FYI #2, this one does affect us but is good news:

1. More flexibility in selecting flights for time vs. lowest cost

2. Slightly higher limits for international flights

3. Bit more flexibility in approvals and reimbursement

----- Forwarded message from Brett Smith <brett@...41...> -----

Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2017 10:38:27 -0400 From: Brett Smith <brett@...41...> To: project-reps@...41... Subject: Upcoming changes to the travel policy Reply-To: policies-discuss@...41...

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,

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