All about guest speakers.
Getting a guest speaker in is a great way to help support your members and achieve the objectives of your society. A guest speaker might be an industry expert, someone to teach you a new skill or perhaps someone to entertain your society. Whilst the Union encourages societies to seek out external speakers there are a few considerations you should think about to keep you and your members safe as well as keeping in line with Union policies.
When you reach out to a potential guest speaker make sure that you use your official society email account and remain professional (check out our guide on using your society email account here).
Let us know.
As part of the process you need to let us know that you're inviting someone to speak at your event, so please fill out our Guest Speakers Form here. We advise that you give us at least 3 weeks to process your request, so please aim to plan in advance so that we can process your request. If there's any last minute changes please let Christy know.
Paying your speakers.
We know that speakers sometimes want payment even if it's just to cover expenses. Whilst we don't have a set limit for paying guest speakers, we'd advise that you use your common sense, especially when expenses/fees go over £100. Talk to your commitee members about whether your members would see the benefit from a really expensive guest speaker (compared to someone less expensive) and discuss how you're going to fund that expense.
Payments should be made from your society bank account.
Here is a link to our full guest speaker policy.