Editor’s Note
Indigenous people throughout the world view the butterfly as a symbol of renewal, rebirth and regeneration. In a fascinating process, the caterpillar creates a pupa where it undergoes a profound metamorphosis to emerge as a butterfly. It is appealing that the butterfly preserves its heart and spirit, while the old body passes away to be replaced by a newer, much more capable one. The Menomonee masters Falls Toastmasters Club underwent a profound metamorphosis too. Guided by Jennifer Smith and a capable team of club officers, they changed everything that could be changed: its name, meeting time, and a majority of its members. Incredibly, the club also changed its meeting location three times. When the club emerged from their metamorphosis, it had earned the Select Distinguished Club Award and doubled its membership. Judging from the contents of their story, the heart and spirit of the club are stronger than ever. Readers may discover some tips for finding new meeting locations and will benefit from the educational vignette that describes how Toastmaster clubs can promote themselves on Google Places.
Farewell to the Former Club
The Wells Fargo Stagecoach Toastmasters Club was chartered as a corporate club for Wells Fargo in 2007. They met on site at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. After one year, workplace politics were having a negative impact on the club. Management was not supporting this club as many members worked in the call center. Lunch was the meeting time that worked for three shifts of workers, but was not a good time to allow so many off the phones to attend a meeting. Management would not approve an hour off the phones when regular lunch periods were 30 minutes. Due to this conflict, management did not join the club. Wells Fargo originally hoped that more management would join. Travis Dodge was a club sponsor that attended the lunch meetings on a monthly basis. He knew that the club was in trouble. They started to cancel meetings as many people were unable to attend. Early on, one solution was to open the club up to the community. Travis offered to help the club understand this option and was present when the club voted To change their status to a community club. It was after that when Travis’s involvement dropped off. Without the vote, we could not do anything to help this club. So, I appreciate his help in this process. After a few months without any new information about a new location or time, I got involved. The first step was an organizational meeting consisting of current members and people that were interested in joining a community club.
Planning for the Future Club
The organizational meeting for rebuilding this club felt very similar to an organizational meeting for chartering a new club. Nine new members joined the two remaining members from the Wells Fargo Club to make a well-attended meeting. An experienced Toastmaster gave “Reaching a Consensus”, from the Facilitating Discussions Advanced Communicator Manual to lead our productive discussion. We voted on new officers, new dues, and a new meeting time. We reaffirmed our commitment to Toastmasters by talking about the mission and purpose of the club. We addressed our first major challenge – finding a new meeting location. Wells Fargo would not allow a community club to meet at its business location. After some discussion, a new member suggested the Menomonee Falls Chamber of Commerce conference room. It was small, lacked adequate parking, but we took it. We ended our organizational meeting by planning the next meeting. Of course, we planned to advertise our new club and maintain the highest standards of meeting quality while the newly organized club grew.
Becoming the New Club
With our core of 11 members, we began meeting at the Chamber of Commerce. We updated the old website with our new name, the Menomonee Falls Toastmasters. We also changed the information on Toastmasters.org to report the details of our newly reorganized club. Our meetings were one hour, with an after-meeting meeting of 30 minutes. This extra time enabled us to answer questions and stay abreast of updates as the club reformed.
After a few meetings, we all agreed that this location was not working. We had to find a location where the club could thrive. To find a new location, we recruited a team to make calls. We called many places such as the library and various community rooms. All those options were either booked or only let us meet once per month. One of the members mentioned a local sandwich shop where he ate his lunch. He saw that they had a private room. One of our team members called the owner of the sandwich shop, made the request, and the shop owner agreed to let us reserve the room for our meetings.
We were so excited to meet at this sandwich shop because it was in a convenient location and had ample parking. We started thinking about advertising this new location more. We planned an open house and ran ads in the local online newspaper. You can post your own story, but sometimes it will end up in the printed edition. We also added a Google map to the website to make it easier to find us. Then, our PR person found out how to make sure that we would come up in a Google search whenever anyone would search Menomonee Falls Toastmasters. Later, we had a Google places site too. All these things helped spread the word and soon more guests joined our meetings. We had a successful open house and added four new members. This energized everyone.
We met at the sandwich shop for 6 months. We liked the location as it was close to the highway. The people there were really nice and supportive of the club. Unfortunately, the sandwich shop decided to change hours, to only be open during lunch. This was a significant challenge because we couldn’t meet at this new time, so we needed to find a new location in less than a week. In our past search, we came to understand the word ‘no’. We were not looking forward to another search, especially with a seven-day deadline. One day my husband and I drove the entire length of the main business street, Appleton Avenue. We looked at coffee houses and restaurants. Many did not have private rooms. We finally saw UNO Pizza that had an ample private room. It was also open on Monday nights. This was great because we did not want to change the night or time of our meetings.
Our new location had great promise because it was in the most popular part of town. We promoted our club again with a lot of new online articles, changed our Google places and updated our website. Then, we really started to get more members. Everyone loves the location and we are very easy to find on the Internet. The culmination of our efforts, especially the patience to endure three meeting location changes, we were very excited to earn the Select Distinguished Club Award. I cannot say one person made a difference, many people in the club contributed to our success.
Lessons Learned
- Corporate clubs should be created with goals of the company in mind. I think the Wells Fargo Stagecoach Toastmasters Club would have been more successful if it was a management club. It is so important to have management support to keep a club healthy. I urge those in District leadership to think about this as you charter new corporate clubs.
- This club underwent a dramatic transition. It changed the name, meeting time, became a community club and changed its location three times. I highly recommend that a coach (or helper) involve themselves from the very beginning. The helper may be a coach, a helper or a team. Situations like this demand a plan. In this case, the original members did not organize quickly. We lost a lot of time, and many members lost interest.
- Every club should think about advertising. A website is a staple, but having support like the ability to Google a club is a good thing to have. We have even added a video to our website that makes us even easier to find online. 4. Plan on having great meetings. We have every meeting has a theme. We weave the theme into meeting. We also have open houses. Even if you have a small amount of people, make the club meeting exciting. I suggest theme nights. Even if people take multiple roles, ask people to fill-in to complete the agenda. We all worked to make our club meetings fun.
Menomonee Falls Toastmasters Club #1188276 District 35 By Jennifer Smith
A Letter of Praise
Jennifer, on behalf of the Menomonee Falls Club, I want to thank you for being our club coach. The club basically became defunct when it lost the support of Wells Fargo and was headed for oblivion, but though your knowledge and efforts you rescued it by turning it into a community club. I was impressed by the way you arranged the charter transfer, set up the organizational meeting, invited a critical core of toasters to form the initial membership and officer groups, and arranged for Toastmasters International vouchers to be transferred to us so we’d have the initial operating funds to purchase supplies. Thanks also to you and Brendon for finding the new club meeting site when our old site closed abruptly on us with no warning and especially to Brendon for creating our club web site, complete with photos and video links which are drawing visitors to our club. In fact, since the addition of the photos and videos to our web site and the move to the new location, our membership has doubled in six months to 24 people. All of the above, plus the education awards you and Brendon attributed to our club, enabled us to achieve Select Distinguished status in our first full year of operation. Thanks again for everything you’ve done and with your continued leadership we look forward to a thriving club and achieving at least Select Distinguished status again this year. By Mike Dill, VP Education