<div dir="ltr">Brett, thanks for your work. Please keep in mind that for us who live really far (Buenos Aires), travel expenses may be higher in some cases. As an Example, when I was invited to RMLL in France in 2015, travel expenses rose to EUR2000 due to the event being on high season. I hope you guys can add an exception based on distance.<div><br></div><div>Best</div><div><br></div><div>Juan</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 11:38 AM, Brett Smith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brett@sfconservancy.org" target="_blank">brett@sfconservancy.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div class="m_-6858785379383620397markdown-here-wrapper">
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">Hi again everyone,</p>
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">Now for the good news.
At their most recent meeting, Conservancy’s board approved the
proposed changes to the travel policy that were recently
submitted to policies-discuss. Let me give a quick recap of
those changes so I can discuss next steps for PLCs.</p>
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">First, the new policy
provides additional budget to book flights that save substantial
time over the cheapest available fare. This was the most common
request we heard, and definitely we recognize the value of
saving people’s time. In order to keep the rules simple, the
budget increases at specific time savings marks. <a href="https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/files/783dcdd92fc61f3f150e1c65782c0fe527c8ff52/Travel/conservancy-travel-policy.md#L352" target="_blank">You
can see the new rules here</a>.</p>
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">Second, the policy
increases the cost of international flights that require
preapproval, from $1,500 to $1,650. This change is just to keep
pace with fares we’re seeing; the $1,500 limit has been in place
since at least 2012, and of course fares have risen since then.
This should reduce the number of flights that require
preapproval.</p>
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">There are also a couple
of changes that just provide additional flexibility in handling
reimbursement requests. The new rules clarify that our 90-day
limit on reimbursement requests starts from the last day of
travel, not the day the expense was incurred. (This is how we’ve
treated it since the 90-day rule was introduced, but now it’s
official.) Expenses that require preapproval can be approved by
any officer of Conservancy, not just the executive director.
This should help us be more responsive to your requests.</p>
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">There are also non-rules
changes, like updates to the currency rates we use (forced on us
because the Bank of Canada stopped providing them) and Markdown
formatting. For more background, see <a href="https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/policies-discuss/2017-August/thread.html" target="_blank">the
messages to policies-discuss</a> and <a href="https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/changelog?branch=2017-08-proposed-updates" target="_blank">the
Git history</a>.</p>
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">Next steps: We would
like to make these changes effective in a week, on 20 September.
The reason for the gap is we want to give you time to discuss
them internally. Because these changes potentially mean
increased project expenses, we understand you might not be
prepared to take those on. If you would like to follow the old
policies, or other rules that are stricter than ours, you can
always do that. Just let us know through your project alias, and
we’ll handle your reimbursement requests accordingly. If we
don’t hear from you, we’ll follow the new rules for any
reimbursed expenses incurred on or after 20 September.</p>
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">I really hope you all
like these changes; our goal in pushing them forward was really
to try to address head-on a lot of the feedback I’ve heard about
flight reimbursements and preapprovals while I’ve been helping
with our bookkeeping, and I’m optimistic we’ve made good
progress there. If you have any questions about the changes,
feel free to ask us through your project alias, or on
policies-discuss if it’s appropriate for public discussion.</p>
<p style="margin:1.2em 0px!important">Best regards,</p>
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cD4=" style="height:0;width:0;max-height:0;max-width:0;overflow:hidden;font-size:0em;padding:0;margin:0"></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
</font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<div class="m_-6858785379383620397moz-signature m_-6858785379383620397markdown-here-signature">-- <br>
Brett Smith</div>
</font></span></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div>