“Why does any organization pay any famous person to speak?”
Several standard “party-line” public relations answers occur to me, but I realize none are fundamentally good answers.
Your question is a darn good one.
From the point of view of the recipient, the monies received are usually sizeable, out of proportion to the task “homoraria,” which additionally add a fake luster to the recipient. It is interesting to comtemplate what would happen to this “system,” if either the grantors stopped giving money beyond basic the speaker’s actual travel expenses. Universities and non-profits and sectarian organizations spend big buck government-source and donor source money this way. It’s easy to spend someone else’s money. Members and constituents should start complaining and withholding funds. The government would only withhold funds if a lot of speakers with the “wrong point of view” were paid to speak.
Typo is my post just before this. I’m not seeing straight. The word, of course, is “HONORARIA,” (singular: “HONORARIUM)