Roles and Responsibilities of a Project Lead

This document describes the various roles and responsibilities of a project lead. The
Project Lead plays a very important role in the selection and success of a project. The
success of a project is directly related to the success of Vibha as an organization.

Vibha selects projects based on certain criteria. Please refer to “xxxx” to learn more about
project selection criteria. Each project if selected will be funded for one year. At present
Vibha will not commit to fund a project for more than one year. Funding for the
subsequent years will be based on the success of the project during the first year. The
organization should submit a new proposal application to receive funding for the next year.

The maximum limit for a project per year at present is set at U.S. $10,000.00. There is no
minimum limit set for a project at this point of time. Funds will be disbursed on a quarterly
basis unless there is a specific requirement and justification for the same.

As a Project Lead, you will be the point of contact for Vibha, communicating directly with
the point of contact from the organization applying for funding. Also, the project will be
the contact for the period of funding (1 year) if the project is selected for funding.

The various duties of a Project Lead (PL) are:

• Review a project proposal as per the guidelines given in the Project Selection
Document
• Communicate with the contact person regarding any discrepancies or areas that
are not clear to you in the Project Proposal.
• Present the Project to the Project Selection Committee for review.
• If the project is approved by the Project Selection Committee, prepare a Note
To Trustee document and submit it to the Project Selection Committee.
• If the Board Members approves (final approval) the project, send necessary
information to the Vibha office so that funds are delivered to the project on
time.
• Send the Project Summary to the Public Relations and IT team so that they can
publish the information on the web site.
• Make sure that the project in fact received the funds on time.
• Co-ordinate the Project Visiting Team, so the volunteers visiting India can go
and visit the project.
• Give details of the project to the volunteer who is visiting the project
• Make sure that you get a quarterly report from the project on time.
• Update the Project Team of the status of the project on a quarterly basis.

Project Proposal:
To receive funding for a project, an organization should submit a project proposal. All
project proposals a received and monitored by the Project Proposal Co-ordinator. A format
for submitting the proposal is available online at http://www.vibha.org/projects.
The project proposal co-ordinator assigns the project to the project leads. To create a
streamlined process we encourage that proposals be sent directly to the following e-mail
address project.proposals@vibha.org instead of sending it to volunteers personal e-mail
address. When a project is assigned to a project lead, the first thing he/she should do is to
send an acknowledgment to the contact person from the organization applying for funding.
It is important to let the person know that you are the contact person from Vibha for the
project and will be reviewing this project in the next 4 – 6 weeks and all communication
henceforth should be directed towards you.

Step 1: Send an acknowledgement to the project contact person in India

Project Proposal Review:

Project proposal review is the most important task of a Project Lead. All projects should
fall in to one of the categories mentioned in the “Project Selection Criteria” document.
Make sure that application form is duly filled and signed by the concerned person from the
organization. Some of the key things to note are:

1. Proper street address and phone numbers

2. FCRA No. (without FCRA clearance we cannot fund a project)
3. Details of the budget.
4. References.

It is important that you get all the relevant information about the project for a making a
decision on the project. Also, it is important that you get in touch with the reference
personnel mentioned in the proposal and get their views and opinions about this project.
Please go through “Questions to Reference” document for a standard set of questions.
Document all the communication related to this project. The preferred way is to copy all
the communication you made to one Word document and upload it to the yahoo groups
(vibha-projects yahoo groups). Please keep all the files under one folder (folder with the
project name). This data is very important when we analyze the quarterly reports for each
project and evaluate the success of the project.

Note: If you feel this project is way out of our domain in terms of cause budget etc. it will
be a good idea to check with the project selection team before you spent too much time
reviewing the project, doing the reference check etc. For example: a project requesting
$50,000.00 in funds for a year.

Step 2: Make sure that the application form has all vital information.
Step 3: Contact all the reference mentioned in the proposal.
Step 4: Document all the communication and upload it to the yahoo groups. (This is
important during the project selection conference call)

Project Selection:
Once you feel you have all the vital information about the project, let the project selection
committee know that you are ready to review the project. (send a mail to projects team . )
You have to dial in for a conference call during which the project will be reviewed. If the
project selection committee have more question, you may have to get answers for those
questions from the contact person for the project. Again, document all your
communication.
Step 5: Send a mail to projects team stating that you are ready for project review.

Step 6: If a decision was not made, follow up on the questions from the project selection
committee.

If a decision was made during the conference call, then you need to a list of things
depending on the decision.

If the decision is NOT to fund the project, then you need to send a letter to the contact
person in India stating that. Please use the sample letter available on the yahoo groups for
this.

Step 7: Send a letter to the project contact person saying that the project was not selected
for funding. Please use the standard reasons listed in the Template letter (Template 2).

If the decision is to fund the project then you need to Prepare a Note To Trustee document.
The format for this document is available on the yahoo groups file section. You can go
through some of the old NTTs prepared for other project for reference.
The Board of Trustees makes the final decision on the project.
Step 7: Prepare NTT document and send it to project selection team.

Once you get the final YES from the Board of Trustees, convey the message to the contact
person in India. Also, you need to make sure that you have the following
information for transferring funds.

Project Funding:
The project is funded quarterly. It is the duty of the project lead to make sure that each
project receives funds on time. Funds will be disbursed in the form of Demand Draft of
1 FCRA Number
2 Name of Project as it appears on
Bank Account
3 Person who sings the account
4 Name of Bank
5 Address of Bank, Telephone
Number, Swift Code
6 Bank Account number of Project
7 Name of Bank Manager
8 Address and Telephone Number
of Project
Direct Deposit to the organization bank account from Vibha office.

Project Monitoring:
 The success of a project is a direct measure of Vibha’s success as an organization. Success
stories from projects are highly motivating for volunteers and patrons of Vibha. Hence it is
important that we publish such stories from each project on a regular basis.
Once the project is in the funding state, you need to let the Project Monitoring team know
that so that they can find a volunteer to do the project visit. We strongly recommend that
you visit your project at least once during the period of funding. This will help build a
better relationship between Vibha and the organization we are funding.

Before you hand over:

At the end of first year if you would like to hand over the project to another person, please
do an information transfer to the new lead.

Vibha Projects Team

Functional Director
Badri Narayanan

Project Proposal Team
Rajesh Haridas
Vishal Gandhi
project.proposal@vibha.org
Project Selection Time
Badri Narayanan
Venkatesh Subramanian
Vijay Vemulapalli
Srikant Iyer
projects@vibha.org
Project Monitoring Team
Venkatesh Subramaniam
Vijay Vemulapalli
Project Visit Team
Srikant Iyer
Gayatri Subramaniam
vibha-projects-
visits@yahoogroups.com

Project Lead Project Lead Project Lead Project Lead Project Lead