer. Please help me welcome our facilitator for tonight's session, Distinguished Toastmaster Rebecca Murray. Welcome, Rebecca.

Thank you, and thank you everyone for being here and also sharing in the chat what brings you to and keeps you a part of Toastmasters. As you heard, I have a 13-year history with Toastmasters. However, that is spread out over nearly 30 years. So I'm one of these people that joined Toastmasters, left for a while, joined again, left for a while, joined again, and I can look back through my history and each time, aside from the first time that I joined, which was in college for a couple of years, I was introduced to Toastmasters through somebody that I admired and looked up to, and I basically said, "Whatever you're doing, I'm going to follow because I respect you that much." And it was a great move on my part to follow Jan De Vries, formerly Reavers, into Toastmasters. But after those 2 years, I left, and when I found myself unemployed, lost, floundering around in Seattle, jobless, hopeless, Somehow I came back to it. I just knew that it would help me because I needed that confidence boost. I stayed in for a number of years, left again, and then found myself jobless and hopeless once again. I rejoined again. Every single time I have been at a low, when I've come back to Toastmasters, and it's an interesting pattern, this time I decided I'm staying with it and maybe I can avoid the low, right? So as you heard, I'm a member of several clubs and am a VPE in a couple. You don't have to be an experienced Toastmaster to be part of tonight's session. You are all members of Toastmasters, you all know exactly why you joined, you also know what What keeps you here? And those are the two things that we are going to be talking and sharing tonight. Half of the session is going to be breakouts where you are going to be working through a workbook. And might I just make note now, there is a link in the chat called Session Workbook. If you would please click on that and open that because you will need it in your breakout session, and maybe we can— we can— oh, there is— there another Rebecca Murray in this? I'm just going to— I'd like to share one thing that happened earlier. I sent out an email to everybody with the link, and what I shared was my own link, so some of you have joined this meeting as Rebecca Murray. If you look at your name and you see it's Rebecca Murray and your name really is not Rebecca Murray, then I encourage you to change your name to what your name really is. Okay, enough said about that. Let's start off with a little game, a little acronym. If you've been in any of my prior sessions, you know that I love games. But actually, let me prep you a little bit before we go to the game, just to help you out. There will be no cash and no prizes, by the way. We are going to focus on these two things tonight. Our two objectives is to discuss and share ideas to retain members and re-engage members like I was who left Toastmasters so that they may come back again and join us. We're going to spend a lot of time in breakouts, as I mentioned, and talk about these things. So, here's what I want you to look at, and if you did the homework, that you received in the email that I sent out last week, this chart might look familiar, and you will notice that this information, which was gleaned from people like us, hundreds of people, Toastmasters hired some statisticians, did some surveys, and essentially most of us are here for one reason overall, and that is to learn a new skill, learn a skill of confidence, and confidence, by the way, is a skill, it can be learned, and number 2, to become a more effective speaker. So over 60% of the reason that we are here, most of us are here, is to learn a new skill, and thus my acronym. And here we go, here it is. I love low-tech. In this world of high-tech, isn't low-tech fun? As we go through each letter, L-E-A-R-N, what you think these have to do with, like, what word comes to mind with starting with the letter L that has to do either to engage and retain members or why members might want to come back to a club, to your club, rejoin Toastmasters. What might— yes, listening! Yes, I didn't even have to give you a hint. Absolutely. And we know we have members in our clubs that come for that primary reason, to be listened to. They're not really that interested in education or professional goals, but to have a safe place to come and be heard is invaluable. Invaluable. E. E. What might E stand for in our LEARN acronym? Lots of great E words, by the way. I've chosen one of the great E words: effective speaking, evaluation, engage. Nope, not yet. All of these are yeses, by the way. All of these are absolutes, but there is one— yes, entertain— there is one that I've chosen, and it is encourage. It is encourage, and I saw it there. Nakisha, yes, to encourage. But all of you are 100% Right. We come for encouragement. Now, I have had to learn the hard way how to encourage people gently. Like, I'm really hard on myself, and I think if you're hard on yourself, we tend to be harder on others. So I have had to learn through example of just watching others how to learn the skill of encouragement, because I did not learn this growing up. I learned it in Toastmasters. All right, A. A is for what? Lots of great A words for the LEARN acronym. Lots of— in fact, I've changed this one. It was one A word and I changed it to another, but what I— attitude, ambition, ability, achieve, appreciate, all these are great. Applaud, yes. And all of these, some of these relate to the word that I've chosen, which is acknowledge. Acknowledge effort. Acknowledge effort and acknowledge growth. Yes, but you are all 100% right. Now we are to the R. The R is again lots of great R words that you could choose related to Toastmasters. Isn't that amazing how there are so many great— respect, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, rapid, realize, relate. I don't see— recognize! I see it, Brian got it, but you are all right. We want to recognize achievements. You're going to talk about that in your groups. How do you in your club recognize the achievements in Pathways? Recognize, like we did this evening, the achievements outside of Toastmasters, those thank goodness for Toastmasters moments. And lastly, N. Now this one might be kind of hard because I chose a word that may be a little out of the norm for the N, but what do you think? Nudge. I love that.

Network.

There's some very creative people here tonight.

Neatwork.

That was network too. Novice energy. That's cool. Okay, I'll just tell you what I chose, and here's what I chose. I chose notice. Notice. And this, this has to do with keeping members and also members who leave. We want to notice members that drop out, drop off, or drop the ball. Somebody says, "Yeah, I'll do that. I'll be your VPE or secretary," and yet they don't show up for meetings. So we need to reach out for them. We need to notice if people aren't coming and reach out. So notice. Notice and pick up the phone if somebody's not showing up or looks like they're struggling. In fact, I'll tell you, we could have noticed, I guess. In our club, we made a mistake about 6 months ago. We had a brand new member, and we needed somebody to take on an officer role, and we asked her. She didn't say no, but we kind of noticed that maybe she wanted to, but she didn't want to disappoint us, and the next thing you know, she had left the club. So notice, take notice. We learned from our mistake there. All right, what are we going to do next? And I encourage you with this acronym, if you decide your group, because you're going to stay in the same group 2 times for 20 minutes. If you decide that you have a different acronym or like different words for this LEARN acronym, then I'm going to ask you to share them at the very end of the session today. If you have a different group of words that you would like to bring back to your club with the LEARN acronym, because this is the primary reason we are here. Okay, let's go back briefly to the slides, and I'm going to send you off into breakout rooms. There will be 5 members per breakout rooms. Each of your breakout rooms is numbered. And why is this important to take note of the number 1 through— it'll probably be something like 15— of your breakout rooms? Because when you come back from the breakout rooms, one person from your group will report out your findings that I'm going to ask about. So in your groups, there will be 5 people, and here are the— let me show you what we're going to do.

Rebecca, real quick, before we send them to breakout rooms, we need everyone to change their name to the name they have listed in Toastmasters International, or they will not get credit for this training. So if you see Rebecca Murray on your little plaque on your picture, change it to what your name is in Toastmasters International, or you will not get credit, because that's what I'm going by to input all the credit for people. Very, very important.

Thank you, Tina. Thank you for reminding me to say that. I forgot. Yes, please. Rebecca Murray doesn't need 3 credits for the same meeting, that's for sure. What we're going to do, you're going to go into breakout rooms. That link in the chat with the participant's handbook, you are going to have that open. You as a group, you're going to pretend that you're basically a club, part of the club, all the officers in a club. You're going to discuss, you're going to pick one goal from that chart, from that list, and then you are going to talk about ways that you can apply that goal in your club. When you come back then, I'll ask your scribe or your reporter to share at least one idea with all of us. What I've done is I've said, "You need a facilitator. We want to make sure that everybody who gets— has a chance to speak and share. The facilitator's job is to make sure that that happens, so the person whose last name is closest to the end of the alphabet, you will be the facilitator." And we're going to put these messages in the broadcast message that will go to your room. So the person that has the last name closest to the end of the alphabet, closest to Z, you'll be the facilitator. Person who has the last name that is closest to the start of the alphabet, or A, you will be a timer. I would say allow at least, you know, 3 minutes for people to chat. Then you need to choose your scribe. You can keep the same scribe for both sessions, that's fine, fine, or you can decide, this is a decision that you as a group have to make, who will be your scribe and who will be reporting out when we come back together. And when you open up that workbook, you'll see exactly what I mean because the instructions are right there in front of you, and it's a fillable PDF so that you can type as you chat. And I'm going to be coming around to the room so that I can help in any way necessary. So this first session, we're going to work, we're going to focus on member engagement. In the next session, we will focus on bringing members who have left Toastmasters, getting them to come back and visit and maybe even rejoin. Alright, here we go. 3, 2, 1, and go. Wonderful. Welcome back, everyone. What we'd like to do now is we are going to hear from half the rooms this time and half the rooms next time. Since we only have about 7 minutes, we just happen to have half of our rooms is 7. I'm going to start with room number 1, and I would love to hear from whoever is representing your room one thing that you talked about that you think is of primary importance for us to to know regarding retaining members and the importance of retaining members in conjunction with a goal that you chose. So you have 1 minute to please share thoughts from the room. And who would that be who's representing room number 1?

So, hi there, I'm Kate, Kate Morris, and I am from room number 1. So I was taking notes, just writing down what everybody had to say in response to the questions. The goal that we were discussing was building confidence. Most of us felt like that was probably the primary goal that we see in our members. And we had a lot of different ideas around each of the questions that were posed about how do we support another in achieving goals. I really liked that there was a lot about around giving feedback to people and definitely giving, being sure to give extra feedback both individually through an evaluation. Also, there was a club that did both an individual evaluation and a round robin for each of their members. And we also did have a few notes about how to how to measure goals or how to tell when people were achieving that goal. We felt like building confidence could be a little bit subjective and hard to measure, perhaps. But one of our group members used— I liked her quote. Her quote that she gave us is, "Confidence is worn." And she was saying that as a member is achieving that goal of building confidence, you can really start to see it and recognize it. And wonderful, start to take on more responsibilities and more speeches.

Great, thank you so much, Kate. That was beautiful. I love that quote. Yeah, next we would love to hear from spokesperson for room number 2, please. And I have my little timer here, so I'll put this up when it turns green at 1 minute just to let you know you can wrap up. So room number 2.

How do we know that the, the room number— that's you, Song. We were room number 2. Okay, so, okay, so the— we, we talked about the engagement, the membership engagement. So we shared the, shared the difficult challenges to keep the members, especially during the COVID And then we talk about the how we can keep and maintain the engagement and keep the members in the club. And then we talked about from our experience and we talked about why we are sticking to the members of the club. And then we found that the shared idea is the human connection, personal connection, and then the like, The people from the different company and the people from the same corporation, but having the more like the making the friendship within the club is increasing the engagement. That is one thing. And then another one is some people share that the good welcoming, that help him feel more welcomed and more attached to the club. And then make people comfortable That is another way. And then in a different way, we also talk about the pushing for the role and then the agenda and the encouraging to following the pathway to motivate the member to keep the membership in the club.

Wonderful. Okay, those are great. Lots of good ideas there. Thank you so much, Sang, for sharing all of that. Now I would like to— yeah, and I totally agree, the first time the person comes in, there's a few seconds there, even a couple minutes, where that first impression makes a huge difference. Um, number 3, room number 3, who will represent?

Hi, I am Romika, and I'm representing for room number 3. Uh, the goal that we chose for the selected goal was build confidence. And some of the takeaways that we had were the biggest thing that we— for us to take away was to make sure that we meet with each new member to discuss what their goals are, you know, what is their mindset, you know, where is their confidence level, what exactly is it that they need to be able to achieve you know, where they want to get to. And by doing that, that's, you know, understanding the member's goal, help them craft a plan, and to determine the milestones for that plan, as well as whether or not that goal is achieved within the 6-month period. Some of the other things that came up were honest evaluation, constructive feedback for each milestone, So the member knows exactly what they need to improve on, and that can help them build their confidence. The other thing too was assigning a mentor during, during the program is to make sure that the mentor works with the new member to help them achieve their goals and to help them craft their speeches. And those were all the overall takeaways that we had. Or—

Those are beautiful. Those are beautiful. I knew right when you were going to the mentor, I just thought that is the most wonderful last thing to say. How would we achieve that through a mentor? Wonderful suggestions there. Thank you so much, Romeeka. And now, room number 4, please come center stage.

Hi, this is Hima. I represent room number 4, and the goal that we have selected is building confidence in public speaking. We have a couple of very non-traditional topics that we kind of discussed. I will say that one of the topics that we discussed here is Giving constant encouragement and feedback to members as they— so that they can see their growth levels. And some of the members have also discussed giving standing ovation, giving gifts or Toastmasters books, and also providing this mentorship. I think Romeka has discussed this as well. Having that mentorship and being able to help them choose different paths, that is also a key. To retain the members. There were other things that we discussed here, like Romeka was discussing earlier. We had discussed about understanding the context where the members are coming from so that we can provide them the feedback and connecting what they are doing in Toastmasters and help them better understand what they are trying to improve in the public speaking. Really connecting those two worlds is important, is key there.

Thank you so much. Very thoughtful. Love that. Now, room number 5, we'd love to hear from you.

I'm Max. We hit a lot of the same topics that everybody else did as far as mentorship, feedback. We really felt like giving opportunities to speak was a huge one for us on how to support each other. I mean, just getting people into the program and having you dip your feet into public speaking was just huge. And being able to transition that as a leader, having or asking people to stand up and give a table topics, that's, it's a huge part of getting people into the group. One of the interesting weaknesses that we found amongst our groups was that there wasn't as much achievement for reaching goals. And that was something that I really took away. And I thought that it's something that's really important to do because it keeps people engaged in the process. And it really lets you know what each of your friends and other members in the group are working on and trying to achieve. So we talked about different versions of that on how we can give kudos, maybe in the president's opening or in the exit, maybe do some slides or try and have some certificates or call-outs, but do other fun things to really engage people and say, hey, this person just reached this new level on Pathways, or they reached this, you know, reduction in their ums or ahs or whatever they might be working on. So that was something fun that we were really just kind of bouncing around.

That's wonderful, finding, finding other ways to acknowledge the transition. In learning, the transformation in learning. That's very creative. I love that. And lastly, but no, Max, wait a minute. I think I'm— you were Max, right?

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Okay. So we're on room number 6 now. You were room number 5. Room number 6, please come center stage.

Okay. We also touched on many of the things that have already been said. But most of our focus was on encouragement. And one of the ways that we thought of doing that was kind of make people join in friends so that they're more willing to participate. And it's a little friendlier thing rather than just a classic kind of learning situation. The awards, we talked a lot about possible ways of awarding people for their achievements, even if they're small achievements. And it's a little bit harder, I think, to do on Zoom than if it was in person where we could actually bring a cupcake for someone and say, your speech was so good, we're gonna celebrate this. That's pretty much our summary.

That's great, and you bring up a good point. I'm wondering if we might share in the chat some creative ways that you all have found to acknowledge achievements on Zoom because we can't give tangible, tangible things. So what ways have you found that that actually works? Do you play some music, throw some confetti, confetti. I mean, really, what I would like to know— play some music, maybe. I want to know your ideas. I need to know your ideas. And then lastly, room number 7.

I think I'm probably— this is Gwen. I'm probably the spokesperson. We also picked building confidence as the goal that we wanted to work on, and we had a variety of folks that we had someone representing, Emmy was representing a corporate club, which is very different and brings some very different focus. And we talked about one of the, one of the things that you can do to, to build confidence is to make sure that everybody, especially new people, have as many opportunities to speak as they can handle. So if you, you know, if you can provide that and they're willing to do, you know, more than one speech a month or something, then that's how they build their confidence. And one of the ways you could tell they build the confidence is that they, they bring somebody to the meeting when they're giving a speech, like a co-worker or somebody. And then the other thing that came up was bringing somebody, a Toastmaster, to another opportunity they have to speak that maybe not isn't even Toastmasters, so they can give them an on-the-spot evaluation. That would be really valuable.

Oh wow, those are fabulous. Thank you so much, Gwen. Excellent. And I encourage everybody to take a look in the chat at what was just shared in terms of ideas to recognize achievements Fantastic. We are going to transition now with all of your minds buzzing to our next topic, and I thought this, this slide that I'm going to show you puzzled me just a little bit, just in how it was worded, so I'm going to put it up here and let it soak in. How are past members currently involved in your club? And this, this question just stopped me in my tracks. How are past members currently involved in your club? And I actually did not have an answer. So I'll be interested to hear some of your answers because some of you may actually bring past members back. Now we know the statistics haven't changed much. When we had the Legacy Program that some of you here were around for, The average stay in Toastmasters was 18 months. That coincided with the time it took for somebody to get through what was called the Competent Communicator Manual. That was 10 speeches, so on average it took 18 months. Then the person felt like they had achieved the goal that they came to Toastmasters with, and many left. Now, the The statistics, easy for me to say, statistics have not changed much even with Pathways. If you looked through that homework where all those statistics were at the end, standard deviations, and I sort of got lost a little bit, but the, that timeframe, the 18 months, that's what we still see, and the younger a person is, at least how I read the information, the more likely they are to leave after they got the goal. "Hey, I checked it off, got it, I'm good, I'm confident, I feel like I can give the speeches now in the boardroom or to my peers, I'm gone." But how can we reengage those people should they leave? Like, you heard my story, why did I come back? I came back because I needed another boost of confidence. I can't remember anybody actually reaching out to me. I sought out Toastmasters or met a Toastmaster who invited me, and that's how I came back. So, we're going to explore some of these ideas, your next, the next part in that workbook. Now, we're going to shift gears and talk about how to re-engage people who have not renewed, and maybe we haven't seen them for a year or so, but we still have their contact information? What strategies can we take as a club to re-engage these folks and bring them back for yet more learning and growth? All right, we are going to go back into the same breakout rooms that we just came from. This time when we come back, we will be hearing from rooms 8 through 14, so please take note of your room as you're swept away into your breakout room. Again, you're going to have the facilitator. This time it is the opposite of what I said last time, so the person whose first name is closest to the start of the alphabet, you will be the facilitator. If you need a timer, use a timer. After I got in one of those breakout rooms, I thought, "Uh, timer may be not that necessary," but just to kind of report report out on the time and let everybody know where you're at. And then you can choose the same scribe and reporter or choose someone new, up to you. You have 20 minutes and we'll see you soon.

I'm opening the rooms and there's no need to use the leave room button unless, uh, you have help, you need help, but you can always use the help button for that.

Welcome back, everyone. We have a challenge on our hands. We have 10 minutes to hear from 8 rooms. So when I call on your room— and I've decided I'm going to do this out of order, this is kind of like table topics, right? You have 1 minute, up to 1 minute, to speak, those of you who represent the room. To share one thing, hopefully that somebody else hasn't already said, something new. And of course, as you realize tonight, all of the value that you got this evening was sharing information with each other in your rooms. And I hope that you'll take some of this back to your officer meetings and use it to the benefit of your club. It is my pleasure to welcome Room 16 to the center stage. Room 16, will you please—

Point of order.

We're going out of order. What's that?

Sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to know who the timer was, so I'm watching. Is that Linda?

I'm the timer.

You're going to be the timer?

I am.

Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, and Brian, so you're representing Room 16?

No.

Okay, who is Room 16? I believe I'm representing Room 16. Wonderful.

Hi everyone, I'm Lily. I'm representing Room 16, and I guess to kick it off, our group's a little contrary in that we think that the, the most important place to focus your chapter's energy, the officer's energy and resources, is on retaining members before they even leave. So while we did discuss re-engaging through like one-on-one conversations before a member leaves or inviting the elapsed member to a casual chapter event, an open house, or a speech contest. We really agreed that officers are often strapped for time and can only do so much, and so it's important to retain and keep them in the club before they leave.

Fantastic, Lily. Just like every good business person knows, it's much easier to retain a client and less more expensive than to engage a new one. Now I would love to hear from Room 12.

I'm Gary, Room 12. We said you want to stay in contact with people, regular contact with past members makes them feel welcome to come back again. One person said that she had a, they had a policy of emailing 3 times and then following up with a phone call, and I like that idea. Talk about how, give personal opinions about why Toastmasters helps you, how it's helped me build my confidence. That might help people understand the value in it. Finding out why people left, if they're willing to tell you, you can ask them, and they may not tell you honestly if, you know, they really didn't like something. So we discussed using SurveyMonkey, something that talked to a lot of people at once and find out anonymously what they thought about the group and what reasons they might have had for leaving. And also discussed adapting to a member's concerns. In one case, I spoke about how we had a member who we knew He was at least willing to be honest and tell us why he left and that he felt uncomfortable with, yeah. And we were able to address that and say, let's try to not get into politics in meetings was how we addressed that.

Fantastic, Gary. Thank you so very much. Yes, let's not be divisive. Love that idea. Fantastic. Room number 8, please. Please, we are on the countdown.

All right, I'm Dave from Space Toast, and we talked about some of the reasons for why people might leave and realize that some of them are fairly legitimate in that lives change. As you've described, you had needs, you didn't seem to have the needs, and you came back later., and that's sort of what I've done in my life with this club and another type of club. But to engage some of those past members, we're thinking some of the ideas might be to like have social gatherings. And also my club is just yesterday, our leadership voted to add a mentorship program And I'm hoping that some of our past members might see an opportunity to give back something they gained from.

Yes, another, another way to grow, another reason to stay. Excellent, I love that. Room number 10, please.

Thank you very much, fellow Toastmasters. Let's see, what can I say that has not been said already? Only a couple items left. I tried inviting former members to a holiday potluck, and that did produce some surprising results. We saw some faces we hadn't seen in a few years. Unfortunately, none of them rejoined our club, but it was nice to see them again and have more people at the potluck. I also tried surveying former members to find out what it was that they didn't get, caused them to leave. Unfortunately, nobody responded to the survey, but James, who was in our room, suggested we try that over the telephone. That way, if people are not interested in participating via email, you can corner them and force them to participate. Well, not force them, but maybe twist their arm a little bit and see if they change their mind.

I love that idea.

Thank you.

And the potluck idea, that's great. It's so nice to meet you, Brian. All right, room number 9, please.

Okay, that'll be me, Jalon Smith. Uh, some of the notes that I had jotted down was just, uh, Reminding previous members how fun it is to be a member of Toastmasters. But also, I think someone had mentioned being preemptive. If you notice the person isn't attending as many meetings or not quite as active, maybe try to get them to remain a member instead of quitting. But just reminding everyone of the benefits and that there is always something to learn. And for past members also, that they can just improve their skills and their skills may have eroded over time and they can just get better that way. And also just remind them that they're also benefiting the club as well, that it's not only for them, but it's for everybody in the club. And but also be empathetic, understanding that a lot of folks have a ton of things going on. And if they aren't available all the time, yes, we understand that. How can we work together to get you back into the fold?

Yes, I love that. And you do have a very empathetic way about you, I must say, JLo. And now I would like to hear from Room 15.

Great. Okay, so in under a minute, or a minute or under, I am going to try to touch on two topics. One would be social events. I think that social events, or we all thought that social events are very important. A couple of us were in agreement that less meeting, more social, to make it fun and to invite those past members to those social events. Really important. Make it fun, keep it fun, and give them a reason to want to come back. And that kind of relates over to question number 6, was— I believe the question was, um, what would happen if you did nothing? And well, one of the main things is that your club will become smaller if you don't do anything. And I've been around a lot of networking groups and other organizations like this, and as membership dwindles within that chapter, it gets harder to recruit. And worse, it gets harder to retain. Because as it shrinks, it keeps on shrinking, and the smaller it gets, the harder it is. So you have to move forward with making sure that you do something and go, just do it.

Oh, that's fantastic, Craig. It's sort of like, I totally agree with you, that tipping point where it's hard to bring it back. And thank you. I think you were the only room to actually touch on that hard question. That is a really tough question to answer. So thank you, did fabulously. And now I would like to call on room number 14, please. Thank you, Rebecca.

My room did have an opportunity to touch on some of these points that have already been shared, but we also discussed that past members have experienced. They have been through maybe a Pathway or Competent Communicator book and they have given speeches, so they understand what it's like to go from an icebreaker all the way through to a Pathway or Competent Communicator completion, and they can empathize and relate with newer members. So engaging them and asking them to come back for the sole purpose of being a mentor and stating or communicating, hey, we have this one particular new member who has a lot of need, and we would really look to an experienced and knowledgeable Toastmaster like you to support them. What do you say? Would you consider this? Or something that I have seen that I particularly like is you have a past member and you invite them to be an evaluator on a particularly difficult speech project. You have a member who might be on a Level 4 or Level 5 speech project. And ask them to be that outside voice that the member's not used to hearing an evaluation from in terms of your normal members. And then potentially in so doing that evaluation, that past member is now reinvigorated to rejoin.

Wow, I love that. Really, you're hitting on building somebody's pride and Yeah, that's so creative. I love that. We need you. We need your expertise. That is fantastic idea. All right, last but certainly not least, we would love to hear from Room 11.

Hi, I will be representing Room 11. So to build on top of some of the points that everyone else has already mentioned, I wanted to start off with the fact or the reason why some people may come back during this time. Toastmasters is a very supportive group to join, especially during COVID And as mentioned before, members may be at a different point in life, so they may now have time, more time to participate. So that may be a reason why someone may join again. And to go over some of the steps that we created to try to bring people back into the fold, one, we would have our VPM maintain a list of past members for email communications. Second, before membership renewal time, that would be a good time to send out reminders or emails to past members to see if they're willing to come back or if, if they're ready. And then the last one was having pre-planned special events for a 6-month period so that you know which events to invite them back to.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Um, Nakisha, Nakisha, did I say that right? Yes, yes, good. Yes, fantastic. And you all did so great. Concise table topics champions, you. It's been my pleasure to facilitate this session this evening, and I would like to leave you with a reminder that we are all here to learn, to listen, encourage, acknowledge, recognize, and notice people in our clubs. Thank you so much for spending your time with me, and I hope that you got a great deal out of sharing your ideas and being heard and by each other in your rooms. It is now my pleasure to return control of this educational opportunity back to our Division F Director, Namala Kumar.

Thank you very much, Rebecca. That was really a wonderful session. We all learned a lot and enjoyed the session. Thank you very much. Before we conclude this meeting, there are just few more items to take care of. I would like to invite Tina, who is a program quality director from— for District 2. Tina, would you like to— would you have any announcements for the group. Yes, thank you, Nirmala. Uh, first, I don't know if she's still here or not, but I want to let you all know that Heather Watson, our district director, is here with us today. And Linda Vorth— there she is— and Linda Vorthman is also here. My announcements, I have two. The first one is training, training, training. That's my job, right? We have some more fantastic trainings from the Advanced Training Committee that are going to be coming up, and I hope that you all are going to look on the D2TM.org in the chat for the calendar and look for those advanced trainings. We're going to have some hybrid club meeting trainings. And some other really great things. Please look for those. Our second round of club officer trainings and our TLI will start in November. Please look for those and make sure that your— all of your club officers are getting trained. Also, dues are due, and we have some great incentives for your club. So take this back to your clubs. If you are the first 10 clubs to get all of your members to renew, you will receive $50 D2. D2 dollars. If you are the first 100 clubs to get 8 of your members to renew, you will receive $25 D2 dollars. That means the first 10 clubs that get all of their members to renew automatically get the $25 as well. So make sure your officers or your club members are renewing and making this a strong district. Linda, do you want to make your— do your new club one? I would like to. Thank you, Tina. Everybody here knows 20 people. Maybe you've got a big family, maybe you've got a lot of friends. That's 20 people can start a brand new club. And if you do so before September 30th, we have a big incentive, $200 D2 for starting a brand new club before September 30th. You have to have it all the way chartered, have your 2 sponsors, your 2 mentors, 20 paid members, and D2 can be spent on a variety of expenses for your clubs. There's a list on our website. Back to you, Numala, to talk about the survey. Heather, did you want to say anything quickly? Sorry, didn't mean to exclude you. No problem. You guys are doing all the hard work. I'm just here to say thank you so much for everyone's hard work and effort. For all of you who are here for training tonight, the district would not be here without each and every one of you. So thank you all so much. I really appreciate you being here this evening. Okay, now back to you, Nirmala. Thank you. Thank you, the trio, for being here, being part of the court session. It really means a lot to all of us. Enjoyed having you all, and I would like to request everyone to please take a couple of minutes to do the survey. The link is in the chat. If you can please click on the link, submit the survey. It will help us a lot to keep these sessions as exciting as it was today. Maybe add something more too if you want to. But this was a wonderful session, Rebecca. Thank you so much for being the facilitator, and much thanks to the trio for supporting all of us to making these events happen. And all you wonderful Toastmaster leaders, you're the reason the District is as strong as Heather mentioned.