Managing expectations: the focus of CBA on building adaptive capacity and developing interventions can result in high expectations within partnering communities that projects will directly influence policy and programming. Yet, not all CBA projects have discernible outcomes, especially in the short term, and even where they do, may have difficulty in sustaining them or face significant barriers impeding success. Failure to manage expectations and the overselling of potential benefits by researchers can result in conflict with local partners if there is a mismatch in expectations. Indeed, funding agencies increasingly want to see decision‐making and action‐oriented outcomes as explicit objectives in project proposals, often supported by letters of support from communities, pushing researchers to sometimes list outcomes which may or may not happen and to which partners may or may not be committed. Managing research promises and funding agency demands is important for creating realistic expectations of CBA projects.