Outcome Harvesting

Outcome Harvesting is a participatory evaluation approach, developed by Ricardo Wilson-Grau and Heather Britt, that identifies outcomes after they have occurred and then works backward to determine whether and how an intervention contributed to them. Instead of measuring progress against predefined targets, evaluators 'harvest' evidence of observable changes in the behaviour, relationships, actions or policies of social actors, then assess the program's contribution to each. It is designed for complex settings where cause-and-effect relationships are not fully understood in advance and outcomes cannot be specified ahead of time.