Saturday AM
Saturday AM #7735 / Toastmasters International is a nonprofit educational organization that helps members improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. Saturday AM is a charter club of Toastmasters International, which was founded in 1924 by Dr. Ralph C. Smedley.
Founded in 1990, Saturday AM is located in Columbia, South Carolina and meets every Saturday between 10am and 11:45am at the Cooper Branch Library's meeting room. Saturday AM #7735 is one of the premier open clubs in Toastmasters International District 58, having been recognized President's Distinguished Club ten years consecutively and having coached three toastmasters –– Douglas Wilson, Chakisse Newton, and Henry Flowers IV –– to international speech competition.
Club history
Saturday AM was chartered in 1990 by twenty dedicated toastmaster members, but by 1994 the club had slipped drastically to a membership of six. It had become more of a social club than an educational organization in which it was chartered as, only four years prior. The club's morale was suffering greatly: Out of its six members, one was a twelve-year-old non-member, and its three-term President was no longer attending club meetings regularly. Saturday AM was teetering on becoming defunct.
Then on a routine visit, a Toastmaster Area Governor, representing District 58, discovered the disaster that had become Saturday AM. Raymond Hill (DTM), believing he could turn the club around, promptly joined the club and subsequently recruited his wife, Patricia, to serve as the club specialist (now titled: club coach). Together, the husband and wife team developed a four-part success plan.
First, to get the club back on the educational track, Ray and Patricia recruited a past-District 58 Governor to serve as the club's vice president education (VPE); then, to boost the club's spirit, the couple planned several breakfast meetings to make Saturday morning club meetings more appealing; next, to grow the club's membership they kicked off a public relations campaign to promote the club; and then, to add a personal touch, Ray frequently called guests and members –– thanking guest for attending and asking them to visit again, and telling missing members how much he missed them and got a promise that they would return.
Club Turn Around
In 1994, the Republican Party had gained control of both houses of Congress. Their major campaign theme was a document called "Contract With America". In 1994, in Columbia, South Carolina Saturday AM's club rebuilding team, headed by the husband and wife team of Ray and Patricia Hill, was also striking out on its own campaign to turn the young fledgling Toastmaster club around. It would not be an easy maneuver.
In 1994, Ray and Patricia began conducting proper Toastmaster meetings, but the young Saturday AM club was not accustomed to such discipline; it had slowly, in its four years, become more of a social gathering than an educational program. Members weren't used to doing "table topics", "prepared speeches", and receiving and giving constructive evaluations. Consequently, the club's rebuilding team lost all but one member.
Committed to their belief that they could rebuild the club, in spite of the falling away of five of the club's members, Ray and Patricia Hill "doubled down" on their public relations campaign efforts. The several breakfast meetings that they had put together to make Toastmaster/ Saturday AM more appealing on a Saturday morning was showing signs of promise. Several people joined after attending those meetings. These new members then were quickly encouraged to place posters near the meeting site, send out formal invitations to the club's breakfast meetings, and place advertisements in the Pennysaver. Within two years, Saturday AM #7735 had stretched and grown from becoming defunct to having twenty members on its roster.
References
Newswire Today Media Industry Today Amazon.com Personal Speaking by Ralph Smedley Encyclopædia Britannica The Toastmasters International Guide To Successful Speaking The Old Saying - The Washington Post