Upcoming changes to the travel policy

[Brett Smith]

On 09/12/2017 10:44 AM, Juan Linietsky wrote:

> 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.

Hi Juan,

Sorry to take so long to get back to you. To close the loop on this:
definitely we realize there are plenty of legitimate reasons a trip
might cost more than $1,650. That’s why the number isn’t a hard limit on
the fare, but instead just requires approval from Conservancy. We don’t
want to stop those trips from happening; we just want an extra check on
the spending, given how much money’s involved. And we know that approval
has been a little too difficult to get in the past, which is why we made
the change for more Conservancy folks to be able to do that check and
grant it. So my hope is that that other change will make your life
easier, even if you still do have to get the approval for many of the
trips you make.

Increasing that $1,650 threshold based on distance (or other criteria)
doesn’t really complement what the policy is trying to do. We’re not
trying to check whether or not a trip is reasonable; we know it is
99.99999% of the time. The goal is just to have an additional spending
safeguard to make sure the money’s being well spent. This sort of rule
is pretty common at all kinds of organizations, where any kind of
spending (not just travel) above a certain amount requires authorization
from a second person.

Best regards,

​
-- 
Brett Smith
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