Getting Started

1. Six Members

In April of 2009, renewals for one of my clubs had just been turned in. Checking online, the officers (including myself) realized that we only had a grand total of...six members. We immediately knew we were in do or die mode, and if we didn't turn things around, our club of fifteen plus years was going to fold. 

We decided it was worth rescuing the club from that fate. We didn't want to be small anymore. We were tired of having to double or triple up on roles. We were tired of having the same people be officers over and over. We hated having the same people take the same roles over and over. To get out from that stress, we set what James Collins and Jerry Porras called in their book Good to Great a BHAG, or a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal": 20 members by the end of June. 

Using just some of the methods you'll learn in this course and in the RDG Marketing course, we did it! ...just a week late. At our first meeting in July, we registered member #20, effectively raising membership 333% in just three months. As people were trained, we started enjoying all the benefits a strong club enjoys: diverse speeches, more people to cover the roles, new blood for officer ranks, and much less multi-tasking. You can do it to, and with what I've learned over the years, do it even better.

2. What Do You Mean, RDG?

I've seen many "recovery efforts" for various clubs in my time in Toastmasters, and there's a few symptoms of a "normal" club rescue versus a RDG (or Really Dang Good) club rescue. Having experienced quite a few of these efforts, I can tell you what separates the mediocre from the marvelous. Here's some typical "symptoms" to watch for:

"Normal" (read: mediocre) Club Rescue

• Low awareness of real issues causing guests to not return, and members to leave
• Middling "planning" with lots of nice ideas and "should dos", but little or no follow up
• Low initiative to seek out and correct issues 
• No effort by leadership to improve themselves
• Confuses having tools or setting up technology with affecting real change
• Little engagement of the club

RDG Club Rescue

• Starts with BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) like "Achieve President's Distinguished for 3+ Years" and "reach 30-35 active members"
• Effectively and consistently engages the officers and the members to play roles in the recovery
• Proactively seeks out issues, challenges, and problems, then makes action plans with deadlines and assigned members to take decisive action on them
• Clearly and consistently explains why it's worth working toward these goals, creating mental images that both push toward goals and pull away from failure
• Leaders continuously pushing their own development
• Effectively uses tools and technology to save on unnecessary work, but knows they are just pieces towards a larger strategic vision
  

If pressed to identify what separates a "normal" from a RDG rescue operation in a tl;dr (too long, didn't read) format, it would be "Identifies and attacks weaknesses in the club with intelligent, consistent, and effective action". Many officers meetings list a lot of things to do (usually as "this would be nice for the club"), but not a lot put deadlines on them, or decide who will do them. RDG Rescues demand accountability and consistent motion toward goals.

3. What Will You Get from This Course?

By completing this course, you're going to get tools to not just improve one or two areas of your club, but at higher levels of application, you'll be able to grow a club culture that continuously seeks out gaps and closes them. Even if you struggle to reach that status, many steps in this program are concrete and simple to implement, so you'll still get improvements on your road to recovery. 

This course is not going to cover marketing; think of this as mending what you have before you make a major marketing push. This will ensure that once you begin getting more guests as a result of your marketing efforts, you can have a dramatically improved chance of getting them to join and remain members, as well as have your existing members continue to renew. Think of this course as being internal foundation work before you begin addressing the outside world, though as a result of this course, you may pick up a member or two. 

Some of the material here will overlap with other RDG courses; you're encouraged to go through those in order to make this course even more effective. 

When you remove pain points in your club, you remove barriers to growing and maintaining your membership. When those barriers are removed, you begin to have more people in the club. With more people in the club, you can have more diverse, interesting, and less stressful meetings. No more doubling or tripling up on roles. No having the same officers year after year. Less burnout, stress, and resentment. More fun, more progress, more learning. Sure, it takes effort, planning, and time. This is something you and your club will have to decide to commit to, and continually work at.

If it's worth it to you, keep reading.