"Organizations think they're answering the question, but they're not really answering the question." This episode explores why- and what to do about it!

In this inaugural episode of Project Design: The Good, The Bad and The Wild, host Danielle Wilkins sits down with guest Kavita Desai to discuss what she has learned over her 18 years leading business development and proposal design for organizations like Palladium Group and Abt Global, including the costly mistakes teams make when designing multi-sector programs under pressure, and a success case in a complex multi-sector program in East Africa that integrated economic growth, nutrition, WASH and community development.

In this episode:

• The stakeholder engagement strategy that prevents missing critical perspectives
• How to bound your work when four technical areas could each pull you down a rabbit hole
• The "touch the hot pan" phenomenon: why people learn design importance the hard way
• Practical advice for small organizations without full proposal teams
• Theory of Change pitfalls and the themes you need to identify first
• Protecting design integrity while meeting aggressive deadlines

Whether you're designing programs for donors and foundations, leading social impact initiatives, managing complex projects, or just trying to understand what project design actually means, this conversation offers practical frameworks you can use immediately.

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