10 Ways Your Career Center Can Afford a National Speaker - CareerEnlightenment.com

I agreed to speak for a reduced fee at Portland Community College this year because the coordinator got a local reporter to interview me about my book. It would have cost me much more than my discount to hire a PR firm who can only promise a chance of media exposure. The interview helped me sell books and I can keep the footage for my press kit.4. Organize a Train-the-Trainer with Your ConsortiumMost speakers will charge between $5,000 $10,000 for half-day trainings at professional associations. Most consortiums have between 15-40 members (that’s what makes it a consortium!). For a single institution, $5,000 can be a steep fee. But when 20 members pay only $250 for professional development, then the cost of the learning is cheap. Especially if you can add CEU credits to the event.If you’re a member of a consortium, your job will be to call each member and get their buy-in. Typically, a consortium member would have to take initiative in such an event. I was speaking with a school in Iowa who wasn’t able to afford my fee. So they contacted all 30 members of their career professional’s consortium and got 20 schools to agree to share the fee. It took him a week to set it up, but he managed to organize a great event for himself and his colleagues.Since training is only a half-day, and the speaker is getting a proper fee, why not ask them to stick around for a quick afternoon keynote with your students at a steep discount of course. Give them an energy drink if they’re tired!5. Convince Your President You Need a Senior DayPart of the reason why you may be having trouble getting budget for a speaker is because you might not have an annual speaking event which requires that level of cash, let’s call it a Senior Day. A Senior Day is a full Saturday in January or February adorned with national career speakers, workshops, resume writing and fire tossing. The key is that it happens every year so that the budget is simply maintained.The hard part, as I’m sure you’ve picked up on, is starting an annual Senior Day in the first place. From my experience, it would seem that approval for such a shindig would have to come from high-up, like the president of the college. And what does the president of the college care about? Fund raising! Your Senior Day could have big results for the college as it represents a major benchmark in the institution’s success, especially when you can measure improvements in hiring and who recruits from your university.If schools are often ranked by how well their students place jobs, and rankings affect how much money the school can charge for tuition, and better job programs help the president raise even more money from alumni, then I think you have a clincher.Download the restTo get the remaining 5, visit my speaking page.