TOPIC:

Our club has a difficult time in getting people to sign up for roles. I understand that some clubs schedule their members directly for roles instead and I was wondering if any one out there has tried this and how does it work. Any comments ? Thanks.

Ralston Maloney
Club President
#02976.

I started doing that when I was VPE for my club. (although it has since fallen by the wayside)

Some things to keep in mind:

1. You will need to get buy-in from your club members. Just because you want to do this, does not mean they will go along with it.

2. You will need to have a contingency plan if someone is not available when you schedule them. In my case, I told people that I wanted them to swap dates with another member that was scheduled for the same role. However, it was hard to get members to take responsibility for doing the swap themselves--I usually ended up doing the swap.

3. I recommend publishing the schedule as far out as you can to help people plan ahead. In my case, I created a Google docs spreadsheet for the "role rotation" (the schedule) and put a link to it in the website.

4. Start out simple... focus on the key roles first to enable it to be manageable and enable members to get used to being scheduled. In my case, I only scheduled the Toastmaster, Table Topics Master, and General Evaluator roles, as I considered those to be the key meeting "leadership roles". Once I had those roles set-up, I could ask those people to help get the other roles filled.

5. Some members may feel entitled to only do speeches and none of the meeting functionary roles. You need to be prepared to promote the educational benefits of the various meeting roles.

Steve

Thank you very much for these comments- particularly comment 1 and 4. We will proceed cautiously.

Ralston