How successful are donor supported anti-corruption reforms? In this Practice Insight, the author takes a look at the evaluation of five large-scale technical assistance projects and gives an insight as to why we might not be as successful as we wish: Anti-corruption projects are often fraught with activities to be delivered in a relatively short time frame. In addition, it shows that fulfilling indicators is not always an acknowledgement of achieved impact, and that donors need to better understand how to build capacity in the area of anti-corruption.