Listening while evaluating: examining the benefit of an NGO programme using season extenders (greenhouses) in Bosnia-Herzegovina

This article evaluates the impact of a non-governmental organisation (NGO)-implemented programme in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a case study for evaluating small highly focused NGO programmes, particularly in agriculture. Through the analysis of household-level data, we demonstrate that season-extending greenhouses significantly increased agricultural incomes of beneficiaries, with the greatest income gains occurring after 2 to 3 years into the programme. The benefit of the season extenders comes from extending the marketing lessons learned from crops inside the greenhouse to crops outside of the greenhouse. Evaluating the lessons learned requires that we address two common problems in evaluation - lack of an untreated counterfactual group and long-term nonlinear benefits.