Mentor a Club
Help a new club begin its journey.
In many ways, mentoring a new Toastmasters club is very similar to mentoring a single person. As a Club Mentor, you’ll have the opportunity to share your expertise and apply leadership skills across a variety of new situations.
Club Mentors serve as advisors and tutors for new clubs and can have a huge impact on the degree to which a new club succeeds. If you want to improve your leadership skills by helping with the progress of a new club, consider becoming a Club Mentor today.
Learn More about Mentoring a New Club
Role of a New Club Mentor
As a new club mentor, you will share your expertise on the best practices of running a club with a newly formed club. Your responsibility is not to run the club but to help it understand its options and guide it toward excellence.
Ready to Be a Club Mentor?
Click on the button below to get started.
Benefits of Being a Club Mentor
- Improve communication and personal skills
- Develop leadership and management qualities
- Reinforce your own Toastmasters knowledge
- Increase your confidence and motivation
- Engagement in a volunteering opportunity (which is highly valued by employers)
- Enhance your resume
- Increase your circle of friends
- Gain recognition for your skills and experience
- Benefit from a sense of fulfillment and personal growth
- Earn credit toward a leadership project
Official Duties of a Club Mentor
Your official term as a Club Mentor begins when the new club charters and lasts for 6-12 months. While becoming a member of the new club is not required for mentors, it is quite common for mentors to join — and it can be very helpful. Here is a short overview of a Club Mentor’s duties. (Click on each item for further details.)
Build rapport with the club.
Share your experience, lend your support, and attend every meeting.
Ensure the club is strong and functional.
Lead members to helpful resources. Share lessons from your own experiences.
Familiarize the club with the TI website (toastmasters.org).
Encourage club members to use it as a resource for updates on the club’s progress in the DCP, and downloadable forms and documents as well as for performing administrative tasks like submitting new member applications, dues renewals and educational award applications.
Conduct the Successful Club Series program.
Help members can develop the skills they joined the club to learn. Help the new club grasp how the communication and leadership tracks facilitate their skill development.
Make certain that club officers attend district-sponsored training.
Also meet with each officer individually, educate each about what standards he or she must meet and how to meet them. Provide information about the tools each officer needs to perform his or her duties. Start by ensuring each officer has (and reads!) the appropriate officer manual.
Conduct the Successful Club Series program – How to Be a Distinguished Club.
Explain how the DCP is a tool the club can use to keep itself on track and focused on providing members with the service and environment they need to achieve their goals.
Help club members build positive habits.
Emphasize the need for members to regularly come prepared to meetings, to give manual speeches, to present excellent evaluations and to project a positive, enthusiastic attitude.
Create a quality club.
A club’s standards for service must reflect the quality and reliability of the Toastmasters program. The best way to teach clubs how to do this is to encourage them to conduct the module Moments of Truth from The Successful Club Series. Make sure the new club knows and applies these quality standards to current and new members. Remind them the same care and attention afforded to guests and potential members also should be given to current members.
Foster a culture of membership-building within the club.
Every club, even new clubs, should continually strive to bring in new members. Membership-building activities give clubs a stronger base of leaders and provide a continuous flow of original personalities and ideas that help keep club meetings fresh and exciting.
Share the club’s progress.
Provide an update about the club’s progress with district leadership by submitting the Club Mentor Visit Report after every visit to the club.
Questions?
Contact the Club Mentor Chair at newclubmentoring@d101tm.org.
Existing Club Mentors
Don’t forget to fill out your Club Mentor Visit Report after each visit to the club you’re mentoring. Click on the button below to go to the online form for submitting your report: