Projects and activities

Projects carry the location, budget, start and end dates, and current delivery status for work under a program. Program Lead sets up the project plan. Field Coordinator records the activities that actually take place and the number of beneficiaries reached. The result gives the team a way to compare planned work with recorded delivery without replacing the underlying project or activity history.

A project may be planned, active, completed or suspended. Its activities have their own planned, in progress, completed and cancelled states. That distinction matters when a project is active but an individual activity has been cancelled or is still waiting to begin. Do not mark every activity completed just because the parent project has advanced.

• Project plan. Program Lead links the project to its program and records location, budget and dates.
• Activity history. Field Coordinator records the activity name, date, summary, reach and status against the project.
• Portfolio attention. NGO Operations Overview brings at-risk projects and stalled activities into the daily worklist.

An activity’s beneficiary reach is a numeric observation attached to that activity. The Beneficiaries records describe supported households and their location and vulnerability. Use both sources deliberately: an activity total and a household record answer different questions and should not be treated as interchangeable counts.

Agree what qualifies as an active project, what makes it suspended, and who records a completed activity. Use a consistent location convention so project and household locations can be reviewed together. Decide whether the budget is entered in the organization’s currency and how teams will handle a project whose funding comes through more than one donor.

Set an operating cadence for activity updates. The coordinator needs to enter the date of the work, a useful summary and the beneficiaries reached while the evidence is fresh. Program Lead should review stalled work before changing the project’s overall status. The finance team uses these activity records in project funding reconciliation, so a missing or outdated activity can change the interpretation of the funding picture.

Create an active project under an active program and add a planned field activity. After the activity occurs, record its date, summary and beneficiaries reached, then mark it completed. Keep another planned activity visible. Project Schedule should retain the project’s start and end dates, while Activities In Progress and Completed Activities split the two pieces of work by their actual states.

Next run the project funding reconciliation after the funding cases and fund events have been entered. Finance Lead should be able to discuss the activity history alongside pledged, received and disbursed amounts. A completed activity alone does not establish that funds were received or disbursed.

• Project Schedule — Planned and active projects with their program, location and dates.
• Activities In Progress — Work still planned or being carried out.
• Completed Activities — Recorded work and beneficiaries reached after completion.

Use the project delivery process to check the operating sequence. The reconciliation process connects recorded activity to funding movements.