At the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2014, various funds began to appear, designed to provide for the needs of the defenders of the country and the affected civilian population. After February 2022, the number of such organizations increased, because there were more people in need.

Ukrainian Freedom Fund is an American non-profit organization that was founded in 2014 and resumed its activities with the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

UFF was founded by former US military personnel. It provides aid to civilians and supplies the military with non-lethal equipment: clothing, first-aid kits, and civilian drones for rescuing and evacuating the wounded. It also organizes training with the participation of trainers from NATO countries, conducts panel discussions about Ukraine, and fundraising events in the USA.

The fund’s mission is to support a free, democratic, and independent Ukraine.

Task

But for the fund to continuously receive donations from the audience in the USA and Canada and to be able to realize its mission and the aid that goes directly to the recipients, it is important to communicate its activities.

It was with this task that UFF turned to the agencies of the agama group: PLEON Talan, Media Direction Ukraine OMD and provid.

Decision 

The agencies approached the task comprehensively. The first steps were:

1. Development of a communication strategy aimed at the audience of the USA and Canada (PLEON Talan).
   “The basis of all communications is the audience at which the communications are aimed. So our team started with segmentation. We divided the TA into the following groups: the first — people who already support Ukraine; the second — entrepreneurs, businesses; the third is the Ukrainian diaspora, people with Ukrainian roots. The goal of our communication is not to cover all residents of the USA and Canada, but to focus on those who have already been in contact with Ukrainians. When developing communication, we relied on the generally accepted standards of strategy coverage: we operated with facts, without resorting to melodramatics. And we formed the ToV of the fund as an intonation of an expert that helps Ukraine to win, “, comments the PLEON Talan team on the initial stage of cooperation.
2. Branding update (provid).

The provid team decided not just to modernize the logo and make it more convenient to use on different materials, but to put meanings in it that will reflect the activities of the fund. The new logo not only contains the abbreviation UFF in the form of a monogram, but also symbolizes the wing of an angel under whose protection Ukrainian fighters are.

3. Launch of system e-mail newsletters (PLEON Talan).

Regular and systematic work with statistics and user base, filtering it to a hot, interested audience. A feature of communication in this channel, which helps to retain the audience, is the use of exclusive content: stories shared by the military with the agency, stories of the fund’s employees, and important news from Ukraine.

4. Updating and maintaining social networks (PLEON Talan).

For social networks to reflect the mission and essence of the foundation, as well as to unite the community of philanthropists and just people from the USA and Canada who are not indifferent to Ukraine, the PLEON Talan team:

• includes experts from the USA and Canada and members of the foundation’s board of directors, which increases its credibility;
• tells exclusive stories from the front line and personal stories of Ukrainians to create a relatable image of Ukraine and remind that war is not only statistics in the news, but also stories of living people;
• forms an agenda to prevent Russian propaganda. Among the fund’s partners are many military and civilian experts from the USA, Canada and Ukraine. These specialists clearly explain the realities of the war and controversial issues in a language understandable to Americans, taking into account their mentality and attitude towards Ukraine. After all, the foundation’s audience trusts Americans — the same ones as it;
• demonstrates help in action. Publishes photos of purchased aid sent by the military, tells about the fate of drones and vehicles that were handed over (some have been running for a year, some were destroyed). All this increases trust, reveals interesting details of the frontline reality and gives donors a sense of involvement.

5. Provid creation of promotional video. Video The video was supposed to clearly and easily explain the foundation’s motivation, demonstrate the principles of its work, and share the results. For the target audience, concrete examples of what their help is aimed at and a justified sense of trust in those who dispose of this help are very important. That is why we added a block of testimonials of authoritative personalities to the list of results of the fund’s activities, who spoke about their attitude to the fund and confirmed its reliability with their own experience of communication and cooperation.
6. Website update (Media Direction Ukraine OMD). To improve the user experience, optimize search engine results and increase operational efficiency, the agency team conducted audits and improvements of the backend, traffic and landing page audits, UX/UI components and competitive analysis. Also worked on end-to-end analytics, which allows more efficient and accurate tracking of traffic sources in terms of promotion efforts and used channels in the context of the number and size of donations received.
7. Launch of search and YouTube advertising (Media Direction Ukraine OMD). An additional paid-promo allows the fund to increase the number of donations to help the army. The agency team set up and launched search engine advertising thanks to Google Ad Grants and posted promotional videos on YouTube. Such advertising activity covers many countries, including the USA, Canada and a dozen countries of Western Europe.

Result 

Media:

• increase in followers on Instagram by 15%, on Facebook – by 6%, on LinkedIn – by 18%;
• reach: over 160,000 monthly users across all channels.

Since the beginning of the full-scale war, the fund has already managed to:

• raise over $4,583,510 from donors around the world;
• restore 5 military hospitals;
• transfer more than 200 drones;
• evacuate 462 Ukrainians;
• provide more than 22 tons of humanitarian aid;
• conduct medical and other training for more than 2,700 military personnel;
• to provide the military with starlinks, generators, tires, computers, etc.