How to VPM the RDG Way

1. What is the VPM?

The Vice President of Membership's main goal is to maintain a minimum of 20 members in the club (with a goal of 30-35 members total). As a VPM, you should be working with your club's VP PR to get guests in the door, then helping them become members. After they become members, you want to make sure they become repeat members. This requires some sales and persuasion skills, especially being able to communicate the benefits of Toastmasters, as well as good people skills. 

Like the VP PR, they are directly responsible for the membership growth goals of the club. This requires consistent, strategic effort. This lesson will teach you some of the skills you need; ultimately it dovetails with the RDG TM Marketing course.

2. VPM Roles & Responsibilities In-Depth

While the ultimate goal of the VPM is to maintain charter strength, there are several auxiliary responsibilities that help move toward (and hopefully beyond) that target.

• Ensures the club maintains charter strength of 20 members or more.
  

Your primary end goal. TI has done research that shows up to 40% of your members may go away over the course of the year for whatever reason, so this is why there's two goals of "gain four members" and "gain four more members" in the DCP. Ultimately, you want to try to get your club to the 30-35 range.

• Builds club membership by conducting club-wide membership building campaigns.
  

You should plan to have at least one membership contest. You can time these to go with the three drives that happen through the year. Your district may offer some promotions as well.

• Prepares and distributes a New Guest Packet to each new guest in attendance at club meetings. 
  

New guest packets help turn guests into repeat guests, and repeat guests into members. You'll find out how to make them later in this lesson. You should stock around 40-50 for a year, keeping 10 on hand at meetings. You should also have a digital version available on your marketing site.

• Follows up with each guest through written and verbal communication.
  
• Answers any questions from guests and INVITES THEM TO JOIN! 

Follow-up is a huge part of (club) success, and it's no different here. You can collect all the information you like, but if you don't act on it, it's useless. Follow up within 36 hours (if not less) of the meeting.

• Is a point of contact for potential guests.

This can be through either Meetup or your marketing (Free Toast Host) site. You'll want to have a phone number and e-mail (or contact form) that can be used to get in touch with you. Keep common information like "how much does it cost" and "what do you do?" handy. This role may also be handled by the VP PR for guests that haven't stepped in the door yet.

• Conducts new member installation.
  

Some clubs do this; it's a good initiation custom to present a member who's completed their Icebreaker a membership pin. Just be sure that member has been voted in prior to this.

• Chairs a Membership Committee for membership recruitment, membership retention, and member follow-up. 
  

Many VPMs don't realize they're supposed to have a committee; you'll learn how to recruit and work with one in this lesson. Your committee should be devoted to creating "4I" members: Informed, Involved, Included/Invited, and Inspired.

• Conducts member surveys to ensure current and future member satisfaction.
  

This should be done once, if not twice a year, and when a new member comes on board.

• Attends and votes at Area Council meetings. 

In my experience, these aren't held as regularly as they should be. If you don't get a notice about them, contact your area director.

• Responsible for guests once they come to the club.
  

The VP PR's efforts should be raising awareness of the club to attract new guests; the VPM should take over once they come in the door. 

• Manage guest, former member, and member lists on marketing site.

I recommend you use Free Toast Host for managing the first two lists, as you can mail all of them by using the e-mail client of your choice. Make sure you consolidate this information there. You can still use Easy Speak if you prefer that. This also includes "promoting" guests to members, and members to ex-members as needed.

• Be the “ombudsman” for the members.
  

Members should know that if they have a concern, you are the point of contact. You don't have to know everything, but you do need to be able to find answers and report back to them. You should also be making sure new members are receiving new member orientation within their first thirty days; otherwise there's a huge risk of them leaving.

• Send out meeting reminder mailings three days before meetings to guest and ex-member lists.

Three days is negotiable; just make sure people have time to prepare themselves for the meeting, but not so much time they forget about it. You may want to try calendar invites. Setting the reminder time is key. Try to automate this if you can.

• Be a backup Meetup organizer.
  

If your club uses Meetup (strongly recommended) and your VP PR can't make changes (e.g. a meeting cancellation), you need to be able to do so.

3. What's in it for You?

VPMs can practice and improve many leadership and communication skills in their job. Here's just some:

• Committee leadership skills: Putting together and running a committee will build this.
• Persuasion and influence skills: In talking to potential members, you'll want to develop your repertoire of "sales" skills by being able to concisely and powerfully explain the benefits of your club.
• Empathy: You have to care about your members to succeed.
• Follow up and follow through: You definitely need to develop these skills for this role to make get guests to return and join.

4. Your Two Week Startup Plan

As with the other officers, make sure you consult the All Officers section for general tasks.

1. If you have 20 or less new guest packets, organize a packet packing event to make more. You should aim to have around 40-50 in stock to get through the year. See the New Guest Packet page for what to include.
2. If your club doesn't have a guestbook, put one together and start using it to collect guest contact information. If the club already has one, make sure the entries in it have been making it into your mailing list.
3. Learn the process your club uses to mail guests and former members. This may be through Free Toast Host or Easy Speak; if the guest list is scattered over different sites and lists, consolidate them into one guest list. It's preferred to use FTH's membership management for maintaining and mailing the guest list. The RDG TM Marketing course will elaborate more on why.
4. If your club doesn't have a former members list, start building it. Contact the officer that has the archive of member applications to start (likely your secretary or treasurer); add those to your former members list. If your former members list needs to be consolidated, do so (preferably within FTH).
5. Begin having members update their profiles on Toastmasters International and your club sites if it's been a year.
6. Begin preparing the membership survey. You can conduct it online or paper.

5. Suggestions

• Is your club feeling run down? You need to shake things up. Hold a not-Toastmasters event outside of the regular meeting once a month (please note: You can't use club funds for this). Make sure that newer members have something special for them; it will help them feel included when they may be shy. These events can be any number of things:
  
• Sporting event
• Board games
• Movie meet
• Trivia night
• Bowling
• Mini-Golf
• Night out to eat
• Invite other clubs in your area to participate in the above.
• Follow up and follow through are some of your best tools in the VPM role. Always be sure to reach out to your guest and ex-member list 3-4 days before the meeting. 
• When using e-mail, be careful about including too many links in a message. This can get it quickly flagged as spam and not seen. Your marketing site should be the bare minimum; from there potential members can join your Meetup group or take whatever steps you want them to.

5.1. Membership Committee

The VPM, like the VP PR and VPE, should have their own committee. This is not only a good way to distribute the workload, but also to get the rest of the club involved and invested in maintaining the club.

Forming the Committee

Preferably in the month after elections, committees for next year should be formed. The current or incoming president can distribute the committee sign up form to members, and make it an executive committee item to assign members to committees. Other officers should not be on the committee, with the exception of the president.

What Will the Committee Do?

You'll want to have a list of tasks that can be assigned to committee members, which come from your roles & responsibilities. Once you have your members list and task list, you can start penciling in some candidates, then schedule your first meeting to talk about your plans for the year, and what you want people to focus on.

As the year goes on, you're going to find that there are tasks that you and your committee members are strong at, and others you're weak at. There are two approaches to this:

1. Reorganize members to play to their strengths (recommended).
2. Have members that want to stay with roles they are initially weak at to improve.

It's recommended to go with the former approach, as it will result in less frustration and more engagement. Just make sure you're covered where you need to be. 

Committee Meetings

You should meet with your committee at least once a month to check in with their status. The executive committee meeting can be a model for this. Don't let meetings last longer than an hour; preferably try to be done in 30 minutes. You can have these meetings in-person, or with a service like Google Hangouts. 

As with executive committee meetings, make sure someone takes meeting minutes and records action item responsibility and deadlines, then forwards those to the committee.

5.2. New Guest Packets

A great tool for generating repeat guests and turning guests into members is the new guest packet. This is simply a folder or envelope with some useful materials for a guest to take with them. Make sure they complete the mini-survey and give it back to you; this is a good way to obtain contact information.

For the purpose of this lesson, I'll assume you're using two pocket folders. You can either use official TI folders or plain ones. Figures listed are for 50 packets. You can usually get extra Toastmaster magazines by asking members of your club, but if you're short on this supply, you can substitute a printed article.

PRINTING

1. Print 50 Membership Applications - B&W, double-sided (100 sheets)
   
2. Print 25 Mini-Surveys (will produce 50) - B&W, single-sided (25 sheets)
   
3. Print 15 "Find Your Voice" brochures - color, double-sided (check flip page up/long edge setting) (15 sheets)
   
4. Print 15 "Confidence" brochures - color, double-sided (check flip page up/long edge setting) (15 sheets)
   
5. Print 20 "All About Toastmasters" brochures - color, double-sided (check flip page up/long edge setting) (20 sheets)
   
6. Print 50 Ice Breakers - B&W, double-sided (100 sheets) - NOTE: This should be replaced with the Pathways variant, although the old manual style is still useful.
   
7. Print 50 "Letters from the Club" - B&W, single-sided (50 sheets)
   
8. Print 50 Features, Benefits, & Value charts - B&W, single-sided (50 sheets)

(Total 325 sheets) 

STAPLING

1. Staple together membership applications
   
2. Staple together Ice Breakers 
   

FOLDING

1. Fold brochures
   

CUTTING

1. Cut Mini-Survey sheets in half (will produce 50 total surveys)
   

BINDING (folders)

(Suggested layout, assume later items stack on top of previous items)

1. Insert Toastmaster magazine into right pocket
   
2. Insert Membership Application into right pocket 
   
3. Insert Mini-Survey into right pocket
   
4. Insert Ice Breaker into left pocket
   
5. Insert letter from the club into left pocket 
   
6. Insert brochure (just one of the three) into left pocket
   

BINDING (envelopes)

(Suggested order, from top to bottom)

1. Mini-Survey
   
2. Brochure (just one) 
   
3. Letter from the club
   
4. Ice Breaker
   
5. Membership Application
   
6. Toastmaster magazine