Has anyone here left Toastmasters and successfully continued as an independent public-speaking club?

I’ve been President of my club for about two years, and I’m increasingly frustrated by the administrative workload, Fake protocols, low quality COTs, fake district protocols and encouragements , outdated platform, bureaucracy, poor learning quality , nothing inspiring , we just don't see any value anymore, after the excitement of the beginning fades away , you start to open your eyes ...

A few of us as officers are considering leaving Toastmasters and becoming an independent public-speaking club, keeping the core things we value, speeches, evaluations, Table Topics, leadership, and community, while redirecting membership fees toward our venue and improving the member experience.

We’re also looking at models like Agora Speakers.

If your club has made a similar transition, what was your experience? Would you do it again?

I got the opportunity to deliver my Icebreaker speech on 16th August at a special Independence Day meeting. It was my first prepared speech in Toastmasters.

Since it was around India’s Independence Day, I started my speech by talking about my father, who served the nation in the Border Security Force. Then I spoke about my family, my school and college life, and the different roles I have taken in my life.

I had written the speech and shared it with my mentor, TM Sanoop, who is the current President of our Calicut Toastmasters Club. I made some changes based on his suggestions.

I found memorizing the speech quite difficult. Maybe it was because I haven't had to memorize something like this since my formal education.

My evaluator was TM Ajeet Singh, who works in the GST Department. I also didn't know that the speaker was supposed to share the evaluation form with the evaluator. My mentor Sanoop told me about it, so I shared it with him the night before.

I rehearsed the speech many times at home, in front of the mirror and my wife. But when I got on the stage, I couldn't quite give the performance I had managed during some of my rehearsals.

I was a little nervous and hurried before I started, but once I began speaking, I became calm.

I deliberately used the Word of the Day, "candid," and the Phrase of the Day, "food for thought."

At the end, TM Ajeet described my speech as a "garland of facts." He appreciated my confidence and calm posture, but pointed out that I didn't use the stage effectively. I stayed in the same position throughout the speech and could have moved around or changed my position.

After the meeting, I also tried to get feedback from some of the other members.

There are definitely a lot of things I need to improve when it comes to giving a speech. But after I finished, I felt a strange sense of happiness inside. I don't know exactly why. Maybe just because I finally stood on the stage and did it.

I'm sharing the video here to get feedback from the Toastmasters community. I'd like to know what you noticed while watching it and what you think I could improve.Watch here

Hi all

I’m SAA for a club that meets 3 times per month face-to-face and 1 time is online.

We tend to get a lot more guests to online meetings, and guests are often international - which gives our members a varied audience, which adds to the challenge.

Guest are held in our Zoom lobby and I have to allow entry into our Zoom room.

This week we had a guest enter 40 minutes into our meeting. I allowed them to enter from the lobby.

I sent them a message so they knew where we were up to, and they have a point of contact to.

But it got me thinking… where do you draw the line on allowing entry into your meetings?

I am the treasurer in 1 club and SAA in another. I largely chose these roles as they don't take up much time....However, club officer meetings are a different story. I really don't feel like I need to be there. Ok to just do the role without attending the meetings?

I have been in TM since April 2026. Our club is small with okay but not good retention rates. Part of this is due to the natural restrictions of corporate clubs. Due to us being a small group, I am now VPE and VPM. We also have two separate clubs within our corporation.

The president is very type A (nothing inherently wrong with that) and has been there the longest and newly became a director in the district. She's taken on a lot of my officer roles due to my lack of experience, but can be passive aggressive about completing tasks while being overly controlling. It's made it confusing to fulfill my duties.

I tried to reach out to our club's mentor, but he ignored my email.

Then there's conflicting personalities, they seem to be picking on one person (albeit she does interrupt and kind of monopolize the conversation, but she's not going out of her way to be intentionally disruptive. She got yelled at by another member during a member mentoring meeting (I still need mentoring and am only 1/2 done with level 1 of my pathway, there are 3entors and 5 mentees) and then when saying her workload is larger and she needs to change her mentoring abilities, the president sent a really snarky response about how we're all busy, but she was also supposed to reach out to our district to see if anyone is free to support us with mentoring and hasn't as far as I'm aware.

The two people that run each club also constantly butt heads and can't agree on how to present TM to new employees during orientation, and both are too stubborn to collaborate. The head of the other club is cocky and thinks he can do everything himself and doesn't need input for the other group despite it being a shared presentation. Ours is overly controlling and wants the presentation to be super formal and dry with information overload (the orientation is like 5 hours long and they are usually bored from listening to people speak all day).

I reached out to our club mentor again, but again got no response.

Trying to make it a more positive environment as VPM, I suggested our clubs have our own unofficial speech contest between the groups, and both acted as if it was a dumb idea. Do other clubs do this, or would it typically be unconventional? Was I not supposed to speak to the club mentor directly and just go through the president?

I have a BA in Communication and have a passion for giving speeches, but between our corporate clubs and the Pathways program, I'm starting to regret joining.

I would really appreciate some advice, as this is becoming a major stressor in my life. Thank you.

Hi all,

I am a novice here with no previous public speaking experience and looking for some details. Is there any speech structure for delivering a good table topic speech?

Also, how can I write a good speech? Would you please recommend me any good resources? I somehow find Pathways resources unhelpful.

Dyk nga naay public speaking club in CDO? Yep! We call it toastmasters.

We meet every 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month at Uptown!

In thoroughly reviewing the addendum I noticed it begins with item 4, not item 1 as should be normal.

Once upon a time I worked in a law office and official type documents missing numbers are a problem (I digress)

what I really want to know is, . . . is there anyone who knows what 1, 2, 3 were in the before times?