Programmes, projects and activities

The three levels your work is organised into, and what belongs at each one.

Work in CommonLynk sits in three nested levels. A Programme is your strategic umbrella. A Project is a funded, time bound piece of work inside it. An Activity is a single session or event that people actually attend.

The shape

Each level answers a different question. A programme says what you are trying to change. A project says who is paying, how much and by when. An activity says what happened, on which day, and who was there.

Programmes

A programme carries a name, a status, a start year and an end year, a description and a strategic objective. Years rather than dates, because a programme is a direction rather than a schedule.

A programme deliberately has no donor and no budget of its own. Money is attached to projects, because that is the level a funder actually funds. A programme’s total budget is added up from its projects.

A programme page shows five figures across the top: total projects, unique beneficiaries, total services, average services per person and total budget. Below them are the programme details and a table of its projects.

Projects

A project must belong to a programme and must have a start date. Everything else is optional, and the form is grouped into Basic Information, Donor and Funding, Timeline, and Objectives.

The project page shows six figures: outreach, services delivered, activities, unique beneficiaries, average completion rate and the share of women reached. Below that are the project details, its timeline and geography, and a table of its activities.

Activities

Activities are always created through a wizard of five steps rather than a single form, because an activity has to decide several things at once: what kind of activity it is, when it runs, who takes part, whether it is evaluated, and how many attendance sessions it needs.

An activity you have started but not finished stays in your list marked as a draft, showing which step you reached. Choosing Continue picks the wizard up where you left it.

Screenshot: step one of the activity wizard, choosing an activity type.

Deleting

A programme can only be deleted once it holds no projects, and the Delete button is not shown until that is true. This is deliberate: deleting a programme with work under it would take its projects, activities and attendance history with it.

A project cannot be deleted at all from the workspace. If a project was created in error, set its status to Cancelled. Ask us if it genuinely has to go.