Advocate Europe is an ideas competition for innovative projects on the theme of Europe. Advocate Europe is looking for original, transnational proposals to strengthen cohesion in Europe. Advocate Europe is aimed at civil society actors seeking start-up funding and support to implement their sustainable ideas. Up to twelve projects per year will be funded with up to 50,000 euros each. The winning projects will also receive mentoring and support from the Advocate Europe network. The Advocate Europe ideas competition is a project of Stiftung Mercator, implemented by MitOst e. V. and Liquid Democracy. nexus evaluates the Advocate Europe programme, examining its acceptance and impact, working out its further (future) potential and, if necessary, deficits, and generating recommendations on how, among other things, acceptance, reach, transparency and impact can be improved and the programme developed accordingly.

The evaluation focuses on the following elements of the Advocate Europe programme: firstly, the online platform, which also serves as an open application platform where all project ideas can be publicly viewed and commented on in an “Idea Space”, and secondly, the support provided by Advocate Europe to the winning projects during the implementation of their project. The evaluation is divided into several methodological components:

  • Usage analysis of the online platform
  • Document analysis to aggregate quantitative and qualitative data on the projects and the process flow
  • Online survey among all registered users of the online platform
  • Qualitative interviews with all winning teams from 2015
  • In-depth study of 3 focus projects, group interviews with project representatives and representatives of the target groups of the winning projects.

The evaluation process is accompanied participatively in several workshops. Objectives, criteria and indicators of the evaluation are jointly defined and readjusted; at the same time, the condensation of the findings from the evaluation into strategies and concrete indications for the further development of the programme is accompanied.

Duration: 03/2016 – 06/2016
Client: MitOst e. V.
Team: Kerstin Franzl (Project manager), Sabine Schröder