Distinguished Club Program - DCP

Ask your club members why they joined and most likely at least 95% of them will tell you they joined to become better speakers and leaders. Your Toastmasters club’s purpose is to provide the environment in which they learn these skills. When your club provides plenty of speaking and leadership opportunities for members, members receive helpful evaluations, and there are enough members to conduct the program, members learn what they joined the club to learn.

The Distinguished Club Program helps your club accomplish its purpose by focusing on two areas:

Educational awards. The number of Competent Communicator (CC), Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB), Advanced Communicator Silver (ACS), and Advanced Communicator Gold (ACG), Competent Leader (CL), Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB), Advanced Leader Silver (ALS) and Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) awards issued to members determines your club’s success in helping its members learn not only speaking skills but leadership skills as well.

Membership. In order to properly conduct the educational program, a club should have
at least 20 members. Membership turnover is unavoidable as members move, change jobs
or encounter other situations that take them away from the club. Your club should continually
strive to bring in new members to combat this natural turnover, to provide a stronger leadership base and to bring a flow of fresh, new ideas and personalities.

The Distinguished Club Program monitors and measures your club’s achievements in these two critical areas.

How It Works
The Distinguished Club Program is an annual program, running from July 1 through June 30. The program consists of 10 goals your club should strive to achieve during this time using the Club Success Plan as a guide. World Headquarters tracks the progress of your club toward these goals throughout the year, sending quarterly progress reports to your club president (updated reports are posted twice montly on the Toastmasters International Web site, www.toastmasters.org). At year-end, World Headquarters calculates the number of goals the club achieved and recognizes it as a Distinguished Club, Select Distinguished Club or President’s Distinguished Club based on the number of goals achieved and the number of members it has.

Goals to Achieve
Following are the goals your club should strive to achieve during the year:

1. Two CCs
2. Two more CCs
3. One ACB, ACS or ACG
4. One more ACB, ACS or ACG
5. One CL, ALB, ALS, or DTM
6. One more CL, ALB, ALS or DTM
7. Four new members
8. Four more new members
9. Minimum of four club officers trained during each of two training periods
10. One membership dues renewal report and one club officer list submitted on time

In addition, your club must meet a membership requirement. At year-end (June 30) it must have:

at least 20 members OR

a net growth of at least five new members.

Get a copy of the entire Distinguished Club Program and Club Success Plan.

To see where your club stands today on the Distinguished Club Program - click here and enter your club number.

District 5 Mission
The Mission of the District is to enhance the performance and extend the network of Clubs, thereby offering greater numbers of people the opportunity to benefit from the Toastmasters educational program, by:

• Focusing on the critical success factors as specified by the District educational and membership goals.
• Ensuring that each Club effectively fulfills its responsibilities to its individual members.
• Providing effective training and leadership development opportunities for Club and District Officers.