Charities have always found it a challenge to raise money in Ukraine. Russia's invasion of the Donbas last year has made it a lot harder for many of them.
It’s not that people are giving less money. More simply are donating to volunteer organizations that help Ukraine’s army, charities say, leaving those that help other vulnerable groups, such as street children, orphans, HIV patients, and the elderly, struggling to raise funds.
While it’s still possible to raise money for non-military causes, it now takes much more energy, creativity, and time, charity workers say.
“(A sum of) money that earlier could have been raised in three weeks now takes about three months to collect,” says Kateryna Soboleva-Zorkina, spokeswoman for the Association of Charities of Ukraine. “But it’s understandable – people donate to causes that they consider their priority – for their own security. So people donate to the army.”
Lera Tatarchuk, head of Tvoya Opora (Your Support), a charity that helps orphans and children with health problems, as well as supplying hospitals with medical equipment, says that now it’s “many times harder to raise money” than at the same time last year.
War is not the only reason, she says.
“Everyone needs help: soldiers, the wounded, children, sick people, but everyone has become poorer equally. And yes, there’s the war. It takes a lot of resources, and not only those from charities,”Tatarchuk says.
Olya Kudinenko, founder of the Tabletochki Foundation, which supports children with cancer, noted that many benefactors who were regular donors have shifted to helping the army.
“The war is something extraordinary – it appears on the front page, (and) everyone wants to be involved in something that appears on the front page,” Kudinenko told the Kyiv Post. “But there are people in need who will never appear on the front page, and we can’t give up on them under any circumstances: sick children, lonely elderly people, the homeless, orphans.”
Yet the foundation manages to grow due to “professional fundraising methods and systematic work,” she says. Tabletochki has so far raised about $451,897 during spring and June in 2015, which is five times more than during the same period in 2014, she says.
“I want a person to feel delighted, so that they walk out with the feeling that they’ve helped (someone) and they’re a wonderful person, so that later they come back and help again,” Kudienko says.
While the pattern of giving has shifted to supporting the war effort, the alteration hasn’t equally affected all non-military charity organizations.
For instance, the Ukrainian Philanthropic Marketplace, another charity initiative, hasn’t had to scale back its health projects, according to spokeswoman Viktoriya Bondar.
Groups that help children with cancer or cerebral palsy “always collect the necessary amount of money,” Bondar says. Organizations engaged in cultural and educational projects, as well as those that help people with disabilities, get less money.
The Association of Charities of Ukraine last year polled 57 managers of charities and people who have been donating for years. A majority of respondents, the survey found, said that to raise money in the current conditions, a charity must “find creative organizational and fundraising methods that are able not only to attract the attention of potential benefactors, but to spark their delight.”
That’s what Tvoya Opora is trying to do to keep donations flowing.
Money can be raised if a charity event provides gratitude to donors, Tatarchuk says. To pique the interest of benefactors, her fund organizes charity weekends with Ukrainian celebrities.
“We need to be very inventive, it takes a huge amount of effort,” she says.
Soboleva-Zorkina from the Association of Charities of Ukraine believes that donations won’t dry up once the war ends because a regular giver usually doesn’t stop. She described a person’s urge to donate and the enthusiasm of fundraisers as “the charity virus.”
Iryna Turchak, a volunteer for the Povernys Zhyvym (Return Alive) Foundation, which supports Ukraine’s soldiers, agrees. While she says it’s too early to think about raising money in peacetime, when the war does end some volunteers will shift to raising funds for other worthy, but non-military causes.
Whatever shifts happen, the amount of money raised by traditional charities won’t match the amounts people are currently giving for the war effort, Turchak says, pointing out that Povernys Zhyvym has already raised $227,272 in July, and the month is not over yet.
“People are paying to strengthen the front line,” she says. “They won’t pay that much (for other purposes).”
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected].
