In the repertoire of Toastmasters abbreviations, DCP short for Distinguished Club Program is a critical piece of the club success plan. Toastmasters defines the DCP as “an annual program, running from July 1 through June 30. The program consists of 10 goals your club should strive to achieve during this time.” The DCP provides a standard of excellence for the club. Just as joining fitness center is not enough to achieve physical goals, joining Toastmasters is not enough to achieve success as a speaker or leader—one has to work the program and the DCP provides the framework to track how well the club is doing in helping its members to succeed. The DCP focuses primarily on education and membership — two fundamentals of a successful club.
At the beginning of the Toastmasters year, the new club officers should meet and determine how they will work to achieve the DCP goals. While certain goals are generally delegated to certain officers, club officers are a team and need to work together to achieve success. The remaining club members also have an obligation to work through manuals and projects, pay dues on time, and help to recruit new members. The goals are identified below along with the Club Officer responsible for that goal.
Goals 1 and 2: Two Competent Communicator (CC) awards and two more CCs. (VP-Education)
Goals 3 and 4: One Advanced Communicator (AC) and one more AC. (Having members who are working on advanced manuals demonstrates that a club is retaining dedicated members.) (VP-Education)
Goals 5 and 6: One Competent Leader (CL), Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB), Advanced Leader Silver (ALS) or Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) award, and one more CL, ALB, ALS or DTM. (VP-Education)
Goals 7 and 8: Add four new members to the club and four more new members. (With the ongoing churn of members due to new jobs, new commitments, it is important to grow with new members.) (VP-Membership)
Goal 9: Four club officers participate in both the summer and winter annual club officer training. (Trained club officers is essential to member success. According the Toastmaster policy, credit is not given for non-officers attending in place of elected officers, and credit is given only for one person per office.) (All officers)
Goal 10: Timely submission of an officer list and membership dues. (Secretary/Treasurer)
When a club participates in the Distinguished Club Program and achieves Distinguished recognition, everyone benefits from both new skills and new ideas, not to mention new friends.
On July 1, Toastmasters International calculates the number of goals clubs achieved in the previous year and recognizes them as a Distinguished Club, Select Distinguished Club, or President’s Distinguished Club as follows:
- Achieve five of 10 goals to be a Distinguished Club
- Achieve seven of 10 goals to be a Select Distinguished Club
- Achieve nine of 10 goals to be a President’s Distinguished Club
District 83 is on its way to success in 2017-2018. Congrats to Bayer, Hunterdon Speak Easy, State Street, Opportunity Seeking, Freehold Phrasers, Impact 21, AT&T Middletown, Westfield, Fairleigh Early Birds for completing 5 DCP goals thus far.
There is still plenty of time before June 30, 2018 for members to complete “one level up” of an education-leadership designation, to have open houses, membership campaigns and for officers to attend training.
Let’s do all we can to make our clubs distinguished.
