We, Michelle Garred and Matteah Spencer Reppart, would like to spark a conversation about Outcome Harvesting (OH) and social justice. OH is a unique evaluation approach because it uses retrospective logic, identifying outcomes after they emerge, in response to complexity. Following Wilson-Grau, OH practitioners consistently approach complexity as a way of understanding social change within contexts that are too dynamically multi-causal to permit advance prediction of an intervention’s outcomes. Complexity theory also helps us to strategize systems change, including the challenge of dismantling systemic discrimination along lines of ethnicity, nationality and other human differences. OH is well suited for evaluating justice-promotion initiatives because of its foundational understanding of complex systems.

At the same time, we also see OH practitioners approaching retrospective logic from a different justice-focused angle, as a way of respecting the worldviews of local people. Most people don’t think of social change in the mechanistic, linear way that mainstream evaluation requires, but rather as an organic and emergent process. The OH practice of retrospective logic can provide a breath of cultural fresh air, because the assumptions underlying mainstream evaluation are not culture-neutral. Rather, excessively linear thinking is an expression of European and North American enlightenment-era rationalism, spread around the world through (neo)colonialism. When OH displaces linear predictive planning, it shifts power by honoring diverse ways of working, thinking and knowing. If that cultural shift is reinforced by equitable relational dynamics within the evaluation process, the transformative effect is even stronger.

In an example from the USA, these benefits were evident during a 2020 evaluation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. LINC UP is a nonprofit organization that pursues racial equity by building economic and community political power for people of color.  Matteah, with OH coaching from Michelle, facilitated an evaluation of their work, which identified  37 significant outcomes relating to housing policies and community power (e.g. police reform, civic engagement, and human rights). These findings helped LINC to recognize and validate their contributions towards systems change.  The results were used to focus LINC’s strategic plan and formalize their advocacy efforts, doubling down on seeking systemic transformation and coalition building for police reform, public safety, civic engagement, and housing – all of which present elements of structural racism.  Considering that LINC engaged this work outside of grant funded deliverables, they experienced OH as liberating:  It was responsive to their changing context and emergent strategy, gave them an opportunity to fully demonstrate their influence, and provided them an opportunity to shift away from solely focusing on predicted programmatic outcomes.

At the global level, Michelle is co-creating a noticeable trend toward using OH in working with faith-inspired actors, who tend to be much more inclined toward emergence than linear predictive planning. Harvesting outcomes through narrative storytelling, a central cultural practice among many faith communities, increases their power when engaging with secular funders and partners. Indeed, across sectors we increasingly hear global colleagues saying that they choose OH in large part for its resonance with non-western worldviews. We believe this to be an expression of the global movement toward “decolonizing” evaluation (while noting some controversy around the term). It is up to the OH community to interpret what these trends mean. We are eager to hear your perspectives. Are social justice values becoming an important rationale for using OH, alongside and complementary to the complexity of our contexts?

Note: We thank Min Ma and Susan Putnins of MXM Research for their thought partnership in developing these OH ideas.