Yale SOM Honorarium Guidelines

An honorarium is a token payment made to bestow recognition to an individual for a significant service they perform, for which payment is not required or requested. SOM's honorarium guidelines seek to recognize the significance and function of a speaker's time and service and to serve as a vehicle for bringing talent to our community. These guidelines affirm SOM's commitment to empower members of the School to compensate guests for their time and talents and to provide the necessary internal support to offer such compensation.

SOM sees honoraria as an important tool for expanding the pool of potential guests to the School and for lowering barriers that guest speakers may face as a result of their industry (e.g., social enterprise, nonprofit, etc.), role (e.g., startup founder, small business owner, etc.), or background (e.g., underrepresented identity, grassroots leader, etc.).

SOM encourages all sponsors to offer an honorarium to all keynote invitees, but importantly, this is not a requirement.

Honorarium Limit is $500

  • This applies to all student club conference Keynote Speakers or Moderators.
  • Clubs are responsible for covering the cost of the honorarium fee from their own Club External Funding source.
  • Honorarium amounts that exceed $1,000 must be approved by the Dean's Office. Requests should be sent to somdeansoffice@yale.edu.

Conference organizers can offer honoraria to:

  • Keynote speakers or moderators for student club conferences

Conference organizers cannot offer honoraria to:

  • SOM or Yale faculty, staff, or students
  • Individuals invited to conferences in any non-keynote capacity (e.g., breakout session, concurrent session, smaller conference activity, etc.)
  • Visitors to student club meetings or club speakers
  • Speakers in academia invited to speak on topics directly related to their area of work
  • Recruiters, or any speakers from an organization actively recruiting at SOM. To determine whether a guest or their organization is actively recruiting at SOM, student club conference organizers and speaker series organizers will work with Rebecca Stekloff (Career Development). This does not apply to faculty-invited classroom guests.