How to Book The Top Clean Corporate Comedians and Funny Keynote Speakers for Corporate and Industry Events.

The cost varies depending on the comedian, the client, the location and the size of the audience. The Ivy League of Comedy‘s Shaun Eli is about the least-expensive skilled corporate comedian around. Locally for a small non-profit maybe $750, but for a large group, say a 250 person corporate sales conference that involves driving to, and an overnight stay, $5,000–$10,000 is a reasonable estimation for a comedian with a couple of television appearances. You may find someone to do it for $500 but you really do get what you pay for. Someone willing to work for $500 is someone moonlighting, not a full-time pro comedian. Note that it’s only a small fraction of comedians who can do a clean and corporate-appropriate half-hour to forty-five minutes. And your corporate event is no place for amateurs.

Musicians are less expensive, but you can’t compare comedians to musicians. There are a lot of very talented musicians and they could be pretty young because they started when they were six. They may not be expensive to book— they can practice on weekends and keep in practice. Comedians start as adults and have to perform thousands, yes, THOUSANDS of times to be skilled enough to take on the challenge of performing in front of people who have probably spent the whole day listening to other people talk. The audience just ate a big dinner and they want to go home, to the bar or back to their hotel room. You want a comedian who knows how to deal with just about anything that can go wrong at a comedy performance without getting angry, picking on the audience or ignoring what went wrong. As an example, if someone drops a tray of food, the audience loses focus and the comedian has to know how to get them back. Or someone at your event had too much to drink and won’t shut up. What works with hecklers in a comedy club may not be appropriate in a corporate setting. And there’s no bouncer to throw them out.

How far they have to travel (does it require a flight and overnight stay?), their level of experience and how famous they are. Someone that most people have heard of will be way more expensive but probably no funnier than the comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy (and often less funny, as they rely on their fame, rather than writing new material and honing their jokes).

In general we recommend 3-4 months but The Ivy League of Comedy can also handle last-minute bookings, so please reach out and ask. If it’s way last-minute, call us at 1 (914) 487-3866, don’t text or email.

The Ivy League of Comedy prefers to quote an all-in price so you don’t have to worry about travel expenses. Our rider is pretty simple. Regarding cancellation, if it’s weather that’s no problem at all (well, it kind of stinks, but we deal with it). If you need to cancel for your own reasons, if it’s far enough in advance it may be no problem or we may keep the deposit. If it’s close to the show date, you might be stuck, although anything we can save from canceling flights or hotels would go back to you. It really depends on the comic. Some will say they didn’t have anything else for that date, so it’s no loss. Others have passed up other opportunities, or they just want to get paid for having planned for the event. As the guy in charge here, I’m fine with giving back my portion, but that’s almost nothing.

We at The Ivy League of Comedy have done Q&A with the audience for over two decades— a lot of the comedians who are doing that now learned it from us. So yes, absolutely. Most of us love doing Q&A because it gives us an opportunity to demonstrate our ability to be spontaneously funny. And it’s always nice when someone’s curious about you.

Sure— take a look at our Testimonials page and have a look at some of the press we’ve gotten.

Shaun Eli’s The Ivy League of Comedy are experts at arranging corporate comedy shows and are happy to answer any questions you might have. Their comedians average well over two decades of experience as clean corporate stand-up comedians.

The best way is to work with a company like The Ivy League of Comedy that are experts at corporate comedy events. We also do shows for houses of worship, so you know that our material will be corporate-appropriate.

Typically we at The Ivy League of Comedy recommend 20-30 minutes. If it’s just the show— not part of a larger event like a conference, but just maybe dinner and client entertainment— we recommend 2-3 comedians and 60-90 minutes. But it’s your show— we can make recommendations but what do you want?

The comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy are experts at acting as emcees or event hosts. As far as acting as an auctioneer, if you need a comedian with extensive experience as a professional auctioneer, we can provide that too. Also, at least some of us have extensive experience moderating corporate panels. Feel free to ask for specific details.

Oh, we’re way easy, says The Ivy League of Comedy’s Shaun Eli. We need a decent sound system with a hand-held microphone (and a back-up mic). We don’t need projectors or screens. A stage and stage lighting are ideal but not required.

We do these shows. The Ivy League of Comedy’s comedians are experts at virtual shows, as we’ve learned the differences between in-person and virtual shows and have learned how to change our performance to accommodate the differences. And, unlike many comedians, we’re very happy to do virtual shows (which are also much less expensive for you).

The Ivy League of Comedy’s founder and CEO Shaun Eli majored in marketing at Wharton, so he’s probably a really good comedian for a sales event. If he’s not available he’s happy to recommend a number of his hilarious colleagues.

The Ivy League of Comedy’s comedians are excellent for health care conferences, for medical associations and for pharmaceutical companies. Founder Shaun Eli studied epidemiology and has a master’s degree in applied positive psychology from Penn.

That’s exactly what comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy do— we make people laugh and they leave with fond memories of your event. Many of us worked in industry, finance or law before becoming comedians so we’ve been to our fair share of conferences as attendees.

The comedian’s funnier. The comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy have one goal— to make the audience laugh. A lot. A keynote speaker may have a message, and that reduces the funny. We just want to make you laugh.

The Ivy League of Comedy‘s comedians can and often do, but it’s really not necessary. Most of us have at least a little material that can be adapted. If we open with a joke or two about your company, your products, your industry, or office life in general, and then towards the end we do another joke or two on the same topic, the audience will have the impression that the whole show was about them (yeah, it’s weird). If you do want specific topics covered, you need to give us enough notice to create new material. Real comedians write their own material— there’s not some master joke book we peruse to find jokes about various topics.

A lot. A club comic is used to a younger audience, one that’s probably consumed some alcohol, doesn’t care if the comedy’s dirty and isn’t sitting with their boss. So the club comic’s material might be about video games or drug use. A clean corporate comedian is unlikely to talk about those things at a corporate event. A good corporate comedian, like those from The Ivy League of Comedy, have extensive corporate comedy experience and their material will be appropriate for your event. Many of us also worked in industry, finance or law before becoming comedians.

That depends. Do you like to laugh? The comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy are experts at emceeing corporate events. And maybe the people who didn’t win any awards could use some cheering up!

What sorts of topics do you talk about, and what do you avoid? How long have you been a full-time professional comedian (or start with— are you a full-time pro comic)? What does “clean comedy” mean to you? The people from The Ivy League of Comedy are happy to spend significant time on the phone with you to make sure you’re super-comfortable with our shows.

No, it makes them far worse. First of all, there aren’t 2000 quality corporate comedians in the country. Far from it. Secondly, how could they know much about that many comics? Have they even seen them in front of an audience? Any audience at all? How could they possibly know which comedians keep their material up to date, or what they talk about? The Ivy League of Comedy founder and CEO Shaun Eli is, first and foremost, a comedian. He’s working with his colleagues at theatres, at charity events and at other venues. He knows what they talk about and how they’re doing. He’s not some guy sitting in a remote office who gets paid just for sending people out. And that booker? Could be keeping half or more of your money for himself. Yes, some of them are that greedy. So that $5000 you’re paying? You’re getting a $750 comic, and the booker owns a nice boat.

The Ivy League of Comedy provides dozens of comedians with experience performing for large corporations.

We don’t know your boss, but perhaps ask the boss if they want your attendees to leave happy and be talking fondly about the event for days or weeks afterwards, says The Ivy League of Comedy’s Shaun Eli.

The comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy will not pick on or embarrass anyone, we won’t be dirty, won’t tell political jokes, will not roast anyone, nor tell anyone else’s jokes (we all write our own original material). And we won’t go over our time— we all know how to tell time, we know roughly how long our act is, and many of us use pocket timers (or our cell phone sitting on a stool on stage) to keep track of time.

We’re also on time. We don’t want anyone staring at their watch or phone and worrying. Sometimes we’ll fly in the day before just to avoid any travel issues (and, frankly, so we don’t have to wake up too early on the day of the performance).

And there are no money surprises— we prefer to build in our travel costs so you pay the price we quote. Two caveats— if you want us to provide a sound system we may be able to do that, but we charge extra. And if you want to pay with a credit card, we add in the 3.3% fee that we have to pay.

Not booking a clean corporate comedian like those from The Ivy League of Comedy. Not asking if there are any hidden costs, like travel. Not discussing, in advance and preferably before booking, if there are any specific topics to be avoided.

Asking the comedian to pick on someone, even the CEO, is generally a bad idea. We’re happy to explain why.

The Ivy League of Comedy specifically hates this! We don’t view picking on the audience as good for us, or even good for the art of stand-up comedy in general. When I (Shaun Eli, the founder) started in comedy, I’d ask people if they’d been to a comedy show. A common answer was that they used to go, but they stopped when a comedian picked on them or on their friend. So we don’t do this.

That’s the whole point of us— to give you a clean show. That’s why The Ivy League of Comedy was founded.

The Ivy League of Comedy has several hilarious female corporate comedians. They’re not easy to find. Only a small percentage of pro comics are corporate comedians, and women are only around a third of the comedians (and probably an even lower percentage of corporate comedians).

The Ivy League of Comedy’s founder wrote an op-ed piece about women in comedy, and, two decades ago, did a study on the number of women in comedy.

We can but we really don’t want to. There is nothing inherently funnier about a dirty show. Our instructions to comedians in The Ivy League of Comedy are clear: Our Shows Are Clean. We’ve been at other people’s shows (not ours) where a comedian has asked the audience “We’re all adults, okay if I get a little dirty?” Nobody in the audience is going to single themselves out by saying no. Some people think dirty jokes are funnier (they’re not, they’re just dirtier) and they’ll be enthusiastic. After the show the comedian will make excuses: “Well, I felt out the audience by getting edgier and they were fine. I even asked them and they said it was okay.” Our instructions to them are clear— Do Not Do That. Even if the person seemingly in charge says it’s okay. It’s not.

We pride ourselves on our professionalism, creativity and originality, not on making fun of your company or CEO. Will we make fun of your CEO if you ask us to? No. We think that’s a bad idea. Unless he or she specifically asks us to, privately, we shy away from that. Very few people actually enjoy being made fun of. If he or she wants to do something to seem more relatable we can write a few quick and funny self-deprecating remarks for him/her instead.

Comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy can do multiple shows. We offer significant discounts to non-profit organizations. Most of us have performed internationally so we’re used to diverse audiences and don’t tend to have cultural references not easily understood by most. And even for those who haven’t performed much overseas, those of us based in New York City are used to a lot of foreign audiences.

We have a lot of experience with a lot of different industries.

We do recommend stand-up comedy for ages 14 and up, so if there are little children at your event please provide a different activity for them.

We strongly prefer to perform indoors, for all sorts of reasons. But we can also do outdoor events.