Outcome Harvesting (OH) is a complexity-aware approach that enables flexible evaluation implementation when faced with real-world constraints and enables participation of evaluation stakeholders such as partner organizations. However, OH can be relatively process heavy for non-evaluators supporting an OH evaluation when conducted as originally intended. Adopting light-touch approaches may help ease the data collection burden on local organizations who are often engaged in the larger program’s OH process. However, at what point does flexible or light touch become too light? In early 2021, Pact’s Women’s Entrepreneur Act (WE Act) project in Cambodia aimed to conduct a light-touch OH approach. The team leveraged pre-established reflection meetings between the program and local implementing partner organizations to collect outcome statements. This was to reduce the burden of multiple data requests. However, during data analysis, the WE Act team faced challenges in editing outcome statements, finalizing data collection and eventually conducting substantiation. This was largely due to the challenge of educating partners, within a short period of time, on what is included in an outcome statement and the meaning of “contribution” towards an outcome. Thus, the major challenge was maintaining rigor while encouraging the participation of a population with limited evaluative training and time. WE Act speakers will share lessons learned and discuss mitigation strategies for future programs which may adopt the light touch OH approach when working with partner organizations and non-evaluators.
