Outcome Harvesting: A Complexity-Aware Monitoring Approach

Outcome Harvesting is one of five complexity-aware monitoring approaches promoted by USAID’s Complexity-Aware M&E Team.  Outcome Harvesting works backwards to identify, describe and verify contribution to results, both expected and unexpected. 

The resources to the right provide an introduction to Outcome Harvesting and examples from USAID:

• Outcome Harvesting Brief: This brief is intended to introduce the concepts and approach used in Outcome Harvesting to grant makers, managers, and evaluators, with the hope that it may inspire them to learn more about the method and apply it to appropriate contexts. 
  
  
• Outcome Harvesting:  Introduction & USAID Evaluation Example: In this interactive screencast Ricardo Wilson-Grau provides an introduction to Outcome Harvesting and Heather Britt discusses an example of using Outcome Harvesting in a USAID performance evaluation. You can download useful handouts directly from the media player.
  
  
• Including Outcome Harvesting in a USAID M&E Plan:  In this screencast, AAAS Fellow Ku McMahan describes why and how he incorporated Outcome Harvesting into the Grand Challenges M&E Plan.