Does any organization have a different policy on reimbursement of employee travel expenses vs. external speaker travel expenses that would be funded from donor dollars?
We have run into an issue in reimbursing a speaker funded from donor dollars where the gift agreement didn't have specifics about how much of the gift should be used for travel. Our procurement process kicked back the reimbursement saying the travel cost was more per diem than the university policy. We indicated that the gift agreement doesn't have that restriction - it just says to support a speaker. For what it's worth, the difference was only $130 and we are going to acknowledge this one as an exception.
Does/should/can a gift agreement trump an institutional policy? Do we need to put into gift agreements reference to internal policies that might additionally govern the use of the donor funds? We do reference certain policies in our gift agreements (e.g. investment policy) but wondering how far this should go?
Interested in what other institutions/organizations are doing.
Thanks.
Tom
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Thomas Chaves
Associate VP for Advancement Operations
St. Joseph's University
tchaves@sju.edu------------------------------