It would have been a bit presumptious of me to title this as "The Hall of Learners Advanced Tostmasters, a.k.a. HOLA's winning success formula", but that is what I will try to explain here in greater detail. I will mention the goals of HOLA - and why we did them.
First, and foremost, our leadership's driving principle has always been giving our members their money's worth in joining the club. We cannot escape the fact that Toastmasters has increased it's semi-annual joining fee from $45 to $60. For a country that has it's currency much lower in value to the US dollar, this represents Philippine members with a double whammy. How much is a memebrship worth these days? Let's put it realistically at one dollar being equivalent to 60 pesos - though it hasn't hit the 60 mark yet, unless our country does something really great, or the US does something stupid, we'll peg the exchange rate as such. So... that would be 60 x 60 or P3,600 per semester. P7,200 annually.
Not exactly small potatoes when you think that not all members are rich. Many are employed, so to enjoy the continued benefits of Toastmasters, we need to set asside money for this every March and September (to beat the April and October cut-off). But wait... here's another consideration. That is for one club. Early on, to be a member of an Advanced Club like HOLA, one would have to first be an active Toastmaster (with their current home club), and then join this one with an additional $60 again. So that P7,200 is now multiplied by two. Each HOLA member is paying that semi-annually to be able to enjoy HOLA.
We forget this at times. It bears reminding.
Back then, we thought, well... since HOLA is goiing to be the second Advanced club in the Metro Manila area - this one being situated in the southern part of the metro, we could offer the club as an alternative to those attending the other advanced club on the northern part of the Metro. But this is little reason in times where having virtual meetings became an acceptable norm some recent years past due to a global pandemic. One could atttend any of these meetings while lounging at home.
So what else could we use to make HOLA unique? The club's founder, Joyce Delovieres, initially focused on a select number of leaders and doers from Division H. It was a way to pool together the best and brightest into one club - an advanced club. Of coursem we had our 'now what?' moment. What makes an Advanced Club. Far as we knew, it was a Toastmasters Club - yes... still following the Educational and Leadership norms of the organization. Thing is, just being invited to be part of the Charter membership of this club, and all it's promises, was enough for me to pay the extra membership fee. Even if I already was a member of two clubs back then.
Social Media
I was tasked to be the Vice-President for Public Relations - timely, I though, more so since I was silently stewing at how hard it was to get members for the other clubs I was with. I felt back then that both clubs were not doing enough to get known... recognized. There was passive Marketing at best. As HOLA's VPPR, this would be my chance to try on a few ideas. The goal would be to make noise - be recognized... first with the Division, then later, beyond it. The cheapest way to make noice? Social Media.
One of my first Instagram poster was a meme from TI reposting it at HOLA's page - and I invited some friends to see it. One happened to be District Director Ninio Sepulveda. He liked it. Shared it with his council, then wrote a quick message to Pres. Joyce thanking her for the initiative. Division Director Abe later shared the screenshots of DD Ninio to the council. That was a bit of surprise. I just wanted to amke a noise... not realizing the repercussions in D75. But hey, this showed that we were on the right track - and now most District Council members were made to realize that there is HOLA. We exist. PR success.
Believe me when I say, I forgot about that tidbit of HOLA hsitory until just now. Must be my age catching up with me. You see, the goal was to make noise. To let Toastmasters in H and beyond, know HOLA existed. WHy? Because unlike regular Toastmasters clubs that can recruit any non-Toastmaster, we had to rely on recruiting Toastmasters - more of this later. :D
Before we could invite members to join, they would first need to know we existed. THen they would need to see that we were worth another $120 annually. The frist was doing fine. This plus inviting our members to always post HOLA activities on their FB pages, so theri freinds could see it. If we wanted to attract memerbship, we would have to prove that we were a club worth knowing and being a part of.
At around the same time we wereletting Toastmasters know who we were, we though of having an image. One that, hopefully, when they see, they will recognize it as the HOLA mark. We asked our mmebers to start coming up with designs for the HOLA logo. In the end we had roughly 13 submissions, and chose the top three, then asekd our members to vote a second round, to choose one design. The design chosen was the one submitted by TM Abby, It is the logo we use in our meeting program, in our certificates and in our meeting background slides. We palce it proudly beside the Toastmaters logo in every chance we get to promote something of HOLA. Then again, there are times we don't feel the need to place the image of HOLA. It can be a tricky situation - but I consider the use of the HOLA logo as something for official use. For insider materials, we nca dispense with showing the logo - just like some project announcment need not have a politician's mug shot displayed.
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