2017
By Fred E. Walker, DTM
8/30/2017
Club Success Toolkit User Guide
Using data
visualization and
analytics to help
clubs succeed.
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1 Using data visualization and analytics to help clubs succeed| By Fred E. Walker, 2017
Document Intent
This document is a user guide intended to provide an overview, instructions, and suggestions for using the
Club Success Toolkit.
Intended Audience/Stakeholders
Club President, VP Education (VPE), other club officers, club members, as well as others who are
interested in the success of the club
District 44 leadership
Toastmasters International®
Notice
Toastmasters International® is a registered trademark of Toastmasters International®. All Toastmasters
International® resources and materials referred to in this document are property of Toastmasters
International®. Excel® is a registered trademark of Microsoft. Adobe® is a registered trademark of Adobe
Systems Incorporated. All registered marks are property of their respective owners.
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I. Purpose and Scope
The purpose of this document is to explain how to use and apply the Club Success Toolkit (CST) to help your
club plan and manage goals, track key milestones, and measure other important metrics within the
Toastmasters International® program.
II. Assumptions and Comments
Please keep the following assumptions and clarification points in mind when reading this document and
using the CST:
The Club Success Toolkit, CST, and Toolkit are all the same. They are simply different ways of
referring to the same thing – a set of tools to help you manage and achieve success within your
club.
The Toolkit is NOT self-updating. In other words, the VPE or other assigned member(s) will need to
manually update the CST with club information on a regular and ongoing basis.
A basic understanding of Microsoft Excel® is helpful when using this Toolkit.
While anyone in the club can be assigned the task of updating the CST, this responsibility would
typically fall to VPE since he/she would likely already have much of this information readily
available. For the purposes of this document, it is assumed the VPE is the person responsible for
making these updates (although the VPE could delegate and/or even appoint a committee to keep
it updated, if so desired).
The figures in this document are intended to show the CST components in a general sense.
Meaning, the actual Toolkit itself may from time-to-time be updated and not exactly reflect the
visual representations contained herein.
The Toolkit is not intended to replace any Toastmasters International® materials, tools, or other
performance metrics, but rather to help augment them by providing a convenient way to present
data in an alternate manner that is intended to be helpful to clubs.
The benefit of this Toolkit is directly related to how often it is updated, used, and communicated. In
other words, if it is only updated once a year, it won’t be as beneficial as if it were updated monthly
or for every meeting. In addition, once updated the Toolkit should be shared with your
members/officers to get the most benefit out of using it. It’s up to each club to determine how best
to communicate this Toolkit (i.e. printed and shared during club meetings, posted on a
website/shared drive available to club members, etc.), but the key point is that it should be shared
with your members on a regular basis.
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III. Overview
The CST will help you to better track and manage key indicators and metrics that are important to the
success of your club. The CST consists of several components. Each one serves a different purpose.
Together, they are designed to help you manage your club’s progress by providing convenient ways to
capture and organize information and display it in a visual manner. The three main components are the
following:
(1) Club Goals Overview
(2) Dashboard
(3) Communication and Leadership Club Goals Progress Tracker*
*Note that the Communication and Leadership Progress Tracker has three different variations that you can
use. Choose the one(s) that best meets your club’s needs.
Below is a visual overview of the main components which will be explained in more detail later in this
document.
Figure 1
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IV. Club Success Toolkit Components
This section provides details on each of the components.
A. Club Goals Overview
This component of the CST focuses on the ten Distinguished Club Program (DCP) goals a club
typically works toward completing every year. It helps you plan your goals for the club, keep track
of them, and communicate them to your club officers, members, and district leadership when
needed. This component is further broken down into two sections: (1) Educational Goals and (2)
Member, Training, and Administrative Goals. Refer to Figure 2.
To use this component, fill out your club’s Educational goals for the upcoming year as well as your
goals/plans for Membership, Training, and Administrative activities. At the beginning of a club year,
you might also consider meeting with your club members and requesting that they make individual
commitments toward communication and leadership goals. Once this is determined, list your
members who have committed to completing such goals in this component. For example, you
would list the names of members who are working on their Competent Communicator, Competent
Leadership, and Advanced Communication/Leadership goals in the first section or tab. As DCP goals
are completed, you then indicate “100%” complete.
The Member, Training, and Administrative section allows you to plan for these activities and to gain
commitment to attract new members, complete officer training (e.g., attending TLI or Toastmasters
Leadership Institute), and complete administrative activities. As in the first section, simply list the
member names (i.e., new members, officers trained, etc.) where applicable. For new members, you
could at first just set a goal of attracting eight new members (since you likely won’t know their
names at this point), and then when new members join, add their names for your club’s
tracking/recording purposes as desired.
You can also manually track Percent Complete, Planned versus Completed, along with Target and
Actual Completion dates in this component.
Think of this component as a way to help you plan, organize, and manage your club’s yearly DCP
goals. It provides you with a mechanism to track the progress of the club and of members who have
committed to achieving certain goals for the year.
Additional Suggestions: Completing the Club Goals Overview component can help you with your
Club Success Plan at the start of the club year. It also provides a convenient way to capture all this
information in one place, which in turn can be printed and/or emailed to your club members and
Area Director (AD). Note: Your AD will likely request this type of information from you at the
beginning of the club year, as well as during his/her visits throughout the year. For education goals,
rather than list all your members in this component, list only the members who have committed to
completing their individual goals for the upcoming year.
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Figure 2
This
component is
divided into
two sections
or tabs. It can
be used as a
planning
guide to help
your club
track
progress
toward your
DCP goals.
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B. Club Dashboard
The Dashboard component provides a visual snapshot of important milestones, DCP progress,
meeting attendance, budget information, and other important metrics at the club level. When kept
up to date, this component shows a quick overview of club status in an easy to read one-page
format. It can be used during officer meetings, general meetings, as well as sent directly to
members and your District leadership team to keep them updated on your progress at any given
time during the year. Figure 3 below shows the Dashboard. The next several pages cover details on
its various sections. Note that the Dashboard has an “Input” section (tab) in which you enter
information that is displayed on the Dashboard itself (refer to the actual component for more
details).
Figure 3
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Figure 4:
Section 1:
Club Name and Year: The club
name and year are indicated in
this section. Enter club year as
‘Year – Year’. Example: 2016-2017
Section 2:
Key Club Event Milestones: Important club
milestones are listed in this section. As you
complete the milestones, check ‘’them off on
the list in the Input Tab. An indicates the
milestone was not completed or missed. A blank
space simply means it is not yet started and/or
completed. Note: This milestone list is not meant
to be all inclusive, but rather cover most things a
club would typically complete during any given
club year.
Section 3:
DCP Progress Tracking Goals: The
number of Planned and Actual
completed DCP or Distinguished
Club Program goals are indicated
and tracked in this section.
1
2
3
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Figure 5:
Section 4:
TI Education Program: This section is
for you to indicate the number of
Planned and Actual Toastmaster’s
educational programs your club
anticipates delivering this year (i.e.
Moments of Truth, programs from The
Successful Club Series, etc.).
Section 5:
Countdown to End of Club Year:
This section shows a count-down
(number of days remaining and %
remaining) until the end of the
club year. This provides a way to
quickly see how many days are
remaining in the club year which in
turn can help motivate your club’s
members to work towards
completing their goals.
Section 6:
Meeting Attendance & Attendance Metrics:
This section shows meeting attendance metrics
in graphical and numeric format.
4
5
6
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Figure 6:
Section 8:
Club Membership: This section shows your
membership strength at the beginning of the
year compared to your current ‘Active’
membership at the time you generate your
report. Refer to the Toastmasters
International® website for information on
your club’s membership.
Section 7:
Club Budget for the Year: This
section contains club budget
information for the upcoming
year. You would indicate the
Planned amount your club
anticipates spending for the year
(i.e. this year’s budget) as well as
what you’ve actually spent to-date
(as the year progresses). This can
help you quickly see and keep
track of your club’s performance
from a budget standpoint.
7
8
MMR
MMR or the Member to
Membership Ratio pertains to
meeting attendance. This ratio is
calculated based on the average
per meeting member attendance.
It shows your percentage of
members who attend meetings as
compared to your overall current
membership (e.g. if you have 20
members and on average 10
members attend your meetings,
your ratio would be 50%).
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C. Communications and Leadership Club Goal Progress Tracker:
The next component of the CST encompasses a visual representation of member progress towards
completing various communication goals and new membership growth for the club. There are
three separate variations of this component to allow you flexibility in using the one that works best
for your club.
(1) Communications and Leadership Club Goals Progress Tracker
(2) CC and CL Progress Tracker, 20, 30 and 36
(3) CC Progress Tracker
The main component is called the Communications and Leadership Club Goal Progress Tracker (or
simply Club Goal Progress Tracker) and is pictured in Figure 7. It shows the different sections of this
component which includes Competent Communicator, Competent Leader, Advanced
Communicator Bronze, and New Members Joined by Month.
This “one-pager” is a quick visual overview providing an easy way to see how your members and
club are progressing toward achieving goals at any point during the year. As a side note, by showing
this information visually it may help be a motivator to club members to complete their goals. [In
one of my clubs and in using the Competent Communicator visual tracking portion of this toolkit, it
prompted friendly competition among members to see who could complete all ten projects in their
CC manuals first]. Note that due to page size limitations only 15 member names can be displayed
on this component at any given time. Therefore as a few suggestions, if you have more members
that you want to list you could decide to include only members who have committed to achieve
their specific goals for the upcoming year. If that number still exceeds 15, you may want to only
include members on the graph who have first completed a minimum number of speeches. For
example, set a minimum of one, two, or perhaps even five speech projects before listing them on
the Progress Tracker. You could even include all members (even if the number is greater than 15)
by simply printing a second page or using another version of the Progress Tracker included in the
Toolkit. Determine a number/method that makes sense for your club. Overall, it’s up to you how
you want to list your members. Just keep in mind only 15 member names can be displayed at any
one time when using the Club Goal Progress Tracker. The same goes for Advanced Communicator
Bronze and Competent Leader tracking. With this said, Figures 8 and 9 shows variations of Progress
Trackers that give you the flexibility to add more member names if needed.
Overall, use the Progress Tracker component/variation(s) that best meets your club’s needs.
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Communications and Leadership Club Goals Progress Tracker
Figure 7:
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The CC and CL Extended Progress Trackers include several variations that allow you to enter up to
20, 30, and 36 member names.
Figure 8:
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A larger version of the Progress Tracker (CC Progress Tracker) showing only members working
towards their CC goals is pictured below in Figure 9.
Figure 9:
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V. Technical Details on Saving and Distributing the Files
To make updates to the Club Dashboard and Progress Trackers, click on the Input Tab in each component
file and follow the directions. To make updates to the Club Goals Overview component, enter the updates
directly on the worksheet.
When making your updates, it’s suggested that you save the files under a different name (i.e. with different
dates appended to end of the file name such as Club Goal Progress Tracker_May252017) for your tracking
purposes.
For distribution, rather than send the Excel® files which could be inadvertently updated, consider saving
instead as an Adobe® PDF file. In Microsoft, perform a Save As and select PDF format for the Save As type.
Select Options and indicate Page(s) as applicable. For example when saving the Dashboard as a PDF, select
Page 1 to 1. In doing so, you only create a PDF of the Dashboard worksheet and not the entire Workbook
which includes the Input tab. In addition, by saving as a PDF you don’t have to be concerned if some of your
members may not have Excel® or an applicable viewer and would therefore be unable to open the
spreadsheet file.
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VI. Key Success Factors (KSFs)
To get the most benefit out of using the CST, below are a few Key Success Factors (KSFs) to consider.
A. Ownership and Accountability: For the CST to be of the most benefit to your club, the VPE or
designated administrator in charge of updating the information must commit to the job for the
duration of the club year. Members must also commit to providing updated project completion
information in a timely manner, and the VPE must regularly update the various components of the
CST.
B. Data Management: As briefly mentioned earlier, there is no automatic data feed for updating the
CST. Updates will need to be made manually. Therefore, making sure information is updated in a
timely and accurate manner is critical to success.
C. Member Commitment: Members should commit to working toward their individual goals, as well as
to helping set and achieve goals for their club. Club officers should help motivate their members to
work toward completing various DCP and other club goals, as well as promote programs to grow
the club’s membership.
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VII. Author Commentary
Hopefully this document has provided you with some beneficial information on how to use the Club
Success Toolkit. Using it can help your club to better manage and track important metrics that are critical to
your success within the Toastmasters International® program. The CST is a tool that can help your club, but
it will only work if the content is continuously updated and made available to your members. Keeping the
information up to date is very important and does take work. Since there is no automatic data feed,
someone in your club (again, likely the VPE since he/she will already know much of the information the CST
uses) will need to take ownership and update the Toolkit on a regular basis. Since the key benefit of the CST
is to help you manage and achieve your member and club’s goals, it will only work if you make a
commitment to keep the information up to date.
Regarding the various components and sections, I advise you to simply use what works best for your club. If
all are of help, great! However, if only one component of the CST is helpful to your members and the others
are not, just use that one component and put the others aside. The same goes for various sections within
the components. Use the component(s)/section(s) that most help your club to achieve its goals.
Once you decide on the CST component(s) and/or section(s) you will use and begin making updates, you
will also need to decide how you will communicate the information to your members (e.g., send via email,
post on a shared site, etc.). You will also need to determine how frequently you will provide updates. For
instance, you could update and publish the Toolkit weekly, biweekly, monthly, or quarterly. Just choose a
communication method and consistent timeframe that makes the best sense for your club and stick to it!
The CST isn’t something that has a theoretical benefit. It works! I know this because I have used some of
the earlier versions of the components outlined in this document. For instance, as mentioned previously,
when I used a visual graph showing members working toward completing their Competent Communicator
manuals, it promoted a spirit of friendly competition amongst the members in my club to see who could
finish all ten projects first. I also experienced how members were more actively engaged in working on their
communication projects when they could see their progress and the progress of their fellow members.
Regarding the Dashboard, I used this while serving as president at one of my clubs. It helped frame our
current progress regarding DCP goals over the course of the year and was a “quick read,” showing at a
glance how we were doing as a club. It also provided insight into how many people attended our club
meetings during a typical week, as well as other useful metrics.
I hope this CST can assist you and your members to better track, manage, and measure metrics that are
important to your club and ultimately help your members and club achieve success within the Toastmasters
International® program.
VIII. Contact Information
My email address is listed below if you have any questions or would like additional information.
Fred E. Walker, DTM; [email protected]
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