Top 11 Membership Recruitment Ideas

Compliments of Lark Doley, DTM

1. Have you contacted members who did not renew to invite them back to your club?  Have you looked at old club rosters from last year or from previous years?  Why not contact your former members and invite them to come back and join your club?  These individuals already know the value of Toastmasters.  They are probably hoping you will call to invite them back.  Give it a try!
    
2. Give a discount in September, March, and June off your local club dues to encourage new members to join in those months.  Give your VP Membership and VP Public Relations time on your club's weekly agenda to encourage membership recruitment.  Go to a local restaurant and ask them to donate  gift certificate for a free dinner for two for your Membership Drive.  Then give this prize to the member who recruits the most new members in these months.
    
3. Do you wear your Toastmaster lapel pin wherever you go?  To the grocery store, to work, out shopping?  This is the best personal advertisement for your club!
    
4. Has your Club's Vice President Public Relations created business cards for your club members with the date, time, and place your club meets?  Do you carry them with you and give them to your co-workers, your friends, to anyone who expresses an interest in Toastmasters?
    
5. Has your Club's Vice President Public Relations created promotional flyers for your club?  Have you taken these fliers to local businesses, libraries, public places close to where your club meets?  Have you posted these fliers EVERYWHERE?
    
6. Has your Club placed ads in local papers?  Have you listed your club's meeting place and time in the local paper's Calendar of Events?
    
7. Ask the place where your club meets if you can hang up a plaque that states "Toastmasters meets here every ____ at ___."  Then order the plaque from the TI Supply Catalog.
    
8. Have you taken old Toastmaster magazines to local libraries, dentists' and doctors' offices, and placed them in employee break rooms at your office?  Staple a page of tear-off business cards in the magazines with the date, time, and place of your club meetings.
    
9. Conduct Membership Drive Mall Days or Shopping Strip Days. Contact the local Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and ask if you can set up a booth with Toastmaster literature and your club's literature.  Ask if you can conduct a demonstration meeting.  If you contact the local mall to do this, you may need a Certificate of Liability Insurance issued to the mall.  TI will gladly do this to help you recruit new members.  Simply email TI at finance3@toastmasters.org all the information about the mall and what name needs to be on the Certificate of Insurance.  Then set up your booth and recruit new members!
    
10. Conduct a Toastmaster Club Open House.  Advertise it in the local papers.  Put up fliers.  Tell each member of your club to bring a guest to this open house.
     
11. Order Membership Recruitment brochures and campaign ideas from the TI Supply Catalog.  Every six months, your club can receive 10 free brochures from TI.  Use these to give to guests or to hand out to prospective members.