ACS Student Chapters Reimbursement Policy
ACS Funding and Reimbursement Policy
- To request funding for your program, you MUST follow the Student Chapter Funding and Reimbursement Instructions. Complete your requests at least two weeks prior to the event (four weeks if requesting travel funds) and before your chapter sends invitations. Late funding requests may be considered on a case-by-case basis. See the Student Chapter Funding and Reimbursement Instructions for more information.
- Your funding request must be approved in advance in order to receive reimbursement for your program expenses. You MUST wait for ACS approval before spending or having a speaker spend any funds. If ACS National approves speaker travel funds, inform the speaker of the funding amount and disclose ACS' policies regarding reasonable travel expenses (see below). The speaker should book the travel directly in their name and submit the travel receipts to your chapter's Treasurer.
- Once your event funding has been approved, you can either go through the reimbursement process or the prepayment process. For speaker travel funding, you can only go through the reimbursement process. See the Student Chapter Funding and Reimbursement Instructions for more information.
- For Reimbursement: Please read the reimbursement form carefully and complete it in its entirety. We will cut and mail multiple checks to different addresses for the same event, but all receipts for that event should be submitted together. If necessary, attach a separate sheet to the form indicating the name, amount and full address for each check. Unless otherwise arranged with the national office, speakers should submit their receipts to the chapter not the national office. However, speakers requesting reimbursement from the national office directly must follow the same procedures as the chapter. Each chapter is responsible for notifying their speakers of these procedures. Please request reimbursement as soon as possible after the event.
- Reimbursable expenses include:
- Reasonable event catering
- Up to 15% tip
- Airfare (Coach (Coach/Economy/Wanna Get Away - When possible, please purchase at least twenty-one days in advance.)
- Rail fare (Coach)
- Mileage based on the IRS rate (when seeking reimbursement, please also include a google map printout of the mileage)
- Car rental
- One night hotel stay ($200 or less)
- Reasonable speaker expenses, such as meals and cab rides (including Lyft, Uber X, etc.)
- Items that are not reimbursable include:
- Honorariums (ACS chapters are not permitted to pay honorariums by or with any means.) or Speaker's fees
- Gifts
- Venue costs (We expect our student chapters to use their free school space.)
- Screening fees for films. If you are interested in screening a particular film that requires a screening fee, please contact your university's library, which can usually pay a discounted rate.
- To the extent that circumstances do not permit following the policy above or the Student Chapter Funding and Reimbursement Instructions, or if changes need to be made to an initial funding request, please notify Student Chapters at campus@acslaw.org as soon as possible.
If you have any questions regarding funding or reimbursements, please email campus@acslaw.org.