Add travel budget notes to the conference spending policy
In the past, we have been inconsistent regarding the travel budgets for conferences. Sometimes travel costs have come out of the conference's budget, sometimes it has come out of the general travel committee budget, and sometimes we might have allocated a separate travel budget for each conference.
I think that there's a consensus that we should consistently ensure that travel is factored into each conference budget. The main advantage is that this will enable us to get a more accurate impression of the cost of each conference. It could also help in other ways, such as by getting conference organisers to think about travel costs and potentially how to reduce them.
A good first step here would be to add some notes to the existing conference spending policy. These should say:
- that conference budgets should include travel
- that the travel part of their budget will be administered by the travel committee
We might need to include travel in the advances that we sometimes give to conferences. Or, we might need to exclude travel from the usual expenditure rules ("you can't spend more than you've raised").