Win Advertising for your Club!

Surveys of guests and new members to Toastmasters clubs have found that guests and new members overwhelmingly relied on two particular sources to locate a club.  The toastmasters.org Find-A-Club tool and the club website.

The primary purpose of this competition among clubs is to encourage clubs to make websites that attract new prospective members, that make it easy for prospective members to visit the club, and that encourage those prospective members to join and remain as members.

Congratulations to our Winners of the District 7 Club Website Contest:

    • Babble-On Toastmasters
      Blue Ox Toastmasters
      Civil Tongues Toastmasters
      Clackamas Stepping Stones
      Clark County Toastmasters
      Columbian Toastmasters
      Communicators Plus
      Corvallis Evening Group
      Feedbackers
      High Noon Toastmasters
      Jefferson State Toastmasters
      Lake Oswego Toastmasters
      Marylhurst Toastmasters
      Nano-Mated Speakers
      Noon Talkers
      Noontime Toastmasters Club
      North Eugene Toastmasters
      Portland Progressives Toastmasters
      Portland Toastmasters
      PR Masters
      Professionally Speaking
      Roseburg Speakers and Storytellers
      Sage Beaverton
      Salem Speak & Lead
      Sherwood Town Criers
      Silicon Forest Toastmasters
      Tell Me a Story
      Toast of Corvallis
      Toasting Excellence
      Toastmasters for Speaking Professionals
      Top DOTs
      Tualatin Valley Toastmasters
      Unified Toastmasters
      Waffle Toasters
      Wake Up, Beaverton!
      Washington Street Toastmasters
      WE Toasted Toastmasters
      West Beaverton
      Yammertime
      Yawn Patrol

      Advertising support can be in the form of direct advertising set up by District 7, or reimbursement of advertising expense for advertising that your club purchases.  In either case, the advertising must include the clubs website with the intent to drive potential members to your club meetings.  This could be a great opportunity for a club to take advantage of an advertising special.

       

      Judging criteria are based on this concept.  That the website will help serve the club by bringing potential members to the club.  Websites may also serve an important function in the operation of the club, such as communication among members, preparing agendas, etc, but that is not the primary focus of this website contest.

       

      Eligibility to Compete

      All Open Clubs in District 7 are eligible to compete. Websites listed by Marshall’s tools (http://www.marshalls.org/tmtools/Club_URLs.cgi?durl=7&Go=Club+URL+List) where the club status is either “Active” or “Low” and the membership is “Open” will be considered for judging.  Marshall’s tools draws the website listing from the toastmasters.org Find-A-Club listing.  If the club entry in toastmasters.org Find-A-Club does not correctly list the website, the website cannot be considered and judged.  Closed clubs are not included since the primary purpose of this contest is to encourage websites that reach out to the general public to grow membership. A club with the Status of “Ineligible” is not eligible for the website contest.  A club with the status of “Low” is eligible, as long as their status does not fall below that. The website must remain accessible through the Spring conference dates, or it will be disqualified. Rather than conduct a judging of all eligible websites, the Judges, PRM and members of the Trio will first conduct a nominating round.  From Marshall’s tools, a list of eligible club websites will be posted into a Google Form.  The Judges, PRM and Trio will then use that form to check off the clubs that they want to include in the judging.  The team may decide to divide up the list for this initial review, with each member of the team, for example, reviewing 20 clubs.  Any club that receives at least 1 vote for consideration, will then be included in the judging round.  If a club is not nominated in the initial nomination round, the club may subsequently request to be included.  This could particularly be the case if a club initially does not have an eligible website, but after the contest began the club developed a new or improved website, or became eligible as a club.

      Judging Criteria and Scoring

      Disqualifying Criteria:  Two items will disqualify a website from the contest.

          1. Egregiously Violates TI Branding Rules.  Any Judge, the PRM or the CGD may challenge the branding eligibility of a website.  When a challenge is raised, the Judges, PRM and CGD are to consider the challenge, offer the club an opportunity to repair the violation, and then vote on whether to remove the club from consideration.
          2. Club meeting information or contact information is incorrect.  When any judge determines that information is incorrect on a website, the club is to be informed.  The website will be ineligible for consideration until the incorrect information is corrected.
      Category Criteria Point Range
      Toastmasters International Utilizes and enhances Toastmasters branding. 1 to 5
      Educates the visitor about Toastmasters. 1 to 10
      The Club Content Provides easy instructions to visit a meeting with a point of contact. 1 to 10
      What makes this club special: Theme, focus, history.  Helps guest get to know the members. 1 to 10
      Provides on-boarding information for guests to become members. 1 to 5
      Informs the visitor about what to expect at a meeting. 1 to 10
      Presentation Has dynamic content to keep site from being stagnant. 1 to 10
      Visual Element: Graphics, photos, image (up to date). 1 to 10
      Site is up-to-date with no “Zombies”. 1 to 10
      Overall attractiveness, ease of use, of the website for a visitor. 1 to 10
      Correctness (spelling, grammar, formatting etc.) 1 to 5
      Works well on a variety of device formats (Desktop/laptop, tablet, mobile). 1 to 5

      Judging will be completed during the months of March, April and May with the announcement of winners at the Spring District Conference.