Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational corporation headquartered in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. Its mission is to improve communication and leadership skills of its members. Mainly, this works out to "improving public speaking skills" but there is also a potent leadership and management aspect to the organization if you aspire to reach that level.
No. The organization includes approximately 200,000 members in 90 countries, including Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, as well as the United States of America.
Toastmasters International publishes a complete set of materials in English, and basic materials in French, Spanish, and Japanese. As translators make themselves available, more materials are translated.
All Toastmasters members belong to one or more clubs. Clubs consist of at least eight members and may have forty or more. The recommended size for a club is twenty or more.
Clubs exist in communities around the world, especially in North America, and it's a rare locality in the United States that doesn't have at least one Toastmasters club within thirty minutes' driving time. There are, at present, over 10,000 clubs around the world, and most of them are in the United States.
There are many sorts of clubs: community clubs, military clubs, company clubs, prison clubs, collegiate clubs, and so on. At this time, the majority of the new clubs being chartered are "company clubs," i.e. clubs chartered at and meeting at businesses and organizations, in many cases open only to employees or members of those organizations. Never fear, however; there are thousands of community clubs already in existence as well.
Usually, no. If you're visiting a community club, it might not be a bad idea to let them know you're coming so they can tell you any details like what time members arrive, but community clubs are almost always open to all and they'll be delighted to have you come to the meeting.
Clubs that meet at companies and organizations, on military bases, or in prisons are often, but not always, restricted to members or employees of the sponsoring body. These clubs are happy to have guests but you sometimes need to call ahead to get through security or to find out specifically where the club meets.
Unlike some other organizations, where one must have a sponsoring member who invites you to the meeting and introduces you to the group, Toastmasters welcomes all guests. If the club is open to membership from the community, you will usually be offered a membership application at the end of the meeting.
The name "Toastmasters" is a holdover from the founding of the organization, when one of the main types of public speaking a member of society would engage in was after-dinner speaking, a.k.a. toastmastering. It is rare that formal drinking and toasts take place, and these are usually at major banquets or conferences.
In general, though, you'll find two types of clubs: those that have a meal with their meetings and those that don't. Clubs that have a meal with their meeting may charge their members for the meals in advance and pay the restaurant in one lump sum or may have members order off the menu. Since breakfast and lunch clubs are popular with the business community, you can often kill two birds with one stone by joining Toastmasters: educating yourself and having a meal with business associates. You'll also find some clubs that get meeting space by having dinner before their meetings -- and half the members wait until dinner is over to arrive. There's infinite variety to it all. This is one good reason to call in advance.
Many clubs do not have meals with their meetings, though. Quite a few clubs meet after dinner time in a public meeting room at a bank or library or at a church, have their meeting, and go home.
The format varies slightly from club to club, but the basics include:
Meetings last anywhere from one hour (especially at lunch or breakfast) to three hours (if the club meets infrequently or has long-winded speakers).
When you join Toastmasters (see the "Membership" FAQ) you receive a basic speaking manual with ten speech projects. Each project calls on you to prepare a speech on a subject of your own choosing but using certain speaking principles. Each manual project lists the objectives for that speech and includes a written checklist for your evaluator to use when evaluating the speech. Thus, if you're scheduled to speak at a meeting, you generally pull out your manual a week or two in advance and put together a speech on whatever you like but paying attention to your goals and objectives for that speech. Then, when you go to the meeting, you hand your manual to your evaluator and that person makes written comments on the checklist while you speak. At the end of the meeting, that person (your evaluator) will rise to give oral commentary as well. The purpose of the extensive preparation and commentary is to show you what you're doing well, what you need to work on, and driving these lessons home so you're constantly improving.
In the basic ("Competent Communicator") manual, there are ten speech projects:
As you can see, all ten projects above are wide-open for you to choose whatever topic you like. Even if you pick a controversial subject, most Toastmasters audiences will evaluate you on how well you presented your subject, not on whether they agreed with you or not.
For further information about the speaking programme, see the "Educational Advancement" FAQ.
Table Topics is fun! It's also terrifying. Basically, it calls on you, the guest or member, to present a one to two minute impromptu speech on a subject not known to you until the moment you get up to speak! A member of the club assigned to be Topicmaster will prepare a few impromptu topics and call on members (or guests, if they've given assent in advance to being called on) to stand up and speak on the topic. Topics might include current events (e.g. "What would you do about Haitian boat people if you were President?") or philosophy ("If you had no shoes and met a man who had no feet, how would you feel?") or the wacky ("Reach into this bag. Pull an item out. Tell us about it.").
The Evaluation programme is the third of the three main parts to the meeting. All prepared speakers, as noted above, should have their speaking manuals with them and should have passed them on to the evaluators beforehand. During the speech, and after, each person's evaluator should make written notes and furthermore, plan what to say during the two to three minute oral evaluation. Evaluation is tough to do well because it requires an evaluator to do more than say "here's what you did wrong." A good evaluator will say "here's what you did *well*, and here's why doing that was good, and here are some things you might want to work on for your next speech, and here's how you might work on them." It's important to remember that the evaluator is just one point of view, although one that has focused in on your speech closely. Other members of the audience can and should give you written or spoken comments on aspects of your speech they feel important.
As noted above, speeches have time limits, Table Topics have time limits (1-2 minutes, usually) and evaluations have time limits (2-3 minutes, usually). This is in order to drive home the point that a good speaker makes effective use of the time allotted and does not keep going and going and going until the audience is bored. In the real world, quite often there are practical limits to how long a meeting can or should go; by setting time limits on speeches and presentations, participants learn brevity and time management and the club meeting itself can be expected to end on schedule.
Time limits are rarely enforced to the letter. In only a few situations will you find yourself cut off if you go too long, and that's up to the individual club. Most clubs don't cut speakers off if they go overtime.
It is common for clubs to use a set of timing lights to warn the speakers of the advance of time. All speeches and presentations have a time limit expressed as an interval, e.g. 5 to 7 minutes. A green light would be shown at 5 minutes, amber at 6, and red at 7. In Table Topics, the lights would go 1, 1.5, and 2 minutes respectively. When the green light comes on, you've at least spoken enough, though you need not finish right away, and when the yellow light comes on, you should begin wrapping up. If you're not done by the time the red light comes on, you should finish as soon as possible without mangling the ending of your speech.
The only times you're actually *penalized* for going over or under time is in speaking competition; in speech contests (see the "Contests" FAQ) you must remain within the interval or be disqualified.
Some clubs hold an audience vote for "best speaker," "best topic speaker," and "best evaluator" during the meeting and it's a practice in some clubs to disqualify people who go over or under time from these meeting awards. Check with the particular club to see what they do.
If meetings sound complicated, we're sorry. Meetings generally are not complicated once you get used to the timing lights in the back and the different roles members of the group play. Since the average club is expected to have 20 or more members, you need a lot of roles for people to play in order to involve everyone. And, since meeting assignments vary from meeting to meeting, everyone gets practice doing everything over the course of several meetings. One meeting, you'll be assigned to give a speech; the next, you might be timer; the next, you might be the Toastmaster of the Meeting, running the whole show. It keeps you flexible and it keeps you from having to prepare a speech EVERY meeting, which would get old quickly.
EVERYONE is afraid of speaking. In poll after poll, "public speaking" comes up as more feared than "death." Public speaking is the #1 fear. You are no different. Even if you think you're really good at speaking, there will come times when your heart stops and your palms sweat and you freeze before an audience. Toastmasters can help with that.
Remember that EVERYONE in a Toastmasters club is there because at some point they realized they needed help communicating and speaking before audiences. Almost everyone will remember how wretched they felt when they gave their first speech. You may be startled to find out how supportive a Toastmasters club really can be. [The author of this FAQ recruited a friend to Toastmasters who was so overwrought and nervous that she sobbed as if her heart was broken after her first speech. Ditto for the second. Some tears after the third. Eventually she realized that we weren't going to eat her alive and she came to enjoy it. By the time she earned her CC, she consistently won "best speaker" votes at our meetings.
If you're aware how nervous you are but aren't convinced that you should do anything about it, stop and think what skill is more important than any other when it comes to getting and keeping a good job.
Think you're already an excellent speaker? People who think they're really good sometimes come into Toastmasters and find out how unstructured and sloppy they really are. Being comfortable doesn't mean that you're actually GOOD. Even if you ARE good, you can always get better. Toastmasters can give you a lot of skills and keep good speakers improving.
If you still don't know whether you'd like Toastmasters, why not visit a meeting? If you still don't think it's your cup of tea, we'll still be happy you came by.
College and high school courses in public speaking usually involve the students sitting through dozens of lectures followed by one or two speaking opportunities. When the speeches are over, you get a grade. Often, you get graded on what you did wrong. This isn't a way to build reassurance and motivation. Then too, you rarely get much of a chance to practice by doing. You get up at the end of the semester, give your speech, and sit down. Toastmasters is constant reinforcement and constant improvement. You learn by doing, not by sitting there while someone lectures for hours.
For-profit courses such as Dale Carnegie can be very good for their participants. They also cost a lot and when they're over, they're over. Toastmasters costs $US54 per year (plus club dues, if any) and it can last a lifetime.
Hill out our contact form and someone will get back to you and invite you to one of our meetings as a guest. If you enjoy it (and we're sure you will!) ask the membership secretary for an application form.
According to the bylaws all Toastmasters clubs operate under, any new member of a club must be voted into membership by the club. In practice, this rarely happens. Instead, members are welcomed enthusiastically into the club as soon as a standard membership application is turned in with a cheque for the appropriate dues.
Upon joining Toastmasters, you will find yourself paying three different fees. One is the standard $US20.00 fee that every new member must pay in order to receive educational materials (see below). Another is the standard International dues, $US4.50 per month. Third is your Club dues, if any.
All Toastmasters clubs are billed in March and September for semi-annual dues for their members who wish to remain members for the next six months. If you join in between those periods, you submit a pro-rated share of the dues.
Clubs usually charge dues on top of the world dues. This is so they'll have money in the treasury for expenses. It's up to each club what they want to charge. Some clubs waive the club dues for new members and only assess them at the semi-annual dues payment dates.
Then, once you're signed up, dues are assessed every six months, in September and March.
In the United States, they are -- IF your job is of a sort that requires or necessitates good communications skills. In other words, it must be an educational expense to be tax deductible. Toastmasters International will send you complete tax deduction explanations if you request them to do so.
Your semi-annual dues paid to World Headquarters go partly for a subscription to the "Toastmaster" magazine (which is an excellent publication,) partly to support development of new educational programmes (they've got some *nice* new programmes coming out these days), partly to support operations at World Headquarters (i.e. the staff who process membership applications, CC applications, new club applications, etc. etc.,) and partly to support your local District organization.
Furthermore, when you finish your basic manual and earn your CC, you get three of the Advanced project manuals for no extra charge to work toward your AC with.
Your club dues generally go to pay for the club's supplies, such as ballots, awards, ribbons, and educational materials. In some cases, such as when your club has a meal at each meeting, your dues may go to pay for that.
Your $US20.00 New Member fee gets you the following:
The latter three are instructional manuals rather than project manuals. Only the first is a workbook.
Simply wait for March or September to arrive and don't pay your dues again. (It would probably be a good idea to let your Vice President Membership know, though.)
Since most people are genuinely terrified of public speaking, Toastmasters has its hands full recruiting members. There's virtually no chance that you won't be enthusiastically welcomed into any club you join and immediately be considered one of the gang.
Occasionally, however, people get into bad situations, but the same is true of ANY organization. There are jerks everywhere. Toastmasters probably has its share. For this reason, the author of this FAQ considers it a good idea to visit a number of Toastmasters clubs in your area before deciding which one you want to join.
If a club that you visit turns out to be full of jerks, please don't assume that this is true of the entire organization. Once in a while, people forget that they're part of a larger organization and act as though the message and mission of Toastmasters doesn't concern them. Please nod, leave, and visit some other club. This is definitely the exception, but we cannot honestly say that it never happens.
No. You will not be asked to speak unless you're ready to. If you feel more comfortable waiting a few months, that's fine. Most clubs attempt to arrange the meeting schedules in such a way that most members are involved in some capacity at each meeting, so you'll need to let them know what your wishes are.
Well, there are two "right" answers to this question. The first is that your main objective should be to attend every meeting you can and participate to the fullest, helping yourself and the other members of the club to become better communicators. The other "right" answer is that you should be working toward the CC award.
It stands for "Competent Communicator" The CC is the basic speaking certification offered through Toastmasters. Many members join, earn their CC, and drop out of the organization. It's the basic "diploma."
You have to complete the Competent Communicatior(CC) manual, which in effect means you have go work your way through the ten speech projects contained therein. When you finish your manual, you'll complete the registration information in the back of the manual and send it in to World Headquarters in California.
No. So long as you are giving the speech to an audience with at least one Toastmasters member in attendance, and so long as a fellow Toastmaster completes the manual evaluation for that project, you may count that speech toward a CC.
No. You can do the projects out of order if you like. It is recommended that you follow the order given since the projects progress upwards in difficulty but if you have a speech idea or opportunity that better suits one of the later projects you may skip over earlier ones and do that one first.
When you finish, there's a form in the back of your manual to fill out, sign, and send in to World Headquarters. When your paperwork is received at World Headquarters they enter it into the computer and you are issued a CC certificate. If you mark it on the registration sheet they will also send a letter to your employer letting them know. Also, when you send in the registration sheet you're asked what three advanced manuals you'd like copies of, so you can start working on the ACB.
ACB means Advanced Communicator Bronze. It's the next level of Toastmasters achievement after the CC. If you like, you can consider the CC the "core curriculum" and the ACB your actual "major." As there are 12 "specializations" you can work on to get your AC, this is a fairly accurate generalization.
Well, it's a little more difficult than a CC, for starters. You have to have:
There are fourteen manuals available, each with five speech projects of various lengths:
You receive three of these for no cost when you complete your CC. Additional manuals cost $US4.00 plus postage and handling.
Well, there's the ACS, ACG and DTM, of which more information can be found on the Main Toastmasters International site, but there are also Success/Leadership modules. If you'd like to delve in detail into subjects such as management, the qualities of a leader, effective listening, parliamentary procedure, creative thinking, and so forth, Toastmasters International offers pre-packaged course materials for you or a member of your club to present to a group of participants. These courses are called Success/Leadership modules. Again more information can be found on the main TI site.
All clubs have a staff of club officers. These are usually elected once a year. Elections usually take place in May for the term July 1 to June 30.
Club offices (and their rank within the club) are as follows:
Club offices are open to ANY member. There is no reason why a new member cannot run for President without serving in any other club office.
You can serve as Area Governor, Division Governor, District Secretary, District Treasurer, District Public Relations Officer, District Lieutenant Governor Marketing, District Lieutenant Governor Education and Training, District Governor, International Director, International Vice-President, or International President. To explain what all these mean, you need to know more about each level.
Clubs are grouped into Areas of three to eight Clubs. Each Area has its own Area Governor, a member of one of the clubs appointed by the District Governor to serve the Area. Area Governors are usually, but not always, members of a club in the Area they are responsible for.
Areas have Area Speech Contests several times a year, with winners from the Club levels going on to the Area Contest. The winner of the Area Contest goes on to the Division Contest.
Areas also share Area goals, determined by formulas set at World Headquarters, such as "x number of clubs at 20 members in strength" and "x number of CTM's in the various clubs." If an Area meets or exceeds all its goals, its Area Governor is recognized for hard work motivating the clubs.
Areas are grouped into Divisions. Divisions may be as small as one Area in size (rarely) or as have five, six, or more Areas. Each Division has its own Division Governor. Division Governors are usually members of clubs within their Division and are elected once a year at the Annual District Business Meeting. The Division Governor works with his Area Governors to motivate the clubs to high membership and to have good, effective educational programmes.
Divisions have Division Speech Contests several times a year, with winners from the Areas coming together to compete. The Division winners go on to the District level.
Divisions have Division goals, just as Areas do. A good Division Governor will work with his or her clubs and Areas to increase membership and educational effort.
Districts in some cases are equivalent to "states" and in other cases are smaller or larger. If you think of a District as "the state organization" you won't be too far off. Districts are comprised of several Divisions. Districts are the main level of organization outside the Club; Areas and Divisions are "sub-units" of the District.
California has several Districts because there are so many clubs there. North Carolina, on the other hand, is a single District. England and Scotland and Ireland are one District all together, and Australia and New Zealand comprise several Districts. Smaller countries with only a few clubs each are Unincorporated Clubs which report directly to World Headquarters instead of to Districts.
Each District has its own set of officers, most of whom are elected at the District Spring Conference (or Fall Conference in the Southern Hemisphere). The officers include: District Secretary, District Treasurer, District Public Relations Officer, District Lieutenant Governor Marketing, District Lieutenant Governor Education and Training, and District Governor. The last three are always elected and the first three are elected or appointed, depending on local preference. If they are appointed in your District, it's the newly-elected District Governor who does the appointing.
And yes, Districts have their own District-wide goals. The various District officers work with the clubs, Areas, and Divisions to build membership, start new clubs, promote the earning of CTM's and ATM's, and so forth.
Districts have speech contests several times a year, as the Division winners come together at the District Conferences to compete for the District crowns.
In order to provide for people who enjoy competitive speaking, and in order to showcase the best, Toastmasters clubs hold speech contests as many as five times a year. Each contest starts at the club level and works its way up through Area and Division to the District. Three contests go on to Regional and one goes on to the World Convention each August.
The contests are:
Each contest has a set of rules which mandate originality and lay down the procedures. If you go over your time limit by thirty seconds, you're eliminated. If you go UNDER your time limit by thirty seconds, you're eliminated -- except in Table Topics, where you must speak at least one minute, no less. Out in the audience, there'll be a set of judges, scattered among the audience, each with a points form that they use to rate you against what a winning effort should be and how you stack up against the others. There is a different form for each contest, since each contest involves different skills.
Any member in good standing (i.e. whose dues are paid) can compete when the contests come around -- except for current District and International officers and candidates for same -- except for the International Speech Contest. To compete in the International Speech Contest, you must have joined on or before the previous July 1, and you must have given at least six manual speeches towards your CTM. This requirement is intended to prevent professional speakers from joining Toastmasters out of the blue solely to compete toward the World Championship of Public Speaking. District and International officers are barred so the judges won't be swayed by their titles.
It varies from District to District. Some Districts have two contests in the fall, one in the winter, and two in the spring. Others have two in the fall, two in the winter, and one in the spring. All that matters as far as Toastmasters International is concerned is that all Districts must have held their Evaluation, Humorous, and International Speech contests by the time the Regional conferences roll around in June.
At the club level, sometimes all you get is a handshake and some applause. By the time you've gotten up to Division and District levels, you're getting some fairly impressive trophies.
This situation came up recently in District 37 (North Carolina). A club was told that the official District rules for the Humorous Speech Contest mandated similar eligibility requirements for the Humorous contest as for the International Speech contest, to wit, all contestants had to have been members on or before July 1 of the current year, and had to have given at least four (I.S. requires six) manual speeches. According to the District officers involved, these were the official rules for all Humorous Speech contests held in North Carolina, and even though the official rules mailed to all clubs by Toastmasters International mandated that the only eligibility requirement be membership in good standing in a club in good standing, the District 37 rules applied nonetheless.
The club President in question checked with TI WHQ and was told in no uncertain terms that any District which holds speech contests must use the official Toastmasters International rules and that Districts are not permitted to change the rules as published by Toastmasters International in any way.
This policy of course doesn't apply to contests the District has invented on its own, but for the Big 5 (International, Humorous, Table Topics, Tall Tales, and Evaluation), if your District has changed the time limits, eligibility requirements, or policy regarding originality (one District supposedly waived the originality requirement for the Tall Tales contest), they're in the wrong. If they don't believe this to be the case, ask them to contact Toastmasters International World Headquarters themselves. They'll be swiftly corrected.
Why is this important, by the way? Simple: the only official rules most clubs get for the contests are the ones TI themselves mail out. It would be tremendously discouraging to be belatedly told that the rules your club had used for the contest you won were not the official rules as practiced in YOUR District, and thus, you can't compete at the next level. In many cases, 'Official District Rules' are known only by those who have a dog-eared photocopy that's five years old (as was the case in District 37). That's wrong. If your District has changed the rules, tell them they can't, and if they say "Sure we can," let TI World HQ know.
Contests are fun, but it's important to run them the same way everywhere around the world. Fairness and a level playing field aren't just luxuries. They're required.
Districts can hold whatever contests they want in addition to the five sanctioned International contests listed above. However, these vary from District to District and it would not be possible to list all the various speech contests held throughout the world of Toastmasters here in this FAQ.
Find out when your next speech contest is, and ask about competing or being a judge. It's fun! Top