|
First, of course, you must have found a club to join. If you have
visited a club and found it to your liking, ask a member (preferably an
officer, who is more likely to be able to help you) for an application
form.
According to the bylaws all Toastmasters clubs operate under, any new
member of a club must be voted into membership by the club. In practice,
this rarely happens. Instead, members are welcomed enthusiastically into
the club as soon as a standard membership application ("Form
400") is turned in with a check for the appropriate dues.
Upon joining Toastmasters, you will find yourself paying three different
fees. One is the standard $16.00 fee that every new member must pay in
order to receive educational materials (see below). One is the standard
International dues, $3.00 per month. One is your Club dues, if any.
All Toastmasters clubs are billed in March and September for semi-annual
dues for their members who wish to remain members for the next six months.
If you join in between those periods, you submit a pro-rated share of the
dues.
Clubs usually charge dues on top of the world dues. This is so they'll
have money in the treasury for expenses. It's up to each club what they
want to charge. Some clubs waive the club dues for new members and only
assess them at the semi-annual dues payment dates.
So, to make a long story short, if you join at the following times,
you'd owe:
April or October: $16.00 + $18.00 + club dues
May or November: $16.00 + $15.00 + club dues
June or December $16.00 + $12.00 + club dues
July or January $16.00 + $9.00 + club dues
August or February $16.00 + $6.00 + club dues
September or March $16.00 + $3.00 + club dues
Then, once you're signed up, dues of $18.00 + club dues are
assessed every six months, in September and March.
Yes. This is called "dual membership" even if you belong to
more than two clubs. When you join the second club, of course, you don't
need to pay the New Member fee because you don't need a second set of
starter materials (see below). Members are also welcome to visit other
clubs when they can.
Yes. If you belong to more than one club, you must nonetheless pay full
dues for each club.
In Canada,
they are -- IF your job is of a sort that requires or necessitates good
communications skills. In other words, it must be an educational expense to
be tax deductible. Your Area Governors will be in a position to obtain
complete tax deduction explanations if you request them to do so.
Your US$18.00 semi-annual dues paid to World Headquarters goes partly
for a subscription to the Toastmaster magazine (which, to be
honest, is an excellent magazine), partly to support development of new
educational programs (they've got some *nice* new programs coming out these
days), partly to support operations at World Headquarters (i.e. the staff
who process membership applications, CTM applications, new club
applications, etc. etc. ad nauseam), and partly to support your local
District organization.
Furthermore, when you finish your CTM, you get three of the Advanced
project manuals for no extra charge to work toward your ATM with.
Dues went up for the first time in over ten years a few years ago and as
a result, dues should not rise for a long time (it was like pulling teeth
to get the most recent dues raise through, and some members remain
unconvinced that it was necessary). This raise had a lot to do with
printing costs and so forth quintupling over the previous decade.
Your club dues generally go to pay for the club's supplies, such as
ballots, awards, ribbons, and educational materials. In some cases, such as
when your club has a meal at each meeting, your dues may go to pay for
that.
Your New Member fee gets you the following:
- the Communication
and Leadership project manual
- the "Roberts
Rules of Order" manual
The latter is an instructional manual rather than a project manual. Only
the first is a workbook.
Simply wait for March or September to arrive and don't pay your dues
again.
It'd probably be a good idea to let your Vice President Education know
to stop scheduling you for speeches, though.
Since most people are genuinely terrified of public speaking,
Toastmasters has its hands full recruiting members. There's virtually no
chance that you won't be enthusiastically welcomed into any club you join
and immediately be considered one of the gang.
Occasionally, however, people get into bad situations, but the same is
true of ANY organization. There are jerks everywhere. Toastmasters
probably has its share. For this reason, the author of this FAQ considers
it a good idea to visit ALL Toastmasters clubs in your area before deciding
which one you want to join.
If a club that you visit turns out to be full of jerks, please don't
assume that this is true of the entire organization. Once in a
while, people come to forget that they're part of a larger organization and
act as though the message and mission of Toastmasters doesn't concern them.
Please nod, leave, and visit some other club. This is definitely the
exception, but we cannot honestly say that it never happens.
No. You will not be asked to speak unless you're ready to. If you feel
more comfortable waiting a few months, that's fine. Most clubs attempt to
arrange the meeting schedules in such a way that most members are involved
in some capacity at each meeting, so you'll need to let them know what your
wishes are.
|
