The RSR project editor is divided into 10 standard sections:

01 General information

In this section you can fill in the core details of your project, e.g. start/end dates, project status, project photo.

Here you can also link a ‘Contributing’ project (aka ‘child’ project) to a ‘Lead’ project (aka ‘parent’ project) for aggregation of indicator results in a project hierarchy.

02 Contact information

Here you can provide contact information for a primary contact of the project. When entering contact information, please keep in mind that contact details will be publicly visible, so be careful providing personal details.

03 Partners

Here you can indicate which partners are involved in your project and what their role is in the project. Collaborating organisations can be easily selected, simply start typing the name of the organisation in the ‘Project partner’ field. If you’re unable to find an organisation after searching, your Akvo programme manager or your organisation’s RSR administrator can add the organisation.

An organisation can have multiple roles within a project:

• Funding partner: an organisation, government or company that provides funds to your project.
• Accountable partner: the organisation that is responsible for oversight of the project activity and its outcomes.
• Extending partner: the organisation that manages the budget and direction of an activity on behalf of the funding organisations.
• Implementing partner: an organisation that physically carries out the activity or intervention.
• Reporting partner: the organisation that is responsible for issuing the report. This can be a primary source if the organisation is reporting on its own activity or a secondary source if the organisation is reporting on the activities of another organisation.

04 Project descriptions

This section gives you the opportunity to provide detailed project information on your project such as a summary of your project and its goals.

05 Results and indicators

In the results and indicators section you build the results framework for your project, i.e you add your results and indicators that will be used to measure progress, including baseline values, target values, and how often it will be measured.

There are three main types of results:

1. Impact: Long term influence of a project.
2. Outcome: Usually relates to the project goal or aim. This is the second level of results associated with a project and refers to the medium-term consequences.
3. Outputs: The direct results associated with a project. Usually what the project has achieved in the short term.

Examples:

Indicator types: Indicators help us to measure progress on these various types of results. They are usually easy to determine for outputs (e.g. 9 training sessions), harder for outcomes (e.g. number of policy documents written) and hardest (or near to impossible) for impacts.

Indicator reporting periods: You can indicate for which period you want to measure a specific indicator. Especially for longer projects this is helpful to track progress during the project. For example, you can set a target of 3 training sessions per year for a 3-year project. When you don’t add a period for an indicator, it is assumed that the indicator (and the target and actual values) applies to the full project period.

Target Value: Besides that you can set a target value (e.g. 9 training sessions) and later add the actual value (e.g. 8 training sessions took place). This gives you progress information against set targets for monitoring and evaluation purposes. Sometimes baseline values are used to measure against (e.g. average income level at project start).

Cumulative option: You can select if indicators report a running total so that each reported actual includes the previously reported actual and adds any progress made since the last reporting period. When an indicator is set to 'cumulative', the value for the latest period will be carried over and used as a base for the next period. For an indicator set as 'non-cumulative', the values of all periods are summed up as the end-value.

A full example:

Result: 'Organise training sessions for staff'

Indicator: 'Organise 10 training sessions'

Indicator period: 01-01-2019 - 31-12-2019 (Target: 10 / Actual: 5)

06 Finance

In this section you specify individual budget items, indicating the amount for each item.

07 Locations

Here you add the location(s) of your project and also the recipient country.

By adding information about the geographic area(s) in which your project is being carried out, the locations will be visible on a map at your project page.

08 Project focus

Here you can define the sector in which your project is working, e.g. water and sanitation, agriculture, SDG Goal, OECD DAC, poverty reduction, etc.

09 Links and documents

In this section you can add documents or links to your project’s page that you would like to share with a broader audience: annual reports, your organisation’s or a project partner’s website, brochures, baseline surveys or any other contextual information that relate to your project and help project page visitors understand more about the project’s activities.

10 Comments and keywords

This section is for internal use, i.e. content from this section is not publicly visible. Here you can add comments about a project, for example to share amongst your other colleagues also working with RSR.