[CREATE] Dec Reimbursement Inquery

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

Andy Fitzsimon wrote:
> geeks have gotta book their tickets for next lgm and a
> double deficits sucks.  Is the gnome-foundation still dragging their
> feet? I'm sure there are people who would appreciate an update even if
> its bad news.

I forwarded on Barry's query to Rosanna Yuen at the foundation.

With Stormy leaving, Rosanna is once again the primary contact for this
kind of thing - and I would once again urge everyone concerned to thing
about the individual,rather than the organisation.

I don't know what conversations there have been since the last query, si
I have no idea if the ball is in Rosanna's court, or in ours.

> maybe for next year we should flatly not offer reimbursements  or award
> them case-by-case as sponsorship comes in to the bank. 

The GNOME project put in place a travel committee, with responsibility
for the allocation of a travel budget, to handle these issues - they
have a process for asking for funds, specifying a reimbursement method,
sending receipts & processing reimbursements. It's not perfect, but it
does work. Perhaps we need to start having a similar process - I can't
help but feel that things would go smoother if we had a checklist of
stuff people had to send in/fill out to get reimbursed.

For example, the GNOME Foundation form basically has the requester fill
in the bank transfer form that the bank asks the foundation to fill in,
if you want a bank transfer. From experience, insufficient information
for the bank was at the origin of 70% of the delays in reimbursement for
LGM in 2006. So this helps a lot. You don't understand why the bank
needs your home address & branch address, or why they need both bank
account number and IBAN, when they're essentially the same thing?
Neither do I, but they ask for that stuff, and won't process transfers
without it.

Anyway - just a suggestion. Anything we can do to improve this process
is good, and the first step to doing that is a frank exchange over the
reasons for the delays.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
dneary at free.fr
Tel: +33 9 51 13 46 45
Cell: +33 6 77 01 92 13