Support Ukraine Now update: what we've been up to in the first quarter of 2023
Published on April 28, 2023 by Diana
In the beginning of 2023, we launched a crowdfunding campaign for the SUN Leaders Program. It is a 6-months Fellowship Program for young leaders of social projects in Ukraine. Let us tell you what we’ve been up to since then.
What have Support Ukraine Now been up to for the past 4 months?
🏛️ Registered an NGO
Support Ukraine Now started on February 25, 2022, as a social initiative in response to Russian full-scale invasion to Ukraine. For a long time we were working as an initiative with no legal status. Now we are officially registered in Ukraine as a non-governmental non-profit organization “Support Ukraine Now”, or in Ukrainian “Громадська Організація «Підтримай Україну Зараз»”.
(Extract from the unified state register about registration of non-governmental non-profit organization “Support Ukraine Now”)
More so, we’ve partnered with a human development organization from Lichtenstein called Fraendi and jointly applied with several more EU organizations for an Erasmus grant. As a result, SUN NGO received the following recognition:
- Erasmus ID: E10329525
- PIC code: 882024105
💶 Fundraising for SUN Leaders Program
General budget of SUN Leaders Program to support 50 leaders is €300,000. It includes scholarships and mentoring for leaders, as well as 25% administrative costs. It’s a substantial sum for a project, so to implement the Program, we are working on fundraising through different channels.
- Grants
We have applied for 12 grants. Out of them, 7 were rejected, 1 was approved, 4 are pending — we are waiting for the final decision. To give you some context, foundations issuing grants usually take a few months (1 to 9 months depending on the program) to make a decision, especially for systemic long-term projects. 10% approval rate in grants application is considered standard across the field.
We have received Google Ads Grant of $10,000. To make the most use of it, we partnered with a marketing agency to help us launch an effective fundraising campaign.
To apply for grants more efficiently, we hired a grant writer Olga in April. Together, we are working on 8 new grant applications.
We have received Google Ads Grant of $10,000. To make the most use of it, we partnered with a marketing agency to help us launch an effective fundraising campaign.
To apply for grants more efficiently, we hired a grant writer Olga in April. Together, we are working on 8 new grant applications.
- Sponsorships
We’ve put together a sponsorship offer. We are talking to several businesses about their potential sponsorship of our Program. You are more than welcome to review the offer and share it with businesses that might be interested in supporting leadership and social impact in Ukraine.
- Crowdfunding
Yes, we are talking about you :) As of today, you donated to us €9,465.58 here on Open Collective. Thanks to you, kind strangers and loyal friends, we are able to continue working and will be able to launch the SUN Leaders Program in 2023. You’ve given us the momentum to scale dozens of social leaders in Ukraine with a mission to impact 1,000,000 Ukrainians.
🤳 Communications
In March, we hired a communications manager Alina, a Ukrainian living in Amsterdam. She is working with us part-time, helping with our social media: telling stories about SUN NGO, our projects – including the SUN LP, – our results and plans, and the voice of Ukraine abroad.
🙌 Building up the network
In May, we will be hosting SUNconference — Support Ukraine Now un-conference on the topic of Social Economy.
Unconference is a non-traditional event that has an open agenda and allows participants to co-create its format. The agenda is created by the attendees at the beginning of the program. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic or any activity can claim a time and a space.
Currently, we are running preparations for it: taking care of organization questions, inviting the participants, who will be able to act both as speakers and as guests.
In April we organized a SUNconference intro meeting, with 20 people attending. We talked about a topic chosen right at the intro meeting — “AI and it’s influence on the social economy.” But there is so much more to unpack; especially, since the recent UN recognition of social economy.
Read more about SUNconference and register to attend here.
Let’s see what the full SUNconference experience brings!
🤔 What’s coming in the next quarter?
- We continue fundraising for SUN Leaders Program through grants, sponsorships and crowdfunding. Continue public communication of our work.
- We host the SUNconference — un-conference on social economy in Ukraine.
- We are also working on supportukrainenow.org website renovation — updating the information, adding new relevant sections. Furthermore, we have some ideas of improving the website, and we are working on validating them right now, to engage you and other people in helping Ukraine most effectively, where it’s most needed. More on this later!
Thank you for being here for Ukrainian people 💙💛
Your SUN team 🌻