I have following updates to share with you:
1) Club fees
2) DCP status
3) Membership renewal update
4) 4 speech meetings and Speech-a-thons
5) Club Officer elections - Need your participation
Taking cue from our Vice President of Education, Sharad Nair, I am using my new blog http://mytmjournal.blogspot.com/ to communicate this update. I am hoping to achieve two things from this new approach - (1) Responses/Replies can be on the blog instead of copying all members - cut down on number of emails and (2) Blog can be a good placeholder to save important communications. Please let me know your thoughts by posting comments at the bottom of this link.
Fees: (modest increase)
Our fee structure consists of two components - Toastmasters International (TI) fees and Star Search Club's fees. When a new member joins the club, we have a one time fees of $4. There is no one time TI fees other than new member kit. On an on-going basis, TI charges $4.5 per month for all members and club charges $1.5 per month. So we all pay a total of $6/- per month to keep membership. Club fees have been unchanged for years now but we are experiencing more expenses when we buy stationary like ribbons and manuals or conduct a pizza party for members. To accommodate these expenses, officers have voted a modest increase of $2 for new member one time club fees (from $4 to $6) and 50 cents per month increase in on-going monthly club fees (from $1.5 to $2). The change will be effective from April 8, 2009 for new members. For all current members the increase will only impact starting from October 2009.
DCP goals: (7/10)
Club is doing extremely well in DCP goals (see link for more details on what DCP is). We have achieved 7 of the 10 goals and in the next 3 months we hope to complete all 10 goals.
Membership renewal update: (33+)
Membership renewal update: (33+)
We are currently in the process of renewing membership for all current members for the period of April'09-September'09. Our Treasurer Manoj Bansal has reported that we will have around 33 members starting from April. Some members are not renewing due to changes in their life situation. But we still have around 10 members who have not renewed and not expressed whether they would like to continue. If you still have to renew, please use our online payment option to renew and let Manoj know so that we can extend in time. I would like to thank all the members who renewed in time. This really helps our volunteer officers to avoid too much paperwork.
Club meetings: (what is speech-a-thon?)
As you may have noticed, there is a great interest among members to complete their speech goals. In addition we have good number of guests joining meeting these days. This is posing some challenge in terms of accommodating more speeches within 2 hours. We explored increasing to 5-speech meetings but found it not viable since it greatly impacts Table Topics time. So for now we will continue 4-speech meetings but planning to arrange a 'Speech-a-thon' once a month. These special meetings accommodate around 5 speeches on a day other than regular Wednesday. Hopefully this will give ample opportunity for everyone to achieve their goals.
Club Officer Elections: *** NEED YOUR PARTICIPATION ***
Toastmasters year start from July and ends in June of next year. So our current term ends in June'09. Every year we elect new officers. This is a great opportunity for members to try leadership roles. If you are already a leader in your current profession, this opportunity offers leadership role in a 'non-profit' setting. I urge members to make full use of what TM offers by standing for election and serving as a voluntary officer. We are planning to conduct election on May 6, 2009. I want to thank our Past President, Albert Mo, for accepting to be the Chair of the Election Committee. You will see more details from Albert soon. Please feel free to contact Albert or any of the officers on any question related to elections.
Sincerely,
Shashi.
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