Making a flipchart easel or banner stand for your Toastmasters club

When you look at web sites like Amazon or Wayfair, you will see that you can buy a bewildering variety of flip chart easels for prices ranging from about $60. Fancier ones also have whiteboards (as shown above) and may even be magnetic.

But if your club has more time than money (and some crafty members), you might prefer to make rather than buy. At YouTube I found a four-minute video by Andy at westvalley411 on How to make an easel for a flip chart (and why) for $20.00 in 30 minutes. He mentioned it might be useful to have the legs fold. The Brushy Fork Institute at Berea College has instructions for Building a folding flip chart easel. If you prefer plastic, PVC pipe also can be used. At The Owl Teacher there is an article on using 3/4” PVC pipe in a DIY easel for your classroom.

Toastmasters International sells a $110 black portable stand (Item 324) for holding a 35” wide by 47” high club banner. Our club instead uses a $25 banner stand bought from Amazon. At the Instructables Living web site there is an article on using 1 /2” PVC pipe to build A simple banner stand. That design uses a five-way cross fitting that you can buy from Formufit to make an x-shaped base. District 53 Toastmasters has another base design using only tees and elbows. To find their .pdf file just search on Google for the phrase “Toastmasters_Banner_Stand_Instructions”.     

Images of a flipchart easel and a crosscut saw came from Wikimedia Commons.