Financial Officer: Adam S. Kahn (adamkahn@stanford.edu)
Amount Approved: $112,296
Full Budget

What is the mission and purpose of your student group?

The purpose of the ASSU Speakers Bureau is to provide the
Stanford community with relevant and high-profile speakers to
talk about the works, life experiences, and issues in which they
have been heavily involved.  We aim to bring a wide variety of
speakers that reflect the diverse interests of the student body
while simultaneously ensuring that their special fees are well
budgeted to bring speakers which have a relatively wide appeal
and will be well attended at no cost to students who pay their
Speakers Bureau special fee.  Our speakers this year included
Governor Howard Dean, Tom Friedman, and Candace Bushnell.  A list
of past events can be seen on our website at
http://speakers.stanford.edu/

Why are you requesting Special Fees?

Special Fees provides a unique opportunity for students at
Stanford to collectively bring outstanding individuals to speak
on campus.  At no other point in our lives will we be able to
pool our resources and leverage a name like Stanford University
to attract such interesting and relevant speakers.  We also act
as a resource to other groups on campus that need information,
logistical help, or funding in order to plan and hold their own
speaking events.

What are the three largest line item requests in your budget and why?

1.  Honoraria - A large majority of our funding is for our
honoraria line item.  We use this line item to pay the speaker
fees that many of the speakers that come to Stanford to speak
charge.

2.  Travel Fares - Most speakers require first class travel and
travel from the east coast.  When at all possible we try to
schedule speakers when they are already on the west coast on a
tour or have other speaking engagements so we can share in the
travel costs thereby reducing them substantially.

3.  Cosoponsorships - We provide dozens of student organizations
with funding each year for speaking events they plan and
undertake.

If you applied for Special Fees last year, is there an increase in the
amount you're seeking this year?  If so, why?

Yes, we have requested an increase in funding this year.  A
majority of our budget increase is in the form of a higher
honoraria.  Some of the most highly sought after speakers such as
Bill Clinton or Colin Powell can charge as much as six figures
for an appearance.  We try to bring as many high-profile and
interesting speakers to campus as possible within our budgetary
constraints and we do our best to make every dollar count. 
Unfortunately these speakers are very expensive and we need to
expand our honoraria in order to ensure that the Stanford
community has continued access to their unique pespectives.  We
also must make occasional adjustments because all of our events
are completely free to students who pay Special Fees, thereby
eliminating any sources of revenue.

In addition, our cosponsorship program has been so successful
over the last few years, in order to assist all the groups who
have made requests, we may not have been able to give these
individual groups as much money as we would have liked. 
Therefore we are raising our cosponsorship budget by almost 50%.