Carmen Wilson-Grau, Outcome Harvesting expert
For communications professionals working in purpose-driven organisations, demonstrating impact is an ongoing challenge. We track media coverage, impressions, website visits, engagement rates and campaign outputs. These measures help us understand whether our communications are reaching the audiences we want to reach.
But what happens after someone reads our story, sees our campaign or engages with our content? Do they change their behaviour, influence someone else or contribute to a shift in policy, practice or public understanding?
These questions sit at the heart of Outcome Harvesting, a qualitative, participatory approach to understanding change. I spoke with Carmen Wilson-Grau, an Outcome Harvesting expert and facilitator, about how the method works and what communications teams can learn from it.
Start with the change, not the activity
Traditional monitoring and evaluation often begins with an intervention's objectives and tracks whether planned activities and outputs have been delivered. Outcome Harvesting takes a different approach: it works backwards, first identifying changes that have occurred and then investigating how an intervention contributed to them.
"Outcome Harvesting is a qualitative, participatory method used to identify changes in the behaviour of social actors and understand how an intervention contributed to them," Carmen explains.
An outcome is a change in the behaviour of a social actor. This might include changes in practices, policies, agendas, relationships or narratives. Social actors can include individuals, communities, networks and institutions.
For communications teams, this means looking beyond what we produced to ask: What did people do with our communications, and what happened as a result?
Did information influence a decision? Did an advocacy partner use a story in their work? Did communications contribute to a change in how an organisation talked about an issue or encouraged someone to take action?
The point is not to assume that every piece of communications produces a measurable change. It is to investigate what happened, identify where communications contributed and understand the role of other people and factors.
Following the chain of change
A key aspect of Outcome Harvesting is the concept of outcome chains. These map the different changes that contribute to a larger outcome, including unexpected or indirect changes.
Carmen illustrates this through an example of a project designed to reduce littering in rivers. The project builds awareness of waste management, develops capacity and organises beach clean-ups.
Households begin disposing of rubbish in designated bins. Schools respond by introducing waste management education. Children encourage their parents to participate in beach-cleaning activities, families spend more time at the beaches, and local travel agencies begin promoting the area to tourists.
Each change builds on what happened before.
For communications professionals, this offers a useful way to think about impact. A media story might influence a public conversation, which could lead an organisation to change its position and contribute to a policy discussion.
The value is not in claiming that communications caused the entire chain. It is in understanding where communications contributed, how other actors played a role and what can be learned.
Where does communications fit?
Communications is rarely the only factor contributing to social change. It usually sits alongside advocacy, relationships, organising, policy engagement and other interventions.
Carmen argues that identifying communications' contribution requires looking beyond the reach of a communications product and considering how people used what we created.
"For example, a media outlet can publish an opinion piece for the first time, exposing its audience to new concepts and arguments. This matters because it can change the narrative about a specific issue within a targeted audience."
A storytelling piece might also be used for advocacy purposes, indirectly contributing to changes in actions, practices or even laws.
This challenges how communications teams often report their work. Securing media coverage matters, but the coverage itself is not necessarily the outcome. We can also ask whether it introduced a new argument into public discussion, influenced a decision-maker or supported an advocacy campaign.
Reach and engagement still have a role. They simply tell us only part of the story.
What traditional metrics can - and can't - tell us
Reach, impressions, shares and engagement rates help us understand whether we are reaching our intended audiences and whether they are interacting with our content.
But they generally cannot tell us what happens afterwards.
Carmen points to communications during COVID-19 as an example. Sharing evidence about the impact of the pandemic on waste pickers or street vendors´ livelihoods and their essential role in society contributed to public and government recognition, allowing workers to return to work during lockdown. Information about infection risks also helped workers take precautions.
A traditional report might record the reach and engagement of these materials. Outcome-focused evaluation asks how people used the information and what those actions contributed to.
The distinction is important: engagement measures exposure and interaction, while outcome-focused evaluation seeks to understand change.
Moving from attribution to contribution
Outcome Harvesting focuses on contribution rather than attribution. Carmen explains that changes in behaviour are rarely the result of a single intervention. Other organisations, partners, contextual factors and individual decisions may all play a role.
For communications professionals, this provides a way to explore impact without claiming sole responsibility for a complex outcome.
Rather than saying, "Our campaign changed the policy," we can investigate how communications contributed to a broader process involving advocacy, relationships, evidence and institutional decision-making.
This is not about diminishing the role of communications. It is about understanding it more accurately.
Making outcome thinking part of everyday work
Outcome Harvesting can sound like something that belongs in an evaluation report at the end of a project. But Carmen advocates incorporating this way of thinking into everyday communications practice.
She describes asking “what happens after” as eye-opening for teams, helping them understand the impact of their work more deeply and adapt as they learn.
For communications teams, this could mean incorporating questions into campaign reviews, stakeholder conversations and regular reporting:
What changed among the people or organisations we were trying to influence?
How did people use the information or content we produced?
Did our communications contribute to changes in narratives, relationships or practices?
What unexpected changes did we observe?
Who else contributed to the outcome?
What are we learning that should influence our next communications decision?
Over time, identifying outcomes and mapping chains of change can help teams understand what worked, what did not and where to adapt their strategy.
Evaluation then becomes more than an exercise in proving value after the fact. It becomes a tool for learning and improving communications while the work is still underway.
A more meaningful way to talk about impact
When asked what she would change about how organisations evaluate and discuss communications impact, Carmen recommends adding a qualitative method such as Outcome Harvesting to traditional communications metrics.
For those of us working in communications, this invites a shift in perspective. Instead of asking only whether our content performed well, we can also ask what it helped make possible.
Because the real value of communications is not always visible in the numbers we report. Sometimes, it is found in the change that happens afterwards - and in our ability to recognise, understand and learn from it.
