• Posted on Apr 4, 2024

Have you ever been asked to pay to receive an award before?

“Thank you for clarifying. I understand no one specifically has nominated me and that those who attend and who are honored, are required to pay the $3k fee to participate. I understand your pre-qualification process as an effort to get people to participate in your $3,000 conference and less about receiving a meaningful award. Legitimate programs do not charge awardees to receive an award. No thank you.”

That’s the last message I sent to a representative of a conference who reached out to me about my “nomination” for an award.  

Have you ever heard of the Education 2.0 Conference USA? If not, I’d say beware! I was approached by a representative from their conference via LinkedIn. This is not unusual, since I am a speaker and get approached often for conference engagements.

The Education 2.0 Conference USA targets people working in academia. My experience is they contact you to discuss the “recognition section” at their upcoming conference. They will explain that they have “reached out to you regarding your nomination for ‘Outstanding Leadership Award’ for the conference” and immediately try to get you on a phone call.

However, if you review their website and ask for clarification if indeed someone has nominated you for one of their awards and put two and two together, you will learn that no one specifically nominated you for anything. You will learn that their conference folks actually administer nomination. Your gift for accepting the nomination is to be required to pay $3,000 to attend their conference to receive said award. In short, its vanity program – like the “who’s who” directory that was popular many years ago.

Professionally, I have been awarded and recognized as well as many of my clients. I can tell you 100% if the organization is legitimate –  you will not be required to pay 1 cent to receive your award. Occasionally you might be asked to donate, especially if it’s a non-profit, but a financial contribution will never be a requirement to receive an award from a legitimate process.

I have not attended any of their conferences. I’m not saying the whole conference is scam. What I am saying is the way they run their bait and switch award program certainly comes off as a scam, in my humble opinion.

There have been conferences where I’ve been paid to speak. There’s been conferences where I presented and was required to pay the conference fee. In these cases, it was worth it because my target audience was there. In these cases, it was never over $300, much less $3,000.

✔️ Have you ever been asked to pay to receive an award before?

✔️ Why are these types of pay-to-be awarded programs so successful for organizations like the Education 2.0 Conference USA?

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