Non-rule changes proposed to the travel policy

[Brett Smith]

Hi everyone,

With me helping out in the accounting queue recently, and Conservancy’s
board meeting coming up, I’ve been looking at specific changes we can
propose to make the travel policy friendlier. That’s coming up—but
first, to lay the groundwork for those, I wanted to make some changes
that don’t change the rules, so we’d have a better base to discuss
bigger changes.

Those changes are in a branch 2017-08-reflect-practice. Here’s the
history of commits
<https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/changelog?branch=2017-08-reflect-practice>;
here’s the policy with all the changes
<https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/files/bcc90cfb1a5d3424063f38e34203edb2764f3cb8/Travel/conservancy-travel-policy.md>.
Some of the commits are copyedits too small to comment on, but I did
want to highlight some of the bigger changes for anyone interested.

Format the policy as Markdown
<https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/changeset/5f8a406c13e3b225c437d3d758007548bc8ffa27>
- It was previously asciidoc, but there’s so much more tooling available
for Markdown now, it made sense to go ahead and do this.

Update information about rates we use
<https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/changeset/3422d93682351b0ea41f869965f2bfc77467d89b>
- This is the most substantial change in the branch, but it was forced
on us by external factors. A few of you have noticed the Bank of Canada
no longer publishes useful currency conversion rates as of April.
Because of that, we have switched to Open Exchange Rates for the same
job. This commit also cleans up the easy reference section so it doesn’t
refer to GSA rates when those aren’t relevant for international travel.

Explain that baggage fees require a receipt
<https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/changeset/0dcee4e12c2af8fd5760063c20550f44ba453695>
- The policy explains that all expenses require a receipt unless they’re
covered by M&IE per diem. Most individual sections remind the reader
about this, but the baggage section didn’t. This commit fixes that.

If you have questions about these changes or others in the branch,
please write back and let us know.

Thank you,

​
-- 
Brett Smith
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