Allocate more funds to 2026 travel budget

[Kobzol]

It seems that we will have more money available for 2026 than we originally thought. Several Project members asked me if we could sponsor travels to other conferences in the rest of 2026 (other than RustConf, which has a separate travel budget from the Rust Foundation), hence I think that this might be a good use of our funds.

However, we also saw that the travel grants for RustWeek 2026 got slightly out of hand, and thus we should try to provide at least suggestions (if not outright rules) for Project members on how to spend reimbursable money on travel and accommodation, to help ensure that we can sponsor as many people as possible and stay reasonable.

We should make those suggestions clear in the travel grant request form, and ask Rust Foundation staff (probably Lori) to talk with the Project member if their ask seems to be unreasonable.

The suggestions can be for example the following:

• Only use Economy class when traveling by plane.
• Try to stay in hotels that are not super expensive, even if that means staying a bit further from the conference venue. Also consider sharing a hotel room, e.g. with friends or fellow Rustaceans.
  • Here we could in theory provide some baseline about expected hotel costs in cities where a given Rust conference will be happening, or link to some online resource that does that already.
• Try to get early bird tickets, if possible.
• If you are employed, try to first get your employer to pay for tickets, accommodation and travels.
• If you are not struggling financially, consider whether you really need the travel grant. We want to support all Project members, but e.g. students or unemployed people should get priority over people who are wealthier.

[clarfonthey]

These all seem reasonable, although I think that it would be worth facilitating a means by which folks can find other rustaceans to share rooms with for conferences in general. It could be something as simple as channels on Zulip/Discord, honestly, but it feels like a pretty low-hanging fruit here. I would imagine even people not using the grants would appreciate such a thing, and it would further make it easier for people to figure this thing out.

Edit: also as an aside, I think it's extra important that this be a general place and not specific to each event because people live all over and there are also definitely cases where I think people would be willing to host folks for events near them that they themselves aren't attending, or know people who could. Obviously, the number of cases shrinks as the specificity grows, but this kind of serendipitous communication probably won't happen if it's explicitly only in event-gated discussions.

Edit 2: this also now exists, too!

[Kobzol]

As a reminder, we allocated $100k for travel grants in 2026. Most of that money was spent on the All Hands and RustWeek travels. However, after the invoices were paid, we now know that we actually have $7,675 left from that allocation. At the same time, our unallocated budget currently is approximately $201k, so we have quite a lot of money to spend in the rest of the year.

I did a mini-survey, asking Project members if they would still like to use some (non-RustConf) grants in the rest of 2026, on the Rust Zulip (the link is private, only for Project members).

8 people answered that they would like to use a travel grant for EuroRust. Of course, I do not expect that everyone who might use travel grants in 2026 answered this survey, but it is at least somewhat of a baseline. EuroRust tickets cost €275 or €332 for individuals, so approximately up to $400. The conference is from 14 to 17 October. I did a cursory glance at apartment costs in Barcelona from 13th to 18th October, and it seems that reasonable accommodation can be found for ~$900 USD. That gives us ~$1300 for a full sponsoring of a ticket and accommodation, and if we add a buffer of $700 for travel (which would even cover a return flight from the US to Barcelona and back), then we arrive at the $2k limit that we had for the All Hands. While we might make further adjustments to how we structure the travel grant limits for next year for the All Hands, as we have tens of people asking for the grants there, I think that for the rest of 2026, we can stay with the limit we already had in place before, so ~$2k.

One question is whether we should reset the upper bound for people who already asked for a grant for 2026. In other words, should the $2k limit be per year, or per event? I think that we should treat it as a limit per event, mostly because many people were already at the All Hands, and thus they wouldn't get a chance to go to another conference in the rest of 2026 if we didn't treat the limit as such. That being said, if we for some reason get a lot of requests and we run out of the allocated budget, I think that we should consider prioritizing people by the total amount of asked grants in 2026 (so people who asked for less in total so far should get priority), to have a bit of fairness.

We have 8 people asking for travel grants to EuroRust, and I know a few other people who'd like to use the grants for smaller travels. To make headroom, I would multiply this count by two, so that we can provide grants for ~20 people. That means offering $40k total in travel grants. Since we still have $7,675 in the travel grant bucket, that would mean allocating $32,325 extra from our budget for 2026 travel grants.

I would set a cut-off date, e.g. 31st of October, as the deadline for asking for the grants. So that we know the state of the budget better. What's left in the travel grants by then will be returned to our budget. Also the travel grants are only for events happening for 2026.

So with that, I propose to allocate extra $32,325 from our current budget for 2026 travel grants, making our remaining travel budget for 2026 be $40,000, and reopen the possibility to ask for travel grants for 2026.

@rfcbot fcp merge leadership-council

[rust-rfcbot]

@Kobzol has proposed to merge this. The next step is review by the rest of the tagged team members:

• @Kobzol
• @Manishearth
• @joshtriplett
• @lqd
• @m-ou-se
• @oli-obk
• @traviscross

No concerns currently listed.

Once a majority of reviewers approve (and at most 2 approvals are outstanding), this will enter its final comment period. If you spot a major issue that hasn't been raised at any point in this process, please speak up!

See this document for info about what commands tagged team members can give me.

[traviscross]

Makes sense. Thanks @Kobzol.

@rfcbot reviewed

[lqd]

I think that we should treat it as a limit per event, mostly because many people were already at the All Hands, and thus they wouldn't get a chance to go to another conference in the rest of 2026 if we didn't treat the limit as such

I don't know how sustainable per event is, since there's at least 5-6 events per year. As long as this doesn't take away from people who don't have an employer that could cover the cost, or cannot themselves afford, it seems fine to do this with the surplus budget indeed.

@rfcbot reviewed

[rust-rfcbot]

🔔 This is now entering its final comment period, as per the review above. 🔔

[m-ou-se]

If you are not struggling financially, consider whether you really need the travel grant. We want to support all Project members, but e.g. students or unemployed people should get priority over people who are wealthier.

I agree it'd be nice to prioritize those who need it the most, but asking people not to apply unless they are 'struggling' seems too much and probably not very useful.

making our remaining travel budget for 2026 be $40,000

That part sounds good to me, so

@rust-rfcbot reviewed