Crowdfunding, auctions and lotteries: how Ukrainians help the army

This year Daria Chervona, a photo retoucher from Kiev, was busy trying to revive 78 million Ukrainian hryvnia, approximately $2 million, for the Ukrainian army, and published daily on social media inviting friends and acquaintances to contribute. but after a few weeks he announced that he had surpassed it and had achieved his goal.

“You did it,” he told his followers on Instagram at the end of January, in a post showing the balance eight digits collected in large black letters.

Strategy

Chervona attributes his success to a system he adopted last summer:

dividing the work among dozens of people, each of whom is tasked with raising money from friends, in a process that she says can generate huge sums.

Each fundraiser is then highlighted in a social media post with their image, capitalizing on civilians’ desire to do so 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 in a recent interview.

“I just realized that anyone who is reasonably active on Instagram could earn $50,000,” he added, referring to 50,000 Ukrainian hryvnias, about $1,300.

Since the early days of the war, thousands of volunteers have led crowdfunding initiatives that have proven crucial in providing critical equipment to the Ukrainian army.

They have become part of the teasocial ejido of Ukraine and currently almost 80% of the population donates, according to a recent survey.

But as the conflict drags on and battlefield momentum shifts toward Russia, fundraisers say it has become harder to raise money.

This has led people like Chervona to rely heavily on sales and marketing techniques to keep donations flowing.

They held auctions, held raffles and invited influencers to participate in promotional clips.

While sophisticated weapons donated by the West get much of the attention, items raised through Ukrainian crowdfunding (such as warm clothes, body armor and drones) are things soldiers need and help boost morale.

The most ambitious crowdfunding campaigns have raised enough money to purchase not only small items like gloves, but also heavy battlefield equipment.

The latest operation in Chervona, for example, was dedicated to raising funds to donate to the military brigade to purchase five armored vehicles troop transport.

Entrance

The Ukrainian government said in September that crowdfunding accounted for 3% of Ukraine’s total military spending since the war began.

The key, said Oleg Gorokhovskyi, co-founder of Monobank, Ukraine’s largest online bank, is to adopt techniques that have worked in other fields.

“You should do it like a business,” he said, adding that his bank has processed nearly a billion dollars in donations since the war began.

He and Chervona provided copies of financial documents The New York Times which they said showed fundraising totals.

People have adopted the broader approaches they use, which Ukrainians call “team fundraising,” for their potential to expand operations and reach untapped donors.

In December alone, nearly $115 million was donated through campaigns using this system, almost as much as Germany’s latest short-term military aid package to Ukraine, according to Monobank data.

Ukrainian crowdfunding for the military dates back to 2014, when civilians began raising money to help an outgunned army fight Russian proxies who had instigated a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine.

But it took off dramatically after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, and has since become “by far the most popular way of engaging in civic resistance” among Ukrainian civilians, said Kateryna Zarembo, associate fellow of the New Europe Center.

Nowadays, any Ukrainian with a social media account receives daily calls to help purchase a pickup truck, walkie-talkie or some other necessity for a brigade fighting at the front.

Unit commanders sometimes address their followers directly, urging them to help them purchase new attack drones.

“You scroll through the news and see your friends raising money and you think:

“Okay, I’ll donate.” Ok, I’ll donate a second time. Well, I can donate even a third time,” said Illia Pavlovych, a 28-year-old designer.

Simply tapping into Ukrainian spirit and patriotism (and anger against Russian President Vladimir Putin) worked at the start of the war thanks to the wave of solidarity that swept through the country.

But as the fighting continued, fatigue increased and people’s ability to donate decreased.

“I was trying to raise money using classical methods,” said Valeriy Tkalich, a product manager who recently organized a crowdfunding initiative to buy a jeep for the army.

“And it gave me smaller and smaller results.”

In an attempt to get around the problem, fundraisers got creative: A popular Ukrainian artist adapted the song “Just the Two of Us,” changing the chorus to “Just Drop the Donation.”

A former member of the Kiev city council opened a lottery in which the first prize was his Porsche.

But perhaps no initiative has been as successful as the one that creates a ladder of donations from friends and acquaintances.

Chervona, who is spearheading fundraising efforts as she looks for work as a retoucher, said she and some friends decided to try the system as they looked for a way toexpand the donor baseso we can continue to raise large sums through smaller donations.

Last July, he posted on Instagram that he was trying to put together a team of 100 people, each tasked with raising about $1,300 from his friends to buy drones for the 12th Azov Special Forces Brigade, a unit that makes part of the Ukrainian National Army. .

He saves money and has a nationalist legacy, aiming to raise a total of $130,000.

The members of the team were called “the people of the rear of Azov”, their photos were published on social networks, and at the end of the crowdfunding they were promised a token similar to a military badge.

Within a month, the operation far exceeded its goal, raising a total of $860,000Cervona said.

“Very effective,” Tkalich, who participated in Chervona’s crowdfunding, said of the method.

“I was wondering why we didn’t do this sooner.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company