What qualifies as a community orchard success story? They are many and varied: from a child excited about finally getting fruit from “their tree” they planted years ago, and the orchard leader now more confident about their own skills after our training course, to the passer-by simply grateful to pick fruit from a local orchard they played no part in creating.
These are clear signs that our delivery team at The Orchard Project often notice, showing that our work is doing what we set out to do. And yet, they are also some of the hardest outcomes to measure.
As a charity, The Orchard Project spends a lot of time thinking about impact. Like most organisations, we are asked to show evidence of change. The data we collect includes how many people take part in our events; the number of trees planted; new skills learned by participants; and whether taking part has had a positive effect on people’s physical or mental health. This is the practical work of monitoring and evaluation; the systems we use to understand what our work is doing, and whether it is making a meaningful impact.
Measurement matters. It means we can say that 96% of people involved with our orchards last year improved their wellbeing as a result. Measurement helps us learn, improve, and make the case for why community orchards deserve investment and care. But measurement is never the whole story.
Why measurement still matters
Good impact measurement helps us understand whether our work is actually making a difference. It allows us to spot patterns, identify what works well, and adapt when things are not going as planned. It also helps us speak clearly to partners, funders and local authorities about the value of community orchards as long-term assets for people and nature.
Without clear and shared ways of capturing impact, each new orchard planted risks being dismissed as “nice but niche”, rather than recognised as skilled, strategic work which has long-term impact. This matters, because environmental causes consistently receive a relatively small share of charitable funding, in part because their impacts are long-term, preventative, and harder to make visible than more immediate social or health outcomes.
At the same time, anyone involved in building community stewardship knows that the most meaningful place-based outcomes often emerge slowly, informally, and well beyond the life of a funded project.
Impacts that slip through the cracks
Many of the changes we see through our work do not fit neatly into a monitoring framework. People regularly tell us how much they love seeing a new orchard in their neighbourhood, even if they never attended a planting day.
Often, the most significant changes happen one or two steps removed from the original activity. Someone who attended a planting day goes on to plant fruit trees at home. A trained volunteer shares their skills with a neighbouring group. These knock-on effects are real, but they are rarely planned in advance, or captured at the point they occur. By the time we notice these ripple effects, they are often already embedded in everyday practice.
Even for graduates of our formal training programmes, the real impact often happens much later. Skills are applied in new places, knowledge travels through informal networks, and new projects happen without us being directly involved. We rarely get to see all of that unfolding.
Combining evidence, experience and essence
At The Orchard Project, we take a multi-stranded approach to learning and reflection. We collect evidence that helps us understand reach, learning and ecological outcomes. But we derive both joy and insight from listening to people’s stories and feedback that reveal how community orchards are woven into people’s lives over time.
This is why we are interested in approaches to impact that help us notice patterns, connections and unintended outcomes, and facilitate ongoing dialogue. When communities are part of deciding what success looks like, we find better ways of understanding how change spreads, rather than simply proving that something happened.
And while data will always matter, the true essence of a community orchard is often felt, rather than measured.
By Harry Earle-Mundil, Head of Fundraising