Use an Initiative to organize several grants, outcomes, supporting files, and reporting activity around one body of work. An Initiative provides a combined management and reporting view; it is not another grant, a QuickBooks class, or a general-ledger fund.

Programs Versus Initiatives

The current product uses Initiative in navigation, page headings, buttons, report labels, and most user-facing messages. The URL remains /programs, some report prompts still say program report, plan-limit messages refer to active programs, and backend records and APIs are named programs. These names refer to the same GrantLink record; you do not need to create both a Program and an Initiative.

Important: Creating, linking, editing, or archiving an Initiative changes GrantLink records only. It does not create a QuickBooks entity, re-code a transaction, move cash, post a journal entry, or change a grant's award amount.

Before You Start

Confirm that:

You are signed in to the correct organization.
You have Member or Admin access for creation and changes. Viewers can review Initiative data, but the current navigation hides New Initiative and archive actions for read-only users. Do not treat a visible detail control as permission to edit; the current detail screen does not consistently hide every write control for Viewers.
The grants you want to group already exist, and their award amounts, dates, statuses, budgets, and allocations have been reviewed. See Creating and Managing Grants and Setting Up Grant Budgets.
You know whether the entire grant award belongs to this Initiative or whether the relationship needs an amount or percentage share. Leaving a linked grant unsplit is surfaced as Unsplit grant shares.
If you will use QuickBooks funding rules, the organization has one active QuickBooks Online connection and the relevant source transactions have synced.
Your plan has capacity for another active program. GrantLink counts records whose status is Active and that are not archived. Creating or restoring one at the limit is blocked with an upgrade-or-archive message; Planning and Completed records are not counted by that active-program rule.

Create an Initiative

In the sidebar, open Initiatives and select New Initiative.
In Describe your initiative, enter enough source detail to identify the name, purpose, period, target, category, and goals you expect GrantLink to organize.
Optionally attach PDF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP source files. The creation composer accepts up to five files, 20 MB per file, and 25 MB total.
Select Create Initiative.
Keep the page open while GrantLink uploads and reads the sources. Review the resulting Initiative rather than assuming extracted details are correct. If a file could not be read, the Initiative may still be created and the unread filename is reported.

When you start from a grant's Initiative-linking flow, the button is Create & Link. GrantLink creates the Initiative, links that grant, and returns to the grant. Otherwise it opens the new Initiative detail page.

Review and Complete the Initiative

The detail workspace currently has Overview, Allocations, Funding, Budget, Reports, Files, Details, and Rules.

Details and status

Open Details to verify the Initiative name, optional code, description, functional category, status, period, target amount, and restriction type. Current statuses are Planning, Active, Completed, and Archived. Correct GrantLink-owned metadata here; correct QuickBooks-owned accounting facts in QuickBooks and sync again.

Goals

Goals appear on Overview. Add a goal with a title and optionally a description, due date, outcome label, unit, target, and current value. Current statuses are Planned, On track, At risk, Achieved, and Cancelled. A current outcome requires a target, and outcome values must be nonnegative. Open a goal row to correct its details or progress; changing a goal does not infer that an outcome occurred.

Files

Open Files to upload source documents and Initiative attachments, preview supported files, or select Remove. This screen accepts PDF, Word, and common image files and rejects an individual file over 25 MB. Remove archives the file record rather than editing the source document. Keep authoritative agreements and evidence under your organization's normal retention controls.

Link Grants and Set Their Shares

An Initiative's financial rollups depend on its grant relationships. Link grants from the grant's Details area, where the Initiative relationship is managed. A grant and Initiative must belong to the same organization, and the same pair cannot be linked twice.

For each relationship, use the available grant-share treatment accurately:

Set an allocated amount when a fixed part of the award belongs to the Initiative.
Set an allocated percentage when a percentage of the award belongs to it.
Do not enter both; changing to one method clears the other.
If no share is set, GrantLink treats the eligible linked award as the full award for the Initiative rollup and flags the relationship as unsplit for review.

The Initiative includes linked grants in Awarded, Active, or Closeout status in its current rollups and default program-report scope. Its Budget worksheet combines categories from linked grant budgets and shows Budget, Spent, Remaining, and percentage used. It is a read-only rollup: correct a budget in the grant's Budget area and correct transaction reporting in the applicable allocation workflow.

Unlinking deletes the relationship and removes that grant's contribution from subsequent Initiative rollups; it does not delete the grant or its accounting records. GrantLink records link, share-update, and unlink events in activity history. Recheck totals and report scope after any relationship correction.

Review Allocations and Funding

Allocations is the Initiative's attributed-spend evidence, while Funding is its funding evidence. Rows can be Assigned, Needs review, Exception, or Removed. Open a row to inspect its QuickBooks source and review history.

Remove from initiative excludes accepted evidence from Initiative totals without changing QuickBooks.
Restore to initiative revalidates removed evidence before including it again.
Confirm updated source accepts a source change only after GrantLink revalidates the current line.

Only accepted evidence is included in QuickBooks-derived Initiative totals. Source changes, ineligible lines, overlap with grant-attributed activity, and incomplete reconciliation can move evidence to an exception or make aggregates unavailable. A limited visible queue does not mean there are no additional exceptions.

Rules

Rules configures grant sources and versioned QuickBooks matching rules. Add a grant award to include all or part of a linked grant, or choose a QuickBooks template and define its matching fields, funding or spend direction, optional funding goal, and status. Use Edit share when only part of a grant belongs to the Initiative.

Rule conditions use only the source fields offered by the editor; do not assume GrantLink can match on an unavailable field. Saving a changed rule creates new rule history and starts reconciliation rather than silently rewriting accepted history. Review Allocations and Funding after rule, connection, or source changes.

Create and Review Initiative Reports

Open Reports and select Create Report.
In Chat, state the exact Initiative, reporting period, and whether to use the default current linked grants or a named subset.
Review every figure and narrative claim against grants, allocations, funding evidence, budgets, goals, and source documents.
Return to Reports. Drafts show Open Draft; published reports show View Report, with a PDF link when an output exists.

Program reports cannot be linked to a grant reporting-cycle ID. Report creation also follows Chat access and plan limits: Viewers cannot open Chat or create, edit, or publish reports, and the plan's monthly report allowance can block another report. For the complete workflow, see Generating Funder Reports, Understanding Report Types, and Publishing Secure Funder Reports.

Verify the Result

Open Initiatives > All initiatives and find the record under Active, Planning, or Completed. Archived Initiatives are excluded from this operational list.
Confirm its status, linked-grant count, Funding, Spent, Remaining, and any unsplit-share warning.
On Overview, verify goals, funding sources, financial position, and Needs attention. Do not rely on a combined position marked unavailable.
On Budget, reconcile each rolled-up category to the linked grants' budgets and allocations.
On Allocations and Funding, clear or explain suggestions and exceptions and confirm accepted evidence against QuickBooks.
On Reports and Files, confirm the expected drafts, published outputs, and source attachments are associated with the Initiative.

For allocation correction details, see Reviewing and Correcting Grant Allocations. For source-data behavior, see Understanding QuickBooks Sync.

Correct, Complete, or Archive an Initiative

Use Details or the status control to correct metadata and move work through Planning, Active, or Completed. Correct grant shares at the grant-Initiative relationship, grant budgets on the grant, and QuickBooks source errors in QuickBooks before syncing and reconciling again.

Choose Archive from the Initiative list or sidebar when the record should leave active navigation. Archive is a soft state change: it sets the Initiative to Archived and stops it counting as an active program, but does not delete linked grants, files, reports, goals, or QuickBooks data. The backend supports restoring an archived Initiative to Active and reapplies the active-program plan limit, but the current Initiative list does not expose an archived view or Restore control. If restoration is required, contact an administrator or support rather than creating a duplicate.

Accounting Boundary

Initiative award, budget, spend, remaining, funding-source, and report figures are GrantLink rollups and evidence views. Grant shares affect how award funding is attributed to the Initiative; accepted QuickBooks evidence affects Initiative funding or spend analysis. Neither changes grant financial totals, transaction coding, the general ledger, cash, donor restrictions, or QuickBooks. Reconcile Initiative reports to their linked grants and accounting sources, and have your accountant determine the appropriate financial-statement and fund-accounting treatment.