CSP application with eSpeakers

CSP application with eSpeakers

With EventCX you can monitor your progress toward the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP®) designation from the National Speakers Association (NSA), and easily generate the event list portion of the application when you're ready to apply.

As often as you want, EventCX will show you a useful visual chart of your progress toward CSP®. This chart looks over the last 10 years of your information and intelligently compares it to the application requirements to visually show you how close you are. When you're ready to apply, EventCX will prepare the Excel spreadsheet part of your application for you to download and send to the NSA.

Tracking and generating the CSP® application is a feature of a PRO-level account. Need to upgrade?

For other questions regarding the CSP® application process, please reference the NSA's documentation and web page .


Check your CSP® progress

Launch the CSP applicationSettings for the CSP application
Check your progress toward CSP® every day if you want to! It takes only a few seconds to find out how close you are.


  1. Launch EventCX and sign in with your eSpeakers username and password.
  2. Open the MY EVENTS menu and choose CSP APPLICATION (users attached to multiple speakers will have a menu item for each individual speaker they manage).
  3. A separate window will open showing a settings screen requiring 2 things:
    1. Indicate which of your event service fee group codes should be totaled for your event fee. Each time you enter a SERVICE item on an event, you choose (or make up a new) GROUP CODE for that item as a shorthand way to show what type of fee it is. Some fees (honorarium and same-day-sales) should be counted toward the fee for your application. Other fees (travel, sales not on the event day, commissions paid to bureaus, etc.) should not be counted toward the event's fee.

      For instance, if you coded your keynote fees as KEYN, your workshop fees as WKSP, and your travel fees as TRVL, then you should check ON the KEYN and WKSP group codes, and leave OFF the TRVL code.
    2. Indicate any salary to apply toward your income. If you spoke as a salaried employee during any of the 10 prior years and want to consider events you did as part of that salaried job, enter the amount of salary to count per year. For instance, if one year you earned $80,000 and 25% of your job was speaking, you should enter $20,000 into the salary box for that year. If you didn't speak for a salary in a year, just leave the box for that year empty.
  4. Click the GET MY CSP REPORT button at the bottom of the screen to continue and see your progress report. 


What does the progress report tell me?


The progress report visually shows your progress toward completing the event requirements for the CSP®. It shows you whether you fulfill the "hard" requirements (number of events, income, etc.) as well as some "fuzzy" checks for things that will raise a red flag when the NSA looks at your application.

The progress report looks at data from the current day back 10 years.

Hard requirements
  1. How many qualified engagements
  2. How many years you met the income requirement
  3. Your percentage of small audience events (between 3 and 15 attendees)
  4. Your percentage of virtual events (not on-site)
  5. Whether you have enough evaluation contacts identified

Fuzzy checks
  1. Too many events on one day
  2. Groups of events with an unusually low fee
  3. Events with a fee much higher or lower than your average
  4. Event List
List of events
Below the visual checklist display, a table all of the considered events from the last 10 years is displayed. The table includes controls that help you find and fix problems:
  1. Click a column head to sort by that column
  2. Click a row to expand the row to display the contact information, fee items, and audience size
  3. Click the external link icon next to the event name to open EventCX right to that event
  4. Click any of the tags in the right-hand column to bring all of the events with that tag to the top
For instance, if you have too many virtual events, you can click the VIRTUAL tag on any event in the list to sort the virtual events to the top of the list. If you recognize events that were mistakenly identified this way, click the event's link icon to open EventCX to that event and fix it.


Generate the event list portion of your CSP® application

  1. Follow the instructions above to check your progress
  2. While looking at your progress results, click the DOWNLOAD EXCEL button
  3. Save the .xlsx file to your hard drive, noting where you choose to save it
  4. If desired, open the downloaded file in Excel, Numbers, OpenOffice, Google Docs, or any other application that can read standard Excel files, to see what was generated. You can make any adjustments you want to the spreadsheet before sending it to the NSA via email ( cspadmin@nsaspeaker.org ).


Can I back-fill old events to make my records complete?

Yes.

If you haven't been using the EventCX to manage your speaking calendar during the past 10 years, you can catch up by entering events that are back-dated (i.e., happened in the past). There's no limit to how far in the past the EventCX will allow you to enter events.


When I enter events in EventCX, what fields are required for CSP®?

Note: with a BASIC account you are able to track some of the information needed to generate your CSP application. A PRO account is required to collect all of the information needed.
  1. Event fees : Use the SERVICES list on the SERVICES tab to enter the fees you collected for the event. Appropriate fee line items you enter for a particular event will be totaled to create your fee for the event. If you do work in different countries, be sure to enter all fees adjusted to USD.
    When you generate the application, you'll have a chance to select which grouping codes (each line item has an associated 4- to 6-character code you create) to include toward the total fee. If you want to enter services (like travel, bureau commission, etc.) for record keeping purposes that you do not want included in the total, just be sure to code the items consistently and then uncheck those codes to exclude in the application setup screen when you view your report.
  2. Client contact, phone, email : Each event on your application has a single set of contact information for it. As you enter events in the eSpeakers App, be sure to use the CONTACTS list on the CONTACTS tab to enter at least one contact for the event. Include at least name, phone, email, and address. Any of these contacts may be called by NSA staff to validate your claim. In additional to that, at least 20 (30 is better) must be identified to receive an evaluation form that will be returned to the NSA. Be sure that at least 20 of your qualified events have a contact with the CSP EVALUATION CONTACT checkbox turned on.
  3. Topic and title of presentation : The application lists a "topic and title" for each event in the list. This information comes from the PRESENTATION field on the MISC tab.
  4. Event type : indicate whether the event was on-site or virtual (phone or web) on the EVENT TYPE field on the DETAILS tab.
  5. Status : indicate that the event was confirmed by setting the STATUS field on the DETAILS tab to "confirmed" or "closed".
  6. Performed as an employee : if you performed an engagement as a salaried employee, check the box labeled PERFORMED FOR SALARIED JOB on the MISC tab. When you bring up the CSP progress report settings screen, be sure to enter the portion of your salary that was for speaking that year. Any fees entered on the SERVICES tab for this event will be ignored.
  7. Stagetime : Make sure at least one STAGETIME is entered on the DETAILS tab; without that the report has no way to know when that event took place. Venue is optional, but if the event was on-site you should enter at least the city and state.
  8. Audience size : Enter the size of the audience into the AUDIENCE SIZE field on the MISC tab. Enter a single number (400) and avoid a range (200-500). Avoid using commas or any characters besides digits.
  9. Organization and meeting name : Enter the name of the company to which you spoke, and a description of the event in the PRESENTING TO and EVENT REASON fields on the DETAILS tab. For instance, the "Presenting to" might be "Ford Motor Company" and the "Event Reason" might be "Managers Quarterly Training Meeting"


How do I exclude events on my calendar from the CSP® application?

The CSP application process will ignore events where any of these are true:
  1. the PERSONAL/BLACKOUT checkbox is ON
  2. the INCLUDE ON CSP APPLICATION checkbox (on the MISC tab) is OFF
  3. the event STATUS is anything besides CONFIRMED or CLOSED


What do the event warning tags in the results mean?

The CSP report warns of many of the things that will stand out to the NSA as a potential problem, by tagging the event with one of several tags if it sees a problem:

  1. NO FEE
    Either check the event's PERFORMED FOR SALARIED JOB checkbox on the MISC tab, or add at least one service (on the SERVICES tab). If the event already has services on it, make sure that you are including the service's group code on the CSP setup page. 

  2. FUNKY FEE
    The fee (sum of all matching services on the SERVICES tab) on the event was quite a bit different (lower or higher) than your average. This isn't necessarily a problem if it's legitimate. You might include a note to the NSA referencing the event and explaining why the fee was so different. 
    If you haven't entered many events for the report to consider, this tag can get applied because there's not enough data to get a good average. Safe to ignore while you're doing bulk entry.

  3. LOW ATTENDEE 
    Make sure you've entered a value for the AUDIENCE SIZE for the event, and that enough of your events are above the NSA's minimum requirement for attendees.

  4. NO SALARY
    You have checked the event's box for PERFORMED FOR SALARIED JOB, but left the salary for that year empty on the CSP setup page. Fix by entering a salary amount on the CSP setup page for the year in which the event took place. 

  5. LOW FEE GROUP
    You have several events that are close on the calendar and have a fee that is lower than your average. If this is legitimate, you might append a note to your application referencing the events and explaining the fee. If you have plenty of qualifying events you could get rid of the warning by excluding a few of the events in the group by unchecking the INCLUDE IN CSP APPLICATION checkbox. 

  6. SAME DAY 
    Flagged when you have multiple events on the same day for the same client (PRESENTING TO field), which is possible but not common. If you have a legitimate case, add a note referencing the events and explaining.

  7. NO CONTACT 
    The event needs to have at least one contact on the event who the NSA can call or email. That contact must have an email address and a phone number to count.

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