HOW TO MANAGE VOLUNTEERING ORGANIZATION DURING THE WAR

01 April 2022

Since February 24, volunteering has become a crucial element of the Ukrainian social fabric. Moreover, even well-functioning organizations had to urgently transform their activities. Taras Chmut, the director of the Come Back Alive Fund and MIM-Kyiv student shares his experience in running the Fund professionally and changing it at an unexpected speed. He also discussed how important people are for the Fund. In his own words.

- You could not assess the scale and nature of war. We had some plan but it was too general. We spend the first 24 hours deciding on moving our back office to Ivano-Frankivsk and on purchasing as many military items as we could. We started working the next day.

- Safety of our families was our prime concern. We spend a lot of effort on evacuating them from warzones. Kyiv’s fate was unclear so we had to restructure the Fund so it could work even if we lose some territory or team members. Emotions and deaths of people who we knew personally aggravated the situation.

- Adapting or rather transforming our routine processes to suit the immediacy of the situation was our key challenge. During the first ten days, we did our best to provide as many military units with as much military gear and equipment as we could. It was critical for stalling the Russian army.

- Our activities are about people. The quality of the team means effective transformation. For example, it took our head of analytics two days to start working as a warehouse manager, manager of the military applications, and purchases for cryptocurrency. The head of the veterans’ unit started running international logistics and customs. Simultaneously, they were running their units. For example, some activities needed to be suspended in a way to be easily renewed after our victory.

- You can’t operate effectively in chaos. Chaos creates hurdles. For example, we did not have any experience in international dual-use goods purchases because we bought from Ukrainian manufacturers. We did not know much about cross-border currency payments. Today we are operating internationally. That’s why we need people with appropriate competencies. On one hand, we needed skilled people on the other hand we had to be selective in terms of finding the right fit. We also had to fine-tune ourselves because many of the new team members did not need more money but more recognition and praise. We are proud that our team more than doubled.

- I believe in the right to make a mistake. People and organizations err. In such cases communication is crucial. We are adapting quicker than in 2014 when we were founded. We are flexible and agile. You can learn more about our activities from the  video. If you wish to donate, please click the  link.