Many club members underestimate the importance of retaining current members. There are several reasons why focusing on retaining members is critical to your club’s success. Here are a few.

Tenured members:

• Serve as important role models for newer members.
• Provide incentive to guests that the club has quality and experienced members that they’ll be able to learn from.
• Prove that Toastmasters is not an overnight process but an ongoing process for continual self-improvement.

Here are several tips for how to retain your members past the first year:

• Recruit them to be mentors for new members.
• Publicly award members for their educational achievements.
• Encourage their participation as a competitor in Toastmasters contests.
• Encourage full-length advanced manual speeches. If advanced members need to perform longer speeches to continually improve their skills, you must encourage them to do so. Maybe have an advanced manual speech day every couple of months where multiple longer speeches are expected. Be creative. The important thing is to accommodate!
• Encourage leadership outside the club. Suggest that your more experienced members serve the district by becoming an Area or other district officer. Many seasoned Toastmasters continue as members just to help others. Serving in a district capacity does just that on an even higher level.

Want more? Check out the other posts for more ideas on retaining members!