Durack Toastmasters

Area Governors

Toastmasters Clubs are arranged into Areas, with each Area typically including four to six clubs. Each Area has an Area Governor, who serves for a year, from July 1st to June 30th.

The basic role of the Area Governor is to help the clubs in their Area in any way they can to be successful. The Area Governor does have some specific duties:

• Club Visits
• Help with Club Competitions
• Ensure the Area Contests occur by the right dates
• Attend Club Officer Training
• Attend Division Meetings
• Club Elections to be completed
• Ensure Club Officer Lists are lodged

Planning Calendar

Club Visits

This is the basic duty of the area governor, to visit the clubs, see how they’re going, and offer them any help you can. You are only required to visit each club in your area twice during the year and lodge a report to TMI about the visit:

• Round 1: Between July 1st and November 30th
• Round 1: Between January 1st and May 31st

You lodge these reports using the TMI website:

https://ecommerce.toastmasters.org/timssnet/district/tm_clubselect.cfm

I would recommend that:

1. Contact the club well before hand. Explain that you need to make a visit and arrange a date well in advance. This is a big deal for the club and you should never just arrive unannounced.
2. You might want to offer to do a role at the club on your visit, such as a general evaluator, or to deliver an educational
   speech, or to hand out club prizes if the club does that.

3. Ask the club officers (specifically the President and VPE) if you can meet with them before or after the meeting to talk about their Club Success Plan.
4. Before the visit, go to the TMI link above and print out the report page. There are a lot of boxes to fill in and it will help you a lot if you have this page with you at the meeting so you know what information you need to collect.
5. After the meeting, call or email and thank the club officers for their hospitality.
6. Make sure you submit your area report promptly after the meeting while it’s still fresh in your memory. Do note the deadlines for the reports to be in. It’s a good discipline to do the visits very early in your term (I aiming to have Round 1 completed in July!)

The club visits are a lot of fun for the Area Governor and if this is your first time, they can be a real eye opener. I always assumed that every club operated just like my home club! The variety of people, culture and approaches at each club is really wonderful.

Club Officer Elections

Each Toastmaster Club elects a group of Club Officers (such as President, Secretary and so on). Clubs may choose to do this on an Annual or Semi-Annual basis and have to lodge that preference with Toastmasters International (TMI). If a club is Annual, then the updated list of Club Officers must be lodged with TMI by June 30th each year. If the Club is Semi-Annual, then the list must be lodged by June 30th and again by December 31st.

As Area Governor, you need to help your clubs and ensure that the elections are held with plenty of time before the required deadline. Let’s focus on the June 30th deadline.

Ideally, you should send out reminders to all clubs in the first week of May reminding them to hold their club elections. I suggest that you put a note in your calendar right now set for the first week of May, to remind yourself to do this! Also add in a follow up
at the end of May to check on progress.

Once the election has been held, the results need to be lodged with TMI.

One of the difficulties with this is that it’s really the last duty of the Toastmasters year for an outgoing Area Governor. Don’t leave a mess for the incoming AG though, do try to get it done in plenty of time!

Club Officer Lists

Once the elections have been held, the club must lodge the results of the election with TMI. The Area Governor needs to ensure that this is done by June 30th (and again by December 31st for semi-annual clubs).

The Area Governor can confirm the status of their clubs by using the District Reports on the TMI web site. The reports for Distict 73 are available:

The list of links on the right area very handy. Select the one that says July Club Officer List Status
. That will show which of the clubs in your area havesubmitted the club officer lists for the period starting July 1st. It’s easy to determine from there which clubs have not yet done it.

The Area Governor cannot submit the list themselves. They have to contact the current club officers and ask them to do it. I’ve sent the following email to Club Officers at clubs to help them do it as easily as possible:

Hi there,

I note that the club officer list for you club hasn't been sent
to Toastmasters International as yet.  It should only take you
about 5 minutes to do the run through.

Just go to the login:

https://ecommerce.toastmasters.org/timssnet/login/tnt_login.cfm

Once you've logged in (your club number is XXXXXX), then you just
click on the third link down the page:

    Change my club's meeting and/or club officer information 

The first page is about where/when you meet.  You should review
this, but I doubt you'll need to make any changes there.  So you
just fill in your details at the bottom of the page and click on

    Continue to Confirmation Page

When you get to the Club Officers Assignment page, you select the
next year:

    07/01/2007 - 06/30/2008

Then you have to fill in each person for the correct role.

If you are not sure on some roles, just put in your best guess.
You can change any time you want to later on.

If you have any troubles at all with this, please let me know.
I'd be very happy to help!

You should follow up regularly with club officers, including a phone call, and see if there is anything you can do to help them get the list uploaded. It really is a very simple exercise!

Division Meetings

Just as 4-6 Clubs form an area, with an Area Governor, areas are grouped together to form a Division. Durack is one of five clubs in Area P30. Area P30 is one of four Areas in Perth Division. It’s not as hard as it sounds!

The Division Governor will call regular meetings of the Division Officers, typically every three months. This will bring together the Area Governors and the Division Governor. The Area Governor should come prepared with a brief report about how the clubs is his or her area are progressing and any thoughts on how the District can help. The meeting will typically last about 90 minutes.

Other Resources

Toastmasters International does provide a list of good training materials for Area Governors and other district officers:

http://www.toastmasters.org/artisan/member.asp?CategoryID=1&SubCategoryID=52