Autumn Edition | September 2026
District 71 Monthly Newsletter
Leading Together
Table of Contents
Leading Together: - Time to Get Moving
Steve campion
District Director
September feels like a turning point.
Whatever you’ve been doing over the summer, whether it’s welcoming guests into sweltering meeting rooms or taking a bit of a break, we’re now a couple of months into this program year. It’s a time where the great ideas, the things we’ve all been doing to prepare, and all of our good intentions need to turn into action.
I’m pretty sure that you and your club want to help your fellow members achieve their goals. To have an excellent meeting experience that people want to keep coming back to. To be recognised for your achievements and to have much to celebrate.
How are you going to make that happen?
It’s great to have goals, but “A goal without a plan is just a wish” (attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). The good news is that in Toastmasters we have an excellent way of planning for success. It has the boring name “The Club Success Plan”, but its impact is real.
Why is it important? It’s not because of the plan itself, but the conversations needed to complete it. It helps you and your fellow club members understand what you need to do and identify how others can support you in doing it.
Every club is unique and every club needs to prepare and submit their club success plan by 30th September. Unfortunately, around three-quarters of our clubs haven’t done it yet, so if yours is one of them, please consider this a friendly nudge. Actually, quite a firm nudge.
There’s a famous quote attributed to US President Dwight Eisenhower: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
OK, so maybe that’s not the best quote or me to use when asking every club to submit a plan. His point was a good one though. We can’t predict everything that will happen during the year. What planning gives us is direction, shared understanding and a starting point.
Don’t wait until everything is perfectly organised, just get started.
Steve Campion
District Director
District Announcements
PR Connect – A place where VPPR’s connect and grow.
PR Connect: Bringing District 71 Together Through Collaboration, Creativity and Fun The role of Vice President Public Relations (VPPR) is
Growth Giveaway-Preston Speaking Club & Heworth Toastmasters
Congratulations to Preston Speaking Club (Area 48) and Heworth Toastmasters (Area 29) for being the inaugural winners of our Growth
Set Your Club Up for Success
Become The Magnificent 7
Building Better Clubs Through Better Leadership
Kevin O'Reilly
Programme Quality Director
After seven years, I have just submitted my final paperwork for my Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) award.
And I couldn’t be more proud.
But here’s the thing. It’s not the three letters DTM that I’m most proud of. It’s not the certificate, the recognition or being able to add another qualification after my name.
I’m most proud of the person I have become on the journey to achieving it.
When I started this journey seven years ago, I couldn’t have known where Toastmasters would take me, the people I would meet, the opportunities I would experience or just how much I would grow.
I have been challenged. I have made mistakes. I have stepped outside my comfort zone more times than I can remember. I have taken on leadership roles, supported others, learned from some incredible people and discovered abilities within myself that I probably wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
The journey has changed me.
It has changed my confidence, my communication, my leadership and, ultimately, my life for the better.
And that is why I want to encourage you to consider starting your own DTM journey.
Don’t look at all the requirements and think, “That’s going to take years.”
The years are going to pass anyway.
Instead, think about the person you could become during those years.
You don’t need to know exactly how you are going to get there. You don’t need to have every role planned out. You simply need to make the decision to start and take action.
Your DTM Journey Starts With Three Simple Steps
1. Speak to our resident DTM expert
Reach out to Phil Heath at toastmasters@philheath.com. Ask him about the DTM journey, what is involved and what your potential pathway could look like.
2. Work out where you are now
You may already have completed parts of the DTM requirements without realising how much progress you have made. Look at what you have achieved so far and identify what your next opportunity could be.
3. Take one step
Don’t focus on completing your DTM today. Focus on taking the next step. Volunteer for a role. Take on a project. Help another member. Explore a leadership opportunity. Then take the next step after that.
Seven years ago, I started a journey.
Today, I have submitted the paperwork.
But the greatest thing I have gained from those seven years isn’t an award.
It’s the person I have become along the way.
If Toastmasters has already helped you grow, imagine who you could become if you deliberately challenged yourself to go further.
Your DTM journey could change your Toastmasters experience.
It might just change your life too.
So, what are you waiting for?
Start the journey.
Kevin O’Reilly
Programme Quality Director
Club Growth IS Member Growth
Dan Deighton
Club Growth Director
Time really does fly… when you’re having fun.
Or as the first two months of this Toastmasters year suggest… when you’re growing.
Club growth is the result of members embracing and taking opportunities to grow and develop their communication and leadership skills.
What that looks like is different for everyone.
For me personally, as your Club Growth Director, it’s renewal season. Whilst we already have 40% of our members renewed, I’m curious about where we’ll end up as a District.
Two conversations this month really pleasantly surprised me.
The first was with an Area Director who shared that two officers who were expected to attend Club Officer Training ended up not making it. He reached out to them, just to check whether they were okay, not to chastise them. They both commented on how special that simple check-in made them feel.
The second conversation was with a Club President of a long-standing, strong club.
At their August committee meeting, the seven officers reviewed their membership list and realised they couldn’t remember the last time seven specific members had attended a meeting. In other words, these were paying members who weren’t getting value out of their membership.
It would be easy to assume that these members would simply leave at the end of September and in many ways, maybe that’s expected.
However, what surprised me was that when the committee reached out to offer them a mentor as part of their club’s mentoring program, all seven members said yes.
That struck me as significant. Those members hadn’t been inactive because Toastmasters wasn’t for them. They were inactive because they felt forgotten about.
Maybe they missed a few meetings and found it hard to come back. Maybe they had a shift in their work situation.
Whatever the reason, they’re engaged again now.
It’s in these situations that I encourage you, as a member, as a club officer, and simply as a fellow human to keep having direct conversations with the people in your club.
It truly makes a difference.
If you’re a VPE, reach out and see how someone’s educational path is going. If you’re a VPM, check in with a member you haven’t seen in a few weeks.
These simple conversations go a long way.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s the difference between a member leaving and a member choosing to continue their journey with what I believe is the best personal development experience out there.
Dan Deighton
Club Growth Director
The Most Powerful Tool in Your Club Is Still You
Stallone-Obaraemi Samuel
Public Relations Manager
Something interesting is happening in boardrooms, classrooms, and conference halls across the UK and Ireland right now. Professionals who communicate well are being noticed more in an age when artificial intelligence can write a first draft in seconds.
Let me explain why that matters to every one of us in District 71. We live in a moment where the tools available to communicators have never been more powerful. AI can draft a social media post, generate a newsletter template, and suggest a speaking structure before you have finished your morning coffee.
The District 71 website now carries a growing library of PR templates, branded graphics, and ready-made assets that your club can access and use today, without starting from scratch, without needing a designer, without waiting for support. Check out the page at
https://d71toastmasters.org/pr-graphics-library/
These tools are real. They are available. And your club should be using them.
But here is the thought I want to leave with you.
The reason these tools matter is not because they replace what Toastmasters International builds in you. It is because they amplify it.
An AI can write a caption. It cannot deliver it with the conviction of someone who has stood at a lectern, stumbled over nerves, received honest feedback, and come back stronger the following week. A template can structure a poster. It cannot replace the confidence of a VPPR who knows their club’s story well enough to tell it to a stranger on a Tuesday evening and have that stranger walk in on Thursday.
That combination — the tool and the trained human behind it — is what the world’s most effective communicators are building right now. And Toastmasters members are uniquely positioned to get there first.
What this means for your club
Every club in District 71 has a story worth telling. The question is whether the right people are hearing it.
The templates and resources on the District 71 website exist to remove every barrier between your club’s story and the people who need to find you. Branded social media graphics. Promotional posters. PR guides for your VPPR. These are not nice-to-haves. They are the infrastructure of a club that grows.
If your VPPR has not yet visited d71toastmasters.org and downloaded the resources available, that is the single most actionable thing your club can do this week. Not because a template will transform your membership figures overnight. But because a consistent, on-brand, professionally presented club is a club that people take seriously, and serious clubs attract serious members.
The broader picture
There is a reason that nearly 300 Fortune 500 companies run internal Toastmasters clubs. It is not because their employees cannot communicate. It is because the companies that invest in structured, regular communication practice outperform those that do not.
The skills being built in your club every week, how to think on your feet, how to give feedback that changes behaviour, how to hold a room when the nerves arrive uninvited, are the skills that employers are actively looking for and struggling to find.
You are building them. Week by week. Meeting by meeting.
The work of the PR team this year is to make sure the world knows that. Through our Masterclass series, through PR Connect, through the templates we are building and the campaigns we are running, we are creating the conditions for District 71 clubs to be found by people who are ready for exactly what Toastmasters offers.
But we need your clubs to show up.
Use the tools. Promote your meetings. Tell your story. Invite your HR manager, your colleague, your neighbour. The next member of your club is almost certainly someone who already knows they need what you have. They just have not found you yet.
Let us lead together.
For support with your club’s PR, contact the PR team or join the VPPR WhatsApp community.
Stallone-Obaraemi Samuel
Public Relations Manager
Featured Articles
Meeting expectations at Division D
Division D delivered Club Officers Training Part 1 (COT-1) at Kavanagh’s in Portlaoise on Saturday morning. 55 registered, 42 turned
Club Officer Training – The Triple A Experience
Many remember their first Toastmasters speech. But do you remember your first Toastmasters committee role? As a first-time Vice President
Start a Toastmasters Club at Your Workplace!
Are you loving your time at your local club and keen to introduce it to your colleagues at work? The
Become Part of the 1%
If you are working towards your DTM, becoming a Club Coach is one of the most rewarding ways to join
Achievement Recognition
Growth Giveaway-Preston Speaking Club & Heworth Toastmasters
Congratulations to Preston Speaking Club (Area 48) and Heworth Toastmasters (Area 29) for being the inaugural winners of our Growth
Clondalkin Talkin’ Celebrates a Double Success
Clondalkin Talkin’ Toastmasters was delighted to be recognised as a Smedley Distinguished Club for 2025–2026.This achievement reflects a successful year
A wonderfully successful Rose Conference
As Celebration is as important as Recognition, as many of the 2026 Rose Conference Core Team team who could attend
Recognising Members Taking on New Roles
No Excuses Online Toastmasters Club is introducing a new initiative to recognise members who step outside their comfort zone and
Poet in Residence
Benita Nwulu
Poet in Residence
September Sings
Podcasts
From the Editor’s Desk
John Leech
D71 Newsletter Editor
There’s a back-to-school feeling to September, and the district has come back sharp, pencils at the ready and we are already up and moving, which is fitting given Steve’s call this month to turn good intentions into action. Autumn suits us. As Benita puts it in her poem, September sings begin again. You’ll find that spirit right through these pages, from the Magnificent 7 stepping up at Club Officer Training, to Preston and Heworth taking the very first Growth Giveaway, Clondalkin Talkin’ earning Smedley Distinguished, and our first DTM of the year. What stays with me, though, is the quieter thread underneath it all: Dan’s reminder that a simple check-in can bring a member back, and that the conversations behind a Club Success Plan matter more than the plan itself. If yours is still sitting in a drawer ahead of the 30 September deadline, take this as a friendly nudge. As ever, the newsletter is only as good as what you send in, so keep the stories, photos and club highlights coming.
As always, this newsletter is only as good as what you send in. Thank you to everyone who contributed, and do keep the stories, photos, and club highlights coming. I hope you enjoy this month’s read. If you are a Club PRO, make it your mission to have your club featured several times this year.
Here’s the link to submit content again, in case you need it:
https://forms.d71toastmasters.org/share-news
John Leech
D71 Newsletter Editor