Recently, Toastmasters, the international speaking and leadership organization, announced a price increase from $60 per half year to $72 per half year. This is after another increase a few years earlier, nearly doubling the dues in a decade.
When I see the new $72 semiannual dues, I don’t just see a price increase. I see the warning signs of a death spiral that we should take very seriously if we’d like to see Toastmasters continue to thrive.
Fundamentally, the issue is that we need to stop changing the tires on the boat and ask if this boat really benefits from having tires.
I’m taking the time to share this because Toastmasters is about evaluation and feedback. This is my evaluation for Toastmasters, because I love this organization and want it to still be around for my daughter to join one day.
The $12 by itself is not going to destroy the organization. The problem is what the increase may represent.
Anyone who has spent time in business or consulting has seen this pattern. An organization starts losing customers or members, but many of its expenses remain. It raises prices to make up the difference. The higher price makes the offering less attractive, so more people leave. That creates another revenue problem, which produces another price increase.
Keep going long enough and you end up with a shrinking group of loyal customers being asked to carry an organization that was built for a much larger population.
That is a structural death spiral, and I think Toastmasters may be entering one.
The uncomfortable part is that Toastmasters is not merely charging more. It is charging more at the same time that the value of membership feels lower and participation has become more cumbersome.
A great deal of that has to do with Pathways.
Before anyone decides that I am simply confused by technology, I’m not. I create software. I run an online business. I figured out Pathways without help, and have fully completed 18 levels of Pathways.
I know how to use it.
I just hate using it.
It is slow, awkward, needlessly complicated, and irritating enough that I now give fewer speeches to my own club. I joined Toastmasters because I love speaking and wanted to do more of it. Now, when I think about giving a speech, I often decide not to. By the time I think about the slow load times, arcane interfaces, and meandering corporate-vibe training, I no longer feel like giving the speech.
Toastmasters has managed to create a speaking program whose software discourages me from speaking.
That is quite an accomplishment.
It is even more frustrating when I mentor a new member. I want to talk with them about how to organize a speech, how to tell a story, how to get comfortable in front of a room, how to use humor without forcing it, and how to make an audience care.
Instead, we spend our time trying to find things in Pathways.
Can you log in?
Did you choose a path?
Do you know where the project is?
Did you open the right screen?
Can you find the evaluation form?
Why is the page taking so long?
No, that is not where it used to be.
Try this menu.
Maybe try another browser.
By the time we finish dealing with the platform, there is little time left to talk about speaking.
This is backwards.
New members are not walking into Toastmasters clubs because they have always dreamed of learning to operate a learning-management system. They want to become more confident. They want to speak better. They want feedback. They want practice. They want community.
Yet clubs now have mentors helping members with Pathways, officers explaining Pathways, workshops teaching Pathways, and endless conversations about how to get people to engage with Pathways.
At some point, I would like us to remember that people join Toastmasters to speak.
The old model was not perfect, but it understood this. You received a manual, opened it, read the next project, and gave the speech.
There was very little ceremony around the manual because the manual was not the point. It supported what happened in the club.
Pathways has become a side quest that consumes far too much of the main game.
It has also changed the cost structure of Toastmasters. Printed manuals cost money to create, print, store, and ship, but once a manual was in someone’s hands, it worked. It did not need hosting, maintenance, cybersecurity, technical support, vendor management, integrations, browser testing, accessibility repairs, or another expensive migration when the first platform became intolerable.
The manuals were largely a per-unit cost. Toastmasters paid to produce and deliver each book. Pathways carries ongoing fixed and semi-fixed costs that must be paid regardless of how many members actively use it.
Pathways has to be maintained continuously, even if membership falls.
And membership has been falling.
Fewer members are now being asked to support an organization with substantial ongoing technology and headquarters costs. Dues rise to cover those costs. The higher price makes Toastmasters harder to recommend, particularly when local club dues are added. Some members leave and some prospective members never join.
Then the remaining members are asked to pay more.
This is not difficult to understand. What concerns me is how difficult it seems to be to discuss.
Whenever declining membership comes up, someone usually says that people do not join organizations anymore, especially younger people.
I don’t believe that.
People join CrossFit gyms. They join pickleball leagues, running clubs, gaming communities, online memberships, networking groups, creator communities, masterminds, professional groups, and all sorts of organizations built around learning, identity, friendship, and shared activity.
They spend plenty of money on them too.
A friend of mine runs a membership for speakers that charges $100 a month, and it is growing. People will pay when they see the value and do not have to fight the organization to receive it.
People have not lost the desire to belong. They are more selective about where they spend their money and time, and they have more alternatives than they used to.
It’s not that people aren’t joining organizations. They’re not joining this organization.
Toastmasters is not competing with the idea of staying home alone. It is competing with every other place where people can learn, make friends, build confidence, find community, and develop professionally.
When the price rises while the experience becomes more frustrating, people notice.
This is not about people refusing to join organizations. It is about why they are not joining Toastmasters.
The other problem is cultural. In some parts of Toastmasters, criticism of Pathways is treated as criticism of Toastmasters itself. If you say the platform is bad, someone assumes you are negative, resistant to change, unable to learn the system, or disloyal to the organization.
Pathways is not Toastmasters.
It is software Toastmasters uses to deliver part of its program. It should be judged by whether it serves members well. It is not a sacred object.
I can care deeply about Toastmasters and still think Pathways has been a damaging mistake. In fact, I am raising the issue because I care.
If I hated Toastmasters, I would leave.
I do not need Toastmasters. There are other places where I can speak, network, learn, and build relationships. I stay because I value the people I have met, the friendships I have made, the things I have learned, and the opportunities this organization has given me.
I want Toastmasters to be around in ten or twenty years. I want my daughter to be able to join it when she grows up. I want it to be something I can recommend without adding a warning about the software. I want to mentor people in speaking instead of spending our time on unpaid technical support.
The culture around Pathways makes that conversation harder because the people who dislike it most often stop complaining eventually… because they leave Toastmasters entirely.
They stop giving speeches. They stop attending. They do not renew.
Then the organization listens to the people who remain and decides that Pathways cannot be much of a problem.
Of course the people who remain are more willing to tolerate it. The others left.
You cannot measure satisfaction by talking only to people who have not canceled yet.
There is a way out of this, but we have to be brave enough to discuss it. The answer is not another LMS migration. At some point, Toastmasters needs to consider the possibility that it is replacing the wheels on a boat.
The organization should make its educational materials available as clean web pages, accessible PDFs, and printed manuals for members who want them. Let members read the project, give the speech, receive an evaluation, and have the completion recorded.
That is all most of us need.
Keep a simple record of completed awards. Stop building the entire educational experience around a cumbersome platform. Publish what Pathways actually costs. Invite serious critics into the discussion. Freeze dues while the organization examines whether its infrastructure is still appropriate for its current size.
Most of all, return the focus to what happens in the club.
Toastmasters still has a wonderful core idea. People become better speakers by speaking. They become better leaders by leading. They improve because other people pay attention, encourage them, and tell them the truth.
That model still works.
What is failing is the complexity Toastmasters has piled on top of it.
The $72 dues increase should be treated as a warning. Toastmasters can continue asking fewer people to pay more for a more frustrating experience until it collapses under its own weight, or it can simplify, lower the friction, and make the organization easy to love again.
I am talking about this because I desperately want the second option.
Toastmasters is a great organization, and I hope it can continue to be one.