Project design and formulation
- Page updated on18 de April de 2025
Once we know the humanitarian context, the needs of the population and possible limitations or risks for our operations, it is time to work on the formulation of cooperation projects. This requires determining what our action is going to consist of, reflecting it in a simple outline, and completing it with additional detailed information. A well-designed and formulated project is fundamental for obtaining donor funding and, later on, facilitating its implementation and management. However, there are significant obstacles to designing quality cooperation projects.
Table of contents:
Project formulation is a key step for accessing financing
Although humanitarian actors often seek funding through multiple avenues, including partners and private contributions, most rely on donors and their grant applications.
When a donor opens a call for grants, it indicates in it the objective of the call, the type of projects that could be eligible (according to geographic areas or technical sectors, for example), its priorities and interests, the requirements to be met by the organizations that wish to apply for funding and the volume of funding available. It also indicates the deadlines and mechanisms for applying for the grant and the templates of documents to be completed and the additional documentation required.
Donors often ask for project concept notes at an early stage. A concept note is a description of the general idea and objective of the project, in only 3 or 4 pages. After reviewing them, the donor chooses the ones they consider best to request that they submit in a second deadline the complete project in full detail. On other occasions, however, the donor requests the complete project from the beginning, which means a lot of work for the organizations, with no guarantee of success. After all, these calls for proposals are usually very competitive.
In any case, project design has immense value beyond the search for funding. A formulation coherent with the intervention context and a solid and viable internal logic will be a fundamental pillar for the management and implementation of the project.
Where to start? Theory of change and logical framework
The logical framework is usually the heart of our project. It is a planning matrix that summarizes its vertical and horizontal logic. It therefore includes, according to a classification by outcomes or expected results, our plan of activities, indicators, sources of verification and hypotheses.
Although the logical framework is a practical tool for project management, it has a rigidity that sometimes limits reflection and creativity in project formulation. This is especially important when trying to do a participatory process with community representatives, partner organizations and specialists. In fact, starting a collective co-creation workshop with a huge blank table to be filled in is often a perfect way to annihilate inspiration and the desire to build.
It is often advisable to begin this stage by thinking as a team in a more flexible and conceptual way. How? By constructing a theory of change that reflects how we believe the change process we are seeking can be produced, always from our ultimate goal downward. In a theory of change we can capture in a very open way the relationship between the needs we have identified, the goal we set, the activities we are considering, the effects we expect them to have, and the obstacles or risks we anticipate. Once the theory of change is developed, it is easy to adapt its key content to the formats we need to use, including the rigid, traditional logical framework.
From concept note to a complete project
When working on writing our full project proposal it is not enough to simply dump our planning matrix or logical framework into the donor's template. Usually a lot of additional information is also requested:
- Description of the partners collaborating in this proposal, their experience in the country or similar projects and administrative data certifying that all partners comply with their ethical, legal and administrative obligations, and that they will make good use of the funding they receive.
- Summary of the context analysis, the process we followed to perform it and the problems addressed by the project.
- At times, the theory of change of our country intervention program, where this specific project is framed.
- Narrative description of all the elements of our logical framework, providing details of the planned activities and how they will contribute to the achievement of the results.
- Explanation of how our project integrates cross-cutting elements that are fundamental in humanitarian response or priorities for the donor, such as gender analysis, conflict sensitivity, protection or environmental protection, among others.
- Detailed budget with detailed information on how the grant is planned to be used and will be followed to inform the donor on the progress of financial execution. Additional information on co-financing of the project with own funds or contributions from other donors.
- Organization chart of the team of professionals who will implement the project and how they will coordinate or collaborate.
- Additional information on the monitoring and evaluation plan of the project, including the initial status of each indicator (baseline), although this can sometimes be completed at a later date.
Difficulties for sound project formulation
The scientific evidence base for the identification of activities is often weak
The technical teams of humanitarian organizations dedicate time and effort to studying and keeping up to date on the latest published research, technical guidelines and humanitarian standards. They also work to develop proprietary guidelines and technical manuals adapted to the technical priorities and priority geographic contexts of intervention. All of this helps to select and prioritize the activities that, in theory, will best help address the needs of people affected by humanitarian emergencies and achieve the desired change in projects. However, it is important to understand that this is far from guaranteed.
Although it would be ideal to be able to make decisions based on the best available scientific evidence, the truth is that there is hardly any quality scientific evidence to support activities in humanitarian contexts. This is due to multiple reasons. On the one hand, these scenarios are highly volatile and complex. Because of this, it is difficult to isolate which effect is a direct consequence of an intervention, to apply measures that allow us to overcome this obstacle, or to know to what extent the results of an investigation are extrapolable to other contexts. On the other hand, there are important ethical reasons why we should not apply some of the usual research methodologies or practices that produce the strongest evidence. Finally, research often takes a back seat to humanitarian response, with the - more or less justified - aim of alleviating human suffering first.
There are numerous guides, manuals and documents that are used as references and technical standards for many topics. However, in practice, and as much as it pains us to admit it, most technical guidelines and recommendations are based on data collected and analyzed with less rigor than desirable, studies that offer weak evidence and opinions of specialists with many years of experience -that's right- implementing, observing and evaluating humanitarian actions.
In addition, when there is a rush and few resources, projects are poor.
In the real world, humanitarian action projects are imperfect, always. The formulation of cooperation projects, after all, is based on a series of assumptions, hypotheses and estimates that can never be entirely objective. Moreover, they depend on the capacity of the organizations that design and develop them and their professionals. And no, nobody is perfect.
However, there are also many cases in which this imperfection in the design of proposals goes far beyond what would be acceptable, due to lack of time and resources. In this, the characteristics of humanitarian funding and its mechanisms have something to do with it. When the deadlines given by donors are short (and if there was no good prior preparation), it becomes impossible to base the proposed actions on a good analysis of the context. In these cases, project formulation is mainly based on information from secondary sources with little or no participatory processes discussion and analysis, or without integrating the learning resulting from past projects.
It is logical to argue that humanitarian organizations should do this context analysis first. In fact, it is highly recommended to dedicate resources to do good strategic and programmatic planning at the grassroots level, outside of specific donor calls for grants. This allows the formulation of quality projects even in very short time frames. However, this requires flexibility in funding (which does not always exist) and good coverage of indirect and structure costs (which are not always covered, especially in the case of local actors). Moreover, factors that could ease the administrative burden of project formulation (such as multi-year funding) are often the exception.
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