Mentor a Club

Duties and Responsibilities of a Club Mentor

As an experienced Toastmaster, your district governor has selected you to serve as mentor for a new Toastmasters club.

What is a Mentor?
A mentor is someone who shares his or her expertise with less experienced individuals. Your mission is to serve as a coach and advisor to the newly formed club. Your responsibility is not to run the club but to let the club know what its options are, gently guide it toward excellence and allow its members to learn and grow.

Official Duties
Your official term as mentor begins when the new club charters and lasts for six months to one year. It’s helpful and not unusual for mentors to join the new club, but it’s not required.

It’s your duty to the new club to build on the preliminary enthusiasm, spirit of cooperation and fun initiated by the new club’s sponsors. Your duties are to:

  • Build a personal rapport with the club. Share your experience with the members and lend your support. Be sure you attend every meeting.
  • Ensure the club is strong and fully functional. Instead of simply handing out answers to members’ questions, help the questioner find the answer in the appropriate resource. Supplement this information with lessons from your own experiences.
  • Familiarize the club with the TI website (www.toastmasters.org). Encourage club members to use it as a resource for updates on the club’s progress in the DCP, and downloadable forms and documents as well as for performing administrative tasks like submitting new member applications, dues renewals and educational award applications.
  • Conduct The Successful Club Series program The Toastmasters Educational Program. The educational program is the heart of any Toastmasters club. It’s how members develop the skills they joined the club to learn. Help the new club grasp how the communication and leadership tracks facilitate their skill development. Emphasize the importance of recognizing members who work toward their goals.
  • Make certain that club officers attend district-sponsored training. Also meet with each officer individually, educate each about what standards he or she must meet and how to meet them. Provide information about the tools each officer needs to perform his or her duties. Start by ensuring each officer has (and reads!) the appropriate officer manual.
  • Conduct The Successful Club Series program How to Be a Distinguished Club. Explain how the DCP is a tool the club can use to keep itself on track and focused on providing members with the service and environment they need to achieve their goals.
  • Help club members build positive habits. Emphasize the need for members to regularly come prepared to meetings, to give manual speeches, to present excellent evaluations and to project a positive, enthusiastic attitude.
  • Create a Quality Club. A club’s standards for service must reflect the quality and reliability of the Toastmasters program. The best way to teach clubs how to do this is to encourage them to conduct the module Moments of Truth from The Successful Club Series. Make sure the new club knows and applies these quality standards to current and new members. Remind them the same care and attention afforded to guests and potential members also should be given to current members.
  • Foster a culture of membership-building within the club. Every club, even new clubs, should continually strive to bring in new members. Membership-building activities give clubs a stronger base of leaders and provide a continuous flow of original personalities and ideas that help keep club meetings fresh and exciting.

Buoy Up Your New Bunch!
As a new club mentor you are pilot, navigator and boatswain for a new club. How you fulfill your responsibilities can determine if the club cruises to its members’ learning destinations or winds up swamped and sinking. Use the information in these free PDF resources to help your new crew achieve success!

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