A graduation programme, an SHG federation, a producer organisation, migrant support and an artisan value chain do not run on the same workflow. This playbook helps you connect the people, seasons, services, assets and market relationships that make each model work.
| Sabita M. | Cat D | not in SHG?? |
| Sabita Majhi | Cat C | dup? |
Five places, one household. Nobody can see the asset is about to go.
Many organisations combine two or three. Start with the closest match, then borrow only the parts that solve a real programme problem.
Households receive support in stages, such as consumption help, assets, coaching and linkages.
Women organise, save, borrow, govern groups and connect to institutions.
Farmers pool inputs, advice, produce and market access through a collective.
Workers receive information, placement help, documents, entitlements or crisis support.
Producers move from design or production through quality, orders, fulfilment and payment.
Advisory reaches farmers or entrepreneurs through field staff, voice, chat or content.
Not sure which one you are? Bring one tracker and describe a normal week. The model usually becomes clear quickly.
These come up in almost every first conversation we have with livelihoods teams.
"We found out the goats were sold at the graduation survey."
Visit notes sit in mentors' diaries, so a sold asset shows up months later as a number.
"The group register always looks perfect."
The CRP fills it in after the meeting. Nobody can match the book to the cash in hand.
"Purchase, handover and payment live in three files."
The week before audit goes on matching vendor bills to handover photos and bank references.
"We report jobs created. Nobody can show the enterprise is still open."
The count comes from the loan file. A year on, we don't know which businesses are trading or who works in them.
We haven't published an SHG or graduation case study yet. These are the real systems a livelihoods build rests on: eligibility rules and scheme tracking for families, and approvals at every level for women's skilling.
A master list of government schemes and their eligibility rules matches each family to the right ones, and each application is tracked until the benefit arrives. Live in four months.
Read the case study →TRRAIN10,000+trainees a yearPankh (persons with disability) and TRRAIN Her (women) run in one system, from regional teams down to each trainee, with centre and placement approvals and automatic certificates. Live in four months.
Read the case study →Recognise your programme? Tell us where the work gets stuck and we'll suggest a useful first version.
This is one operating model, not a template for every livelihoods organisation. Use it to see how everyday work, follow-up and management decisions can connect.
Stage 01 · Find the poorest
The poorest families are often left out of village meetings, SHGs and government lists. Wealth ranking with the community and a verification visit find them, before any money is spent.
| ID | Household | Village | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| LV-0386 | Sabita Majhi | Tikabali | Verified |
| LV-0391 | Jharana Pradhan | Sarangagarh | Disagreement, visit due |
| LV-0402 | Mamata Nayak | Budhedi | Verification due |
| LV-0377 | Kuni Digal | Tikabali | Verified |
Stage 02 · Build the habit
A goat given to a woman who hasn't saved or planned is often sold within months. Group savings and a plan she believes in are what make the asset stick.
| Group | CRP | Savings | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maa Tarini | Rupa Kanhar | Falling 3 weeks | Visit this week |
| Jai Durga | Sunamani Behera | Flat | Books check |
| Maa Mangala | Rupa Kanhar | Rising | On track |
| Ujjwala | Pramila Sahu | Rising | On track |
Stage 03 · Track the asset
Asset transfers and loans are where the biggest money moves, and where things go missing. A clean handover record shows funders where the money went and tells mentors which enterprises need help early.
| ID | Household | Asset | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| LV-0386 | Sabita Majhi | 2 goats | One died |
| LV-0402 | Mamata Nayak | Kirana stock | Proof missing |
| LV-0377 | Kuni Digal | Sewing machine | Matched |
| LV-0415 | Basanti Mallick | 2 goats | Matched |
Stage 04 · Coach to graduation
Regular mentor visits are what make this a graduation programme. Visit data shows who's on track, and a fair assessment tells you whether the household can manage without you.
| ID | Household | Criteria met | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| LV-0386 | Sabita Majhi | 4 of 7 | Slipped back |
| LV-0391 | Jharana Pradhan | 5 of 7 | Behind plan |
| LV-0377 | Kuni Digal | 7 of 7 | For assessment |
| LV-0415 | Basanti Mallick | 6 of 7 | On track |
Choose the parts that match where your programme intervenes: household, institution, production, enterprise, mobility or market. Connect only what your team can act on.
Connect individual participants with households, SHGs, federations or producer groups.
Follow capital, loans, sales, expenses, cash flow and income without pretending to be precise.
Plan crops, visits, inputs, practices and harvest evidence around the agricultural calendar.
Track transfer, use, maintenance, repayment and the next coaching action.
Move from buyer demand to production, quality, fulfilment, invoices and payments.
Support portable documents, services, referrals and cases across source and destination.
Most AI projects stall because the records underneath are messy. So we work in a fixed order.
Every field has to earn its place by helping someone decide something. If nobody uses it, we don't collect it.
A system people avoid is worse than a spreadsheet. We design around shared phones, patchy signal and WhatsApp.
On clean, connected records, AI can read paperwork, draft reports and flag who needs attention. A person always checks.
Where you start depends on where you are. If your records are already in good shape, we can move to AI quickly. If they're in notebooks, we start there, and we don't start from zero.
Offline forms, local languages, links to government IDs and AI features are set up to suit each programme's needs and consent rules, so not every build includes all of them.
We picked the jobs that save livelihoods teams the most hours. Each starts with a problem we hear often, and each keeps a person in charge of the decision. How we think about AI →
“We can't have staff typing lakhs of SHG registers every month.”
Your team still decides: The CRP confirms totals with the group leader before submitting.
“Our field officers' visit notes stay in diaries, so problems show up in the annual survey.”
Your team still decides: The officer confirms the key numbers before saving.
“Before every audit we spend a week matching vendor bills, loan disbursals and handover photos.”
Your team still decides: The finance officer looks into each flag before passing it on.
“We hear an enterprise has failed when the loan goes overdue.”
Your team still decides: Field officers add households they're worried about, flagged or not.
“Women have good business ideas but can't write a plan the bank will read.”
Your team still decides: The field officer and participant go through it line by line.
“Our members qualify for pensions, insurance and housing schemes, but nobody can check each family against every rule.”
Your team still decides: The coordinator checks documents with the family before any application is made.
These are the poorest families in the village. These lines don't move, whoever's asking.
An asset card for what she received, and a progress card showing which graduation criteria she's met.
A monthly statement of savings, loans and balances for each group, and the final eligible list to explain to the village.
What's different since the last visit and the actions agreed, before she reaches the door.
Households near graduation, those falling behind, and visit coverage by mentor.
Graduation or enterprise survival by cohort, income and savings change, and a check 12 months after support ends.
Households marked graduated to hit a target often slide back within a year. We have graduation checked by someone other than the mentor, go back 12 months later, and report both numbers.
Funders notice. It's the kind of honesty that gets you renewed.Most systems launch in three to four months. The timeline moves with the number of programmes and roles, how messy the old data is, and how many tools need connecting.
Tell us where the work gets stuck today. Spreadsheets, notebooks, WhatsApp groups, all of it.
You show us how the programme runs. We'll tell you straight if you need a new system, a better workflow or nothing at all.
We map how your programme works, talk to the people who'll use it, review the tools you use today and hand you a System Blueprint, a clear plan of what we'll build.
Working screens every 2 to 4 weeks, tested by your field team in your own terms. We clean up your old spreadsheets and move them across.
Field training and launch, then 30 to 60 days of close support. After that, the system keeps changing as your programmes do.
We connect to LokOS or NRLM exports, bank statements, WhatsApp, your survey tools and Zoho Books or Tally, rather than replacing what already works. Zoho licences sit in your organisation's name, and everything exports whenever you want it.
The questions your finance head and IT lead will ask, answered before the call.
Zoho licences are bought in your organisation's name and hosted in the Zoho data centre region you choose, including India. We work inside your account.
Every record exports to Excel or CSV whenever you want, including the day you stop working with us. You're not locked in to us for support either.
Each person sees only the records their role needs. Bank account numbers are masked in field views.
Edits are logged with who made them and when, so an audit or a funder query doesn't start from memory.
Consent is recorded for each purpose, and we agree up front how long data is kept and when it's deleted. ZolaShield, our DPDP platform, shows where you stand.
AI features run on your records under your account's controls. Beneficiary records never go into public AI tools.
Use these focused implementation guides alongside the sector playbook.
We’ll map what your team does now, identify the smallest useful first version and show where follow-up, learning and reporting can share the same information, without forcing your programme into a generic template.
If budget is tight, ask about the Built for Impact Programme, which gives eligible nonprofits free Zoho credits.
The same approach, shaped to each kind of work.
