Putting Together the RDG Meeting

1. Introduction

Getting your meeting-to-meeting organization routine down is a key factor in having a RDG club. Without it, your meetings will be disorganized, which leads to stress, confusion, and conveys a lack of leadership. This leads to frustrated members that may not renew, and guests that will go away with a bad impression of your club. With it, your meetings will flow smoothly from one segment to the next, and stress about who's doing what minimized. This does take some background work, but it's well worth investing the time to get this right. Clubs that do put in the work invariably grow, clubs that don't tend to fizzle out.

This lesson will be pulling together the tasks that were seen in the "Before the Meeting" sections. It will be organized assuming that the club meets weekly; adjust the timing of elements as needed for your club. This lesson uses a day-by-day format. As always, this is a series of suggested guidelines that will need to be adapted as the situation and the way your club does things.

2. Day 0 & Before

Before Day 0:

• Far before in advance, your VPE should schedule meetings, preferably with the Toastmaster pre-set.

The VPE should be setting up meetings on Easy Speak at least two months out from the current month. At minimum, the Toastmaster should be set ahead of time; your club may pre-set other roles, such as speakers, GE, or the Table Topics Master.

Day 0 (the previous meeting):

• The VPE collects roles at the meeting for the next meeting. 
• The Secretary makes notes for an after meeting report.
• The Toastmaster for the next meeting is notified, if they are at the meeting.

Collecting sign-ups at the meeting is critical to making your meetings work - Easy Speak has a printable form that can be used. You should also put in an "Absent" role on the sheet so members can indicate if they can't make the meeting. This way, the VPE can mark them as not attending, which will prevent them from getting e-mail about roles. If the VPE cannot attend, someone else (likely the President) should prepare this sheet, pass it out at the meeting, and then send the information to the VPE. 

If your club does not pre-fill the Toastmaster, don't adjourn the meeting until you have at least that role filled - having the Toastmaster to help setup the meeting is a key factor. Otherwise, the VPE is going to have to do this work. If the next Toastmaster is in the room, letting them know they will be responsible for planning the next meeting is a great practice.

If the Secretary isn't available, someone else should take meeting notes and send them to the Secretary. The after meeting report is a great way to keep members who couldn't attend engaged.

3. Day 1

One Day After the Previous Meeting

• The VPE (or committee member) updates the roster with the actual details from the previous meeting and closes it out on Easy Speak.
• The VPE (or committee member) fills in roles that were signed up for on Easy Speak for future meetings.
• The VPE (or committee member) sends out the "Hello Toastmasters" checklist e-mail.
• The VPE contacts the Toastmaster directly (by phone, preferably) to inform them they are now responsible for managing the meeting.
• Members confirm their attendance or absence.

The VPE will need to confirm the details from the previous meeting on Easy Speak and update as necessary. This includes role changes, absences, word of the day,  award winners, and more. After that, the sign-up sheet will allow the VPE to fill in roles for the upcoming meeting and beyond - this can save the Toastmaster a lot of effort. 

The "Hello Toastmasters" mail uses a template found in the resources folder for this section; after all roles are filled out from the sign up sheet, the VPE should go to the next meeting roster, then use the E-Mail function (currently located in the top right corner). Edit the contents of the template (you can use a text editor like Notepad++), then copy and paste the text into the First E-Mail box, underneath the existing text (you may need to put in a return or two). This will provide members a checklist they can use to plan for the meeting. If you're using Free Toast Host, you can send an e-mail to your members list with the same content.

The VPE should then inform the Toastmaster for the next meeting in case they don't get the e-mail, preferably by phone. Get a positive confirmation. If they can't be the Toastmaster, then work with them to swap dates.

If using Easy Speak, a link to confirm attendance or absence is provided to those that get the mail; this takes minimal effort to use. If you have members who aren't following up here, make sure they know it's important to do so, as it shows respect for those planning out the meetings.

4. Day 2

Two Days After the Previous Meeting

• Members continue to confirm attendance or absence, as well as sign up for roles.
  
• The Toastmaster checks what roles need filling and who is available to fill them.
  
• The Toastmaster fills in their theme and meeting information on Easy Speak.
• If you cannot think of a theme, default to the Moments of Truth theme cheat sheet in the Toastmasters Resources folder.

If the sign-up sheet did its job, the Toastmaster should only have to fill out very few roles. They should be calling, texting, or e-mailing as appropriate to get sign-ups for roles that are unfilled. Easy Speak should have current information on contact numbers; if not, this will need to be addressed.

Many clubs use themed meetings to add interest and entertainment. For new Toastmasters, this might be a bit too much to manage on a first time, but experienced Toastmasters should have no problem here. If no theme is forthcoming (or if the original Toastmaster hits a last minute snag), the Moments of Truth theme should be used. This can be found in the Toastmaster resources section, and a copy should be laminated to be kept with the club supplies.

5. Day 3

Three Days After the Previous Meeting

• The Toastmaster begins developing "theme moments".
• The WAG logs into Easy Speak and fills in their Word of the Day (optional).
• Toastmaster sends out reminder e-mail if necessary; begins calling or texting members as needed to fill roles.
• Members continue to login to Easy Speak to confirm attendance or absence, as well as sign up for roles.
• Speakers connect with mentors or accountability buddies.

"Theme moments" are interstitial moments where the Toastmaster inserts their theme elements. For example, there can be a theme moment for after when roles are introduced, but before the prepared speaker section is scheduled. Theme moments should be concise and to the point; 2-3 minutes is the most any of them should last. 

Using the attendance tracker in Easy Speak is a great tool for the Toastmaster; if members have not confirmed their attendance or absence, they can use it to update their status as they call; if there's no answer, the tentative status can be used.

Speakers who are being mentored should setup meetings with their mentors as soon as possible so they have time to make revisions to their speech as needed.

6. Day 4

Four Days After Previous Meeting

• Speakers log into Easy Speak and enter speech information and introduction.
• Speakers connect with evaluators.
• Table Topics Master creates Table Topics questions/activities.
• Invocators choose or create material for their role.
• Members continue to login to Easy Speak to confirm attendance or absence, as well as sign up for roles.

Having speech introductions lets speakers lead on the right foot (more on speech introductions are in the Speaker lesson). Connecting with evaluators ahead of time lets speakers identify trouble areas for the evaluator to watch for. 

The rest of the items are preparation work.

7. Day 5

Five Days After Previous Meeting

• VPM (or committee) sends meeting reminder to guests and former members.
• Toastmaster sends out final sign-up reminder to members.

The timing of the meeting reminder may vary depending on when your club meets; two to three days out is pretty good. The trick is to balance giving people enough time to get the meeting onto their schedule with not letting people forget it's happening. 

When using e-mail to request sign-ups, it's better to not send out blasts to everyone too often. This can lead to e-mail apathy. The original "Hello Toastmasters" from the VPE and maybe one or two more e-mails to all members should be more than enough; targeted calls and texts are generally better. If e-mail broadcasts aren't getting much response, this should be brought up to the club. Confirm with your members that they're getting the e-mails first; it could be a cross-section of them are having issues with overactive spam filtering (this has been seen in the past with Gmail, for instance). If they are receiving the e-mails and are just not responding, find out why; remind them that this helps plan the meeting, and non-response makes that job harder.

8. Day 6

Six Days After Previous Meeting

• Speakers make final adjustments to their material and makes sure their introductions are on Easy Speak.
• Table Topics Master completes their list of activities.
• Toastmaster completes their theme moments.
• Toastmaster makes final meeting assignments & contacts members as necessary.

9. Day 7

Day of Current Meeting

• Toastmaster makes final agenda adjustments.
• Toastmaster prints off agendas & speaker introductions from Easy Speak.
• VPE (or committee) prints out meeting role sign-up sheet.

Depending on your Easy Speak configuration, last minute adjustments may only be possible by the VPE and the meeting manager a certain amount of hours before the meeting, to prevent last second changes that would make the agenda inaccurate.

This setup leads right into running the meeting, and then the cycle repeats.