'We can't solve everything!'

Your approach resonates. Log frames are awkward at best, and in turbulent contexts they seem abstract and detached. So many contexts today are unpredictable, even in states that are not recently emerged from conflict. Your Option C should be the starting point until sufficient stability can allow for a robust expectation of some outputs leading to a few desirable outcomes. Meyer Brownstone, a past chair of Oxfam Canada once said that they were after the 'educated dollar' from their contributors. I think the same should apply to many donors. Thanks for your insights!
Ricardo Ramirez

While setting clear and some times ambitious goals is critical, the need to manage expectations cannot be over-emphasized. Working in a fragile context often requires re-assessment of goals and strategies and might even call for change in direction, if prevailing circumstances demand so. The political, economic and even social currents that exist in such environments often determaine the extent of progress of media interventions. It's critical to be willing to lower expectations when the tide of political and social currents rise and to focus on smaller and manageable goals that have shorter time frames than to expect extensive, high level results in a threatening environment.

your are true.I am facing same kind of problems and somethimes questioned. What is relation between peace and journalist? why you are engaging on peace or etc...though some countries have their own meaning of peace!
my suggestin is for work...search commone ground among coflict...do work for unheard people and for the poor.

Mary's comment is well made. I contributed to media programmes in the Balkans where it seemed that the larger the aim and the grander the rhetoric, the greater the shortfall. Not least, because at the same time as journalists and media 'experts' were expounding on the virtues of media freedom, professional codes of conduct and self-regulation, media conglomorates, often from the same countries as the experts, were bargain hunting with a view to implementing their own standards of low editorial standards, high profit. A key lesson for journalists was the relationship between their economic rights and their ability to practise high quality journalism.
I still felt that the workshops I attended were of high value, because of the quality of the interactions with a core of journalists who were realistic and clear sighted, but also retained their idealism. They had a high work ethic, strong ethics, impatience with the past, and a determination to do better. I hope that they came away strengthened; I know I did.
Working as a writer and trainer with projects on water and sanitation (in Africa), I am struck by the same paradox. There is, as Mary says, a need for donors to be much more realistic about what external interventions can achieve and a desperate need to rid ourselves of the arrogance of being 'experts'. However, at the same time, if we have skills we can share and we fully engage in the process, something good happens.
Usually, we evaluate the wrong things – trying to relate what has happened to the target outcomes that were in the project proposal. We can instead honestly describe the process, and try to learn from positives and negatives (if we know what these are!). As journalists, we almost always write about processes, because it is the processes that are interesting. Even where there are clear rules and boundaries, we enthuse about the football match rather than the score.
An immunisation campaign can (under the right conditions) have clear impact. Anything that is about human ways of thinking and behaving is much too complex and messy to be evaluated in this way. Even if goals are 'achieved' they cannot clearly be attributed to the programme. And let's face it; if the goals have been achieved, the report that says so is probably suspect. Well informed donors support good processes rather than chasing unrealistic outcomes. Impact is as process does.
Peter McIntyre

Mary Myers reaches the right conclusion in relation to evaluating media interventions in conflict countries: manage the expectations of donors and implementers more, and focus on outputs and outcomes within the context of the broader political context rather than ultimate impacts. Since the ultimate objective of media projects is change, evaluators should seek to measure change. However, the change that is overlooked is the local effort, new knowledge and new practice produced to get a media project up and running in a conflict country. Therefore, shifting the focus of evaluations towards interim change is more realistic and less delusional than expecting peace to break out or radical behaviour change. I am reminded of a request for an evaluation of a 10 part TV series for youth broadcast in a war zone. Although the implementers’ stated objective was to assess the appeal and comprehension of the broadcasts, what they wanted was an evaluation methodology that included a qualitative representative sample survey as well as qualitative research with groups of viewers and non viewers of different ages, sex, religion and ethnicity as well as a handful of parents in at least seven different provinces to establish whether young people’s perception of themselves in relation to national, ethnic and gender identity was changing – as a result of a 30 minute game show. Another issue in relation to evaluation of media projects is attribution. And yet, proving attribution does not help media projects work better. Demonstrating contribution on the other hand may provide useful insights.

Donors should have the wit to judge for themselves. If you commission a project in media for development you should first have confidence in the model, the principles and the organisation you are working with. Of course you should monitor and to do that you will need data. But media effects are notoriously hard to measure, let alone evaluate. It is usually only in the absence of healthy media and communications that we notice it's loss. Most media practitioners instinctively know the limits of what they do (as well as the incremental benefits), it is generally those who seek to use it to power direct development benefits who overclaim and are disappointed.

I think one of the major reasons for which high profile programmes don't produce desired results in the field of communication is because participation is not really practiced. Most often the top sets the agenda and does everything for that agenda to be met. This stifles initiative and commitment which to a large extent is responsible for their failure. Stopping such programmes is however not the solution. there should be revised along lines that make room for participation.

Important point that - managing expectations.

Convincing funders option C is the right one is made more difficult by the fact that many donors are 'one hit wonders' - they fund a workshop, a tick goes into their own logical framework matrix box and, lo, behold; that particular aspect has been "addressed."

Complication is added by the fact that donors themselves frequently do not value feedback towards the critical end of the spectrum - constructive or otherwise. Anything less adulatory than "fantastic, thanks, learnt so much" disappears into maw of the aid matrix, never to be seen again.

And this is even with so-called media organisations. I once asked a representative from the International Federation of Journalists whether evaluation of our feedback forms would be made public?

Judging by the eyeball bulge my question was one of the stupider the workshop host had been asked.

If not even media organisations are accountable to their so-called "stakeholders" then how can we expect our governments to lead the way?

Until we as an 'industry' actually practice what we preach in transparency, there will be little for the shifting sands of political correctness to catch on to. When we are asking others to lay out their secrets, but withhold our own, where is our credibility?

Thanks to Mary Myers for a nicely written piece and a quite significant question for donor perfectionists everywhere.

Is this something that can be linked to productivity versions of the Pareto Principle? That 80% perfect is perfect enough? Or, in the real world, a 60/40 split might be more achievable.

Perhaps there is a need for a workshop for donor on the need for Minor Expectations!