Toastmasters club meeting roles

At each club meeting, several roles can be performed by the club and sister club members, including:


The Toastmaster is responsible for coordinating and conducting the meeting and acting as a genial host, including introducing participants. The Toastmaster sets the tone for the entire meeting.

Serving as Toastmaster is an excellent way to practice planning, preparation and organisation skills, time management, facilitation, motivation and team-building skills as you strive to make the meeting one of the club's best.


In a programme that can include contributions from 20 - 25 people, the control of timing is extremely important. This is also a valuable lesson for speakers to learn, both in and outside of Toastmasters: listeners always like a speaker who doesn't over-run!

The Timer is the member responsible for keeping track of the time. Each segment of the meeting is timed. This exercise is an excellent opportunity to practice giving instructions and time management.

Topics Master

The Toastmasters program has a tradition - every member speaks at a meeting. The Table Topics session of the meeting ensures this tradition. The purpose of this activity is to have members "think on their feet" and speak for a minute or so. The Topics Master prepares and issues the topics; originality is desirable as much as possible.

Being the Topics Master provides excellent practice in such leadership skills as planning, preparation, organisation, time management and facilitation. This is a creative role that is good for trying different variations, and it does give you a brilliant opportunity to take control of part of the meeting.

Topics Evaluator

The Topics Evaluator is responsible for the evaluation of the Table topics segment of the meeting.


A major portion of each meeting is centred around three or more speakers. Their speeches are prepared based on project objectives in the Pathways Educational Programme. Serving as a speaker is an excellent opportunity to practice public speaking skills. Planning, preparation, organisation and time management are essential to success as a speaker.

Speech Evaluators

Speech Evaluators have the important responsibility of evaluating individual prepared speakers.

Evaluators are usually quite experienced speakers who will have completed at least three or four prepared speeches. In addition to your verbal evaluation, you will give the speaker a written evaluation. Your purpose is to help the speaker become confident and more effective and achieve their goals.


Grammarian introduces a word of the day and notes language and grammar usage of all speakers.


Harkmaster takes notes during the meeting and devises questions for a quiz to test the audiences listening skills at the end of the meeting.


Blogger takes photographs and makes notes during the meeting to write a blog post that goes on our website.

General evaluator

General Evaluator is responsible for the evaluation of anything and everything that takes place throughout the entire meeting. In practice, this means evaluating every participant, except prepared speakers who have individual evaluators and topics speakers who are evaluated by the Topics Evaluator.

The General Evaluator position provides excellent practice in such leadership skills as critical thinking, planning, preparation and organisation, time management, motivation and team building.