Using Outcome Harvesting to Assess Unintended Consequences of Market Systems Programs
- Partner: Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO), BEAM Exchange, Alliances Lesser Caucuses Programme (ALCP)
- Publication Type: Brief
- Date: September 2016
- Team: Ben Fowler, Tim Sparkman
- Recommended Citation: MarketShare Associates. Using Outcome Harvesting to Assess Unintended Consequences of Market Systems Programs. Washington, D.C.: United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Prepared by Ben Fowler and Tim Sparkman for ACDI/VOCA with funding from the Leveraging Economic Opportunities project and the BEAM Exchange, 2016.
There is a growing interest in monitoring systemic change. However, a literature review (Fowler & Dunn 2014) found no consensus on how to define a system and no comprehensive framework for evaluating systemic change in market systems interventions. In response, the BEAM Exchange and the Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) project identified a list of tools and approaches to monitor systemic change – and conducted a series of trials to test these with market systems development programs. One of the tools that was tested was Outcome Harvesting. Outcome Harvesting is a utilization-focused evaluation tool that scans the environment for the intended or unintended consequences of an intervention.
MarketShare Associates, through the LEO and BEAM Exchange projects, worked with the Alliances Lesser Caucuses Programme (ALCP) to apply Outcome Harvesting to identify and analyze unintended outcomes arising at least partially from ALCP’s efforts to facilitate improvements in the Georgian dairy industry. The trial also evaluated the Outcome Harvesting approach as a technique for understanding systemic change related to market systems programs. This brief presents a summary of the findings.
