Overview

This article provides a general overview of award cycles in Next.

Key Terms

To fully understand award cycles, it helps to first cover what a program is.

Here’s a quick overview of Next’s structure and how programs fit in:

Term	What It Means
Organization	The home for your entire account. All programs live under your Organization.
Program	A single opportunity that your Organization runs (e.g., grant, scholarhip, fellowship, award). Lives under an organization Can have one or many Each program has its own settings, program members, and cycle(s)
Award Cycle	A single session of a program during which you collect applications, conduct reviews, and give awards. Lives under a program Can have one or many Each cycle has own forms, workflows, and awards

Organizations can run multiple programs for different purposes, and each program can have multiple award cycles, as shown here:

A. The Organization Foundation ABC Demo shows five programs on its Programs page.

B. Each of the five programs has one or more award cycles.

Each cycle has its own forms, intake rounds (collect applications), review rounds (evaluate applications), awards, and other components.

C. Clicking the View Program button for any program opens that program and allows administrators to set up or edit its cycles.

Points to keep in mind about award cycles:

Award Cycles are sometimes referred to as "Program Cycles."
More than one cycle can be in Test Mode. Test cycle URLs are listed on the Program Setup page. (Please see the article titled Set Up a Program for more information.)
Only one cycle per program can be Published (live, able to accept intake forms) at a time. This means an existing published cycle must be closed before you can publish another one. See Closing an Award Cycle for more information.

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