D46 Honorable Mention Website 2007-2008
Chartered
Apr 16, 2009
Distinguished Club
2008-2009
President's Distinguished
Club
2009-2010
- GENERAL
- MEETINGS
- MEMBERSHIP
- THE CC - COMPETENT COMMUNICATOR
- BEYOND THE CC
- THE TM ORGANIZATION
- CONTESTS
What is an Area?
Chapters are grouped into Areas of three to eight Chapters. Each Area has its own Area Governor, a member of one of the chapters appointed by the District Governor to serve the Area. Area Governors are usually, but not always, members of a chapter in the Area for which they are responsible.
Areas have Area Speech Contests twice per year, with winners from the Chapter levels going on to the Area Contest. The winner of the Area Contest goes on to the Division.
Areas also share Area goals, determined by formulas set at World Headquarters, such as "x number of chapters at 20 members in strength" and "x number of CC's in the various chapters." If an Area meets or exceeds all its goals, its Area Governor is recognized for hard work motivating the chapters.
What is a Division?
Areas are grouped into Divisions. Divisions may be as small as one Area in size (rarely) or have five, six, or more Areas. Each Division has its own Division Governor. Division Governors are usually members of chapters within their Division and are elected once a year at the Annual District Business Meeting. The Division Governor works with his/her Area Governors to motivate the chapters to high membership and to have good, effective educational programs.
Divisions have Division Speech Contests twice per year, with winners from the Areas coming together to compete. The Division winners go on to the District level.
Divisions have Division goals, just as Areas do. A good Division Governor will work with his chapters and Areas to increase membership and educational effort.
What is a District?
Districts in some cases are equivalent to "states" and in other cases are smaller or larger. If you think of a District as "the state organization" you won't be too far off. Districts are comprised of several Divisions. Districts are the main level of organization outside the Chapter; Areas and Divisions are sub-units of the District. Our district is District 83, the New Jersey Metro District, and encompasses northern New Jersey, Staten Island and Rockland county.
California has several Districts because there are so many chapters there. North Carolina, on the other hand, is a single District. England and Scotland and Ireland are one District all together, and Australia and New Zealand comprise several Districts. Smaller countries with only a few chapters each are Unincorporated chapters which report directly to World Headquarters instead of to Districts.
Each District has its own set of officers, most of whom are elected at the District Spring Conference (or Fall Conference in the Southern Hemisphere). The officers include: District Secretary, District Treasurer, District Public Relations Officer, District Lieutenant Governor Marketing, District Lieutenant Governor Education and Training, and District Governor. The last three are always elected and the first three are elected or appointed depending on local preference. They are appointed in our District; it's the newly elected District Governor who does the appointing.
And yes, Districts have their own District-wide goals. The various Districtofficers work with the chapters, Areas, and Divisions to build membership, start new chapters, promote the earning of CC's and AC's, and so forth.
Districts have speech contests twice per year, as the Division winners come together at the District Conferences to compete for the District crowns.
If it sounds complicated, it is, but that's the price you pay for:
- having enough offices to fill that a lot of people get the opportunity to serve, and
- having enough officers on the spot to help out chapters that have problems (e.g. low membership).
Joe belongs to the Wide Valley Toastmasters Chapter (chapter 1342). The Wide Valley Toastmasters chapter belongs to Area 22, Central Division, District 83. Area 22 is the city of Wide Valley with four chapters. The Central Division is Areas 22, 23, and 24, comprising the mid-state area. District 83 is the eastern half of the state. Area 22 has an Area Governor who works with the Wide Valley chapter and the other three chapters in the Area. The Central Division has a Division Governor who works with all 12 chapters in his Division and with the three Area Governors under her. District 83 has five Divisions and its own set of officers. Joe goes to various speech contests in his Area, Division, and District and once a year represents his chapter at the Spring Conference to elect new officers and vote on other District policy matters.
What levels are beyond the District?
Technically, none -- just Toastmasters International. The Regions are not formally constituted bodies. They're just groupings of eight or so Districts. Each Region is entitled to representation on the Board of Directors of Toastmasters International by one International Director who serves a two-year term, but it is the world body that elects these officers, not the Regions themselves. The main requirement for representing a Region is that you have residency and membership in a chapter in that Region. Once you are elected, however, you serve the world, not just the chapters of your Region. Regions do not have regional goals. They're not organized bodies.
How do I get to be a District officer?
If you want to be an Area Governor, show up at a lot of events outside your chapter and get to know the people around your District. Work hard within your chapter. Eventually, you'll be considered for appointment as an Area Governor. It doesn't hurt to ask the people who are running for District Governor to consider appointing you. If you want to be a Division Governor or other District Officer, you've usually got to run for the office. Each chapter in a District gets two votes and the chapters that have representatives at the Spring Conference vote and decide who'll serve for the next year. Terms always run July 1 to June 30 by the way, so elections are held in May at the Spring Conference.
Another good way to get to be a District officer is to volunteer to help a District committee. You don't get DTM credit for helping a committee or serving as a District committee chair, but you get *known* and that's usually all it takes to get asked to serve the next time around.
What do I get for serving as an officer?
If you serve as a chapter officer, you earn credit toward the ALB (Advanced Leader Bronze). If you serve as a District officer, you earn credit toward the ALS (Advanced Leader Silver), which is required to earn the DTM. Service on the International level doesn't earn you anything in particular because you've usually already earned everything there is to earn by that point.
But, more importantly, you get tremendous leadership experience. With everyone a volunteer and no chapter HAVING to do what its District officers suggest, you have to develop powerful persuasive abilities to guide the chapters and members in the right direction.
THE TM ORGANIZATION -cont.-
What's the World Convention?
The World Convention takes place each August. The main feature of the Conference, other than presentation of awards for effort during the preceding year, is the Annual Business Meeting, at which International officers are elected and policies are made and changed.
The chapters have the voting strength at the world level, with two votes each. Districts often wind up voting the proxies for chapters that don't make it to the Annual Business Meeting each August.
Currently, 19 members serve on the Board of Directors. Five members serve as Officers, and 14 members serve as Directors. The Officers (President, President-elect, First Vice President, Second Vice President, and Immediate Past President) serve an annual term of office. Each of the Directors serves two years, with half of the seats open for election each year. One Director is nominated from each of the fouteen geographic Regions of the world.
At the World Convention you also find the International speech contest, with the various District winners squaring off first in semi-final competitions. (The humorous speaking, table topics, and evaluation contests stop at the District level.) Nine International Speech Contest contestants decide the World Championship of Public Speaking at the finals.
So the Board of Directors and the President and Vice Presidents make all the decisions about dues and so forth?
Yes and no. Any proposals they wish to see adopted that constitute actual changes to the constitution and bylaws of the organization require a vote by the assembled clubs, with each club having two votes. As above, the District officers gather proxies from any clubs that aren't going to be at the annual business meeting in August.
What's all this about speech contests?
In order to provide for people who enjoy competitive speaking, and in order to showcase the best, Toastmasters holds speech contests twice per year. Each contest starts at the chapter level and works its way up through Area and Division to the District. The International Speech Contest goes on to the semi-finals and finals at the World Convention each August.
The contests are:
- Table Topics - 1 to 2 minutes in length. Impromptu speaking. All contestants are taken out of the room and brought back in one by one to speak on the same topic, which should be general in nature and not require specialized knowledge which some contestants might have while others might not. Sine no contestant hears the topic before his or her turn to speak on it, you can judge their impromptu speaking abilities by the way in which each person's effort stacks up against the others. Goes as far as the District level.
- Evaluation - 2 to 3 minutes in length. A target speaker gives a speech, which all the evaluation contestants are to evaluate. The contestants are taken from the room and given five minutes to prepare their evaluations and make notes, at the end of which time their notes are taken away. They are brought back into the room one by one (at which time the contestant gets his/her notes back) to deliver their oral evaluation of the target speech. Since no contestant hears what another said about the target speech, the judges can compare the analytical abilities of the contestants. Goes as far as the District level.
- Humorous speech - 5 to 7 minutes. Humorous speaking, which must be original. Year after year, people hear the rules read to them and then stand up and present Bill Cosby routines and then act puzzled when they're disqualified. It's supposed to be a speech, not a monologue, and it must be original. It should also be "clean." So-called "blue humor" will get you zero points in the "appropriateness" column of the judges' forms. In other words, it should be a five-to-seven minute speech with a lot of humor value, but also displaying good speechmaking abilities. Goes as far as the District level.
- International Speech - 5 to 7 minutes. Any topic at all, so long as it's original. Can be funny, serious, whatever. It should be the best speech you can give, and it must be original. Did I mention that it must be original? Don't do what so many speakers do and crib at length from someone else's works and then expect that no one in the audience will smell a rat. The reason this contest is called "International Speech" instead of "General Speech" or "Miscellaneous Speech" is because it's the only one of the contests that goes as far as the World level. Each August, winners from the eight Regions and the Overseas chapters (9 contestants in all) compete at the World Convention in the World Championship of Public Speaking.
How do you pick the winners?
Each contest has a set of rules that mandate originality and lay down the procedures. If you go over your time limit by thirty seconds, you're eliminated. If you go UNDER your time limit by thirty seconds, you're eliminated -- except in Table Topics, where you must speak at least one minute, no less. Out in the audience, there'll be a set of judges, scattered among the audience, each with a points form that they use to rate you against what a winning effort should be and how you stack up against the others. There's a different form for each contest, since each contest involves different skills. These are the rules for Area, Division, District, Region, and International contests. At the chapter level we can and do modify them. Generally we let the audience vote!
Who gets to compete? Do I HAVE to compete?
Any member in good standing (i.e. you've got your dues paid) can compete when the contests come around except for the International Speech Contest. To compete in the International Speech Contest, you must have given at least six manual speeches towards your CC. This requirement is intended to prevent professional speakers from joining Toastmasters out of the blue solely to compete toward the World Championship of Public Speaking. District and International officers are barred so the judges won't be swayed by their titles. And, no, you don't HAVE to compete. Everyone is encouraged to try because we get better by practicing. Think of it as a competition with yourself for your new best effort ever!
When do the contests take place?
Our District (District 83) has two contests in November (Humorous Speech and Table Topics) and two in May (Evaluation and International Speech).
What do I get if I win a contest?
At the chapter level, pretty much all you get is a handshake and some applause. At the Area, Division and District levels, you've moved on to certificates and trophies.
| Updated 09/10/11 |
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