Earlier this year, Daria Chervona, a photo retoucher from Kiev, was trying to raise 78 million Ukrainian hryvnias, about $2 million, for the Ukrainian Army, posting daily on social media urging friends and acquaintances to contribute. . It was a challenging goal, but after a few weeks he announced that he had reached his goal.
“They did it,” he told his followers on Instagram in January.
Chervona attributes his success to a system he adopted last summer: dividing the work among dozens of people, each tasked with raising money from friends, in a process that he said can generate large sums. Each fundraising event is then highlighted in a social media post with a photo, exploiting civilians' desire to be recognized as active participants in the war effort.
“They need to be able to say to themselves, 'I'm doing something, I'm helping,'” Chervona, 28, said. “I understood that any reasonably active person on Instagram could generate 50 thousand,” she added, referring to 50 thousand Ukrainian hryvnias, about $1,300.
Since the early days of the war, thousands of volunteers have led crowdfunding efforts, or crowdfunding, that have helped supply equipment to the Ukrainian military. They have become part of Ukraine's social fabric, and now almost 80 percent of the population donates, a survey found.
But as the conflict drags on, fundraisers say it has become more difficult to raise money. That has led people like Chervona to rely heavily on sales and marketing techniques to keep donations flowing. They have held auctions, organized raffles, and invited influencers to participate in promotional ads.
While sophisticated weaponry donated by the West gets a lot of attention, items raised via Ukrainian crowdfunding — such as warm clothing, bulletproof vests and drones — are necessities and help boost soldiers' morale.
The most ambitious crowdfunding campaigns have raised enough money to purchase not only small items like gloves, but also heavy battlefield equipment. For example, Chervona's most recent campaign was dedicated to raising money for a brigade to purchase five armored personnel carriers. The Ukrainian government said in September that crowdfunding had accounted for 3 percent of Ukraine's military spending since the war began.
The key, said Oleg Gorokhovskyi, founder of Monobank, Ukraine's largest online bank, is to adopt techniques that have worked in other fields. “You have to do it like a business,” he said, adding that his bank has processed nearly a billion dollars in donations since the start of the war.
Ukrainians have embraced what they call “team fundraising,” for its potential to scale up and reach untapped donors. In December alone, almost $115 million were donated through campaigns that used this system, Monobank reported.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, it has become “by far the most popular way to engage in civic resistance” among Ukrainian civilians, said Kateryna Zarembo, a research associate at the New Europe Center, based in in Kiev.
In July, Chervona said on Instagram that he was looking to assemble a team of 100 people, each tasked with raising about $1,300 to purchase drones for the 12th Azov Special Forces Brigade, a unit that is part of the National Guard. from Ukraine and has a nationalist heritage — seeking a total of $130,000.
The team members were baptized “the people of the Azov rear”, their photos were published on social networks and they were promised recognition at the end of the crowdfunding.
In one month, the operation raised $860,000, well above its goal.
Valeriy Tkalich, a product manager who has launched dozens of crowdfunding campaigns during the war, said donations “act like little lifelines” to deal with the guilt of not fighting in the Army.
“Although I do not participate in direct combat, I do participate in other significant actions,” he said. “Either you are fighting the war or you are helping to end the war.”
#Ukrainian #women #efforts #country39s #Army #work