ShradhaGiriblogs

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the communication and marketing materials the INGOs and other development agencies produce? I have been working in the communication field for the past 9 years and sadly the materials produced do not have a long shelf life. Often times when an organization is awarded a brand new project there is a whole lot of excitement. As the focal communication person I often collaborate with the program team to develop a communication plan for the new project. The budget has been allocated. The target audiences have been defined in the project document and we are all set to go. So we sit with the team and develop a communication plan. All the team members come up with excellent ideas – brochure, short videos, posters, animated videos, programs on FM and TV. These are all great materials to communicate about the project and its progress during and after the implementation. We make plans to spend thousands of dollars and ensure each and every proj

Why do donors fund projects that they know are going to produce the same results? No real impact. Same lessons learned theories.  The donors like to give money to organizations that are established, have a reputation and can spend the money on time. The organizations bidding for and winning projects have a readymade budget and timeline to spend (in my last post I talked about how communication materials are mostly waste of money and resources). The people involved in the project have strict deadlines and they work hard to implement and meet the project deadlines. In a country like ours where anything can happen anytime excluding the natural disasters that cannot be avoided – well, the projects don’t get the opportunity to stick to the deadline and the budget gets underspent.  What do the projects do with the underspent budget? It’s simple. The recipient organization asks for an extension and the donors happily oblige because no donor wants to take the money back. Most o