The team of the Ukrainian Charitable Alliance has prepared some simple but sound tips for you
- Decide who you want to help:
There are two main areas of charity. The first is targeted assistance, where funds and resources are raised to support a specific person or something specific. For example, to help a seriously ill woman or a small child with a complex, rather rare disease, which can be treated but is very expensive and not affordable for parents, or, for example, raising funds for the purchase of medical rehabilitation equipment.
The second direction is system assistance. In this case, all funds and resources raised are intended to help solve a number of social problems: create a system of assistance to combat domestic violence, combat trafficking in human beings and support research into diseases and treatments, restore forests, create a system of assistance to victims of domestic violence.
If you do not have personal views, you can approach the issue more rationally and support those who are helped the least. Most often they are homeless, drug users, HIV-infected, adults with incurable diseases and / or limited life expectancy.
- Decide for yourself how you can be useful to the community or society
For example, in the Zagoriy Foundation survey – 88% of respondents provided assistance in the form of a monetary donation. However, we want to emphasize that funds are just one way to help. Free professional advice (for example, lawyers, psychologists, accountants or at least recruiters), intellectual volunteering, information support, participation in charity projects, an extra pair of hands and a head will not be superfluous!)
Contact the organizations directly to find out what you can be useful for, monitor the site and social networks, you may see the need and opportunities for your participation.
The main thing is to understand for yourself and remember that small donations do not happen, their regularity is more important – such payments make charity effective. It is better to help not once, but with a large contribution, but on a permanent basis, even if it is about 100 hryvnias per month. To become a system philanthropist, you can set up regular contributions to selected organizations through online banking.
- Find the initiative you wanted to support
People who want to help others often just don’t know where to start. If you find it difficult to decide, do not take the time to find out what help and who needs it right now. Get acquainted with the sites and pages on social networks of various organizations, read about their activities in the media, read the stories of wards, perhaps one of them will particularly affect you and make your choice easier.
If it is still difficult to determine, then you can use crowdfunding platforms that help organizations and foundations collect donations. For example, on The site dobro.ua from the Ukrainian Charity Exchange has collected hundreds of charitable projects from more than 120 proven organizations. Here is exactly the initiative just for you.
- Check out the charity
We will remind that for this purpose it is necessary to find a site and social networks of the organization; analyze how often reports on assistance are updated; and find out who and how the organization helps. Transparency of the organization, documentation, updated information about events and activities will definitely help with the limit of trust!
Good luck in charity, and remember that doing good is easy! Just worth a try.