Assignment 11.1: Outcome harvesting: defining an outcome description Copy

Review documentation and draft your outcome description

Various sources, such as reports, previous evaluations, press releases and other documentation, can be used to identify potential outcomes (changes in individuals, groups, communities, organisations or institutions) and what the intervention did to contribute to them.

In this assignment, you will create your own outcome description. This can be done by – after identifying a source to use – asking a relevant question that you would like to answer. For example: What has been the collective effect of grantees on making the national governance regime more democratic and what does it mean for the programme´s strategy?

The most important next step is to obtain information about the changes in social actors and how the intervention influenced them. The change, in the case of this example, can be a president’s public commitment to being transparent (behaviour); the legislature passing a new anti-corruption law (policy); or a third successive government publishing its procurement records (practice). The influence of the change agent can range from inspiring and encouraging, facilitating and supporting, to persuading or pressuring the social actor to change.

Now it’s time to develop your own outcome statement. Look at your own Theory of Change and identify an intervention that you can use for this assignment.

• What question can you ask to guide your statement?
• What is the outcome, or observable change in agenda, activity, relationships, policy or practice in another actor?
• Why is this change relevant in light of your programme’s Theory of Change?
• How has your intervention contributed to the change (this can be partially or wholly, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not)?

To write down your description, you can make use of this template or create one yourself.