Upcoming changes to the travel policy

[Juan Linietsky]

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.

Best

Juan

On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 11:38 AM, Brett Smith <brett at sfconservancy.org>
wrote:

> Hi again everyone,
>
> 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.
>
> 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. You can see the new rules here
> <https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/files/783dcdd92fc61f3f150e1c65782c0fe527c8ff52/Travel/conservancy-travel-policy.md#L352>
> .
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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 the messages to
> policies-discuss
> <https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/policies-discuss/2017-August/thread.html>
> and the Git history
> <https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/changelog?branch=2017-08-proposed-updates>
> .
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Best regards,
> ​
> --
> Brett Smith
>
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