Let’s Get Even More Creative With Specialty Clubs

by Jeff Young, Club Growth Director

Greetings, District 57!

If you missed January’s DECM, you missed the announcement of the rollout for the Specialty Club Survey, which begins this week.

The plan, essentially, is to crowdsource ideas from all of you to see what sorts of specialty clubs might have a home in D57.  Since Sree, Leesa, Eric, and the Cre-Art  (short for Creatives and Artists Club) gang got the ball rolling with our very first club of the new year, let’s see if we can do more of the same – only different.

Vote for your favorite or add a new one using this finely crafted link!

This is Week 1, so all the ideas on the list are fresh ones:

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Bourbon and Cigars
  • Board Gamers
  • Educator Toastmasters
  • Ink and Papyrus
  • Muscle Mass-ters
  • Time Travelers (Genealogy)
  • Travelmasters
  • Zoomies!

Each week, we’ll be introducing new ideas and keeping the ones that get the most votes that week into the next week.

  • If an idea makes it to at least 8 votes, our Community Club Chair (Arti Kapoor) and I will be in touch to see if we can launch it as a club.
  • If a club idea gets zero votes, it’ll be rotated out for an idea that hasn’t been on the list yet.
  • If you have an idea that hasn’t been suggested …. write it in the space marked ‘Other’.  Caveat: I’m limiting the list to 9 ideas + Other per week to avoid decision paralysis, so if your idea doesn’t appear that week, it’s in the queue.

Bring Your Friends and Make New Ones

This initiative is designed to be location-agnostic to start; if you know people who aren’t Toastmasters (or even ones who aren’t in D57) who might be interested in joining one of these clubs, send them the link to the survey.

If you have a bunch of members in your club who all want to do one of these ideas, we are putting every idea up for adoption by a club — you can host a Kickoff meeting, or if you have one of the smaller clubs, convert your club into the Specialty Club.  (But only if you’re the only club that wants to do it, and the whole club agrees to do so.)

Check out my article in February’s Dispatch for more details, or write to me at jeffrey@d57.org.