Could you please introduce yourself, your full name, age and occupation?
I’m Danyil Tiurikov, I’m 26 years old, I’m an interface designer and also a volunteer. I come from Zaporizhzhia and I currently live here.
Tell us a little about when you started volunteering.
I started volunteering in February 2022. It was either 25 of February or 26 of February [one or two days after the full-scale war broke out]. It started with the regional volunteer headquarters in Zaporizhzhia. Later, it was dissolved and I started raise funds for the need of Ukrainian Armed Forces.
How did you come up with the idea to create Zbirolovy? Has it started before or has the volunteer headquarters dissolved?
Yes, it was after the volunteer headquarters stopped working. But actually, Zbirolovy was not my idea. It was my friends Lyosha and Misha who suggested it. It’s really their idea. They contacted me because, at that time, I was already launching little fundraisings. They had an idea to form a community that would help collect the funds for medium and small amounts goals. Because when we are talking about large-amount fundraisings, there are foundations that deal with this, and in small and medium-sized fundraisings the main problem is that either the troops collect themselves or their families deal with it. Usually, they are not very skilled in using social networks like Instagram, and therefore, they have difficulties with collecting the full amount.
How exactly you have started collecting funds for the Armed Forces?
At that time [when the headquarters was dissolved], I was engaged in joint fundraisings. I was helping people raise money, who then transferred it to those who needed it. It was only with Zbirolovy that we began to cooperate with the military directly.
So do you collect for certain needs? Are you in contact with the particular brigade or, maybe have acquaintances somewhere in the military? How do you find people who need help?
From the very beginning, when it was the first month since we started Zbirolovy, we had to search for people. We just logged in to Instagram and scrolled through the latest feed. We looked for people who are raising money and don’t have much luck with it. It used to be easier to find people because there were fewer fundraisings then.
After some time, our friends and people from the military started writing to us on their own. To date, we have an application form attached to the profile bio. This helps form a queue of requests. So we are no longer looking for people to help them collect the money, on the contrary, we are looking for those we can give out a part of the requests to, therefore raising funds as soon as possible.
Tell us a little about your role in Zbirolovy.
I am responsible for design for everything we use [Instagram page, stories, fundraising pictures]. Other people help sometimes too. Also, I am directly in contact with the military, I talk to them if something needs to be settled. Likewise, when we come across people who drive equipment or machines or organise purchases, I regulate these processes too. We launch the fundraisings and form the queues, we talk to the military… A while ago, we drove some things directly to the troops too. We do everything at once
Do you have any other volunteer activities besides the Zbirolovy?
I also run separate fundraisings on my page. This is not related to Zbirolovy. I do it on my own.
Let’s go back a few steps. When exactly the idea to create Zbirolovy was born?
It was sometime in August 2023.
But you developed this idea? How did you bring it to life? Did you engage in advertising?
We just created a page on Instagram and put out several posts, which contained information about our team and what we do. At the very beginning, when we started fundraising and published it on Instagram, we did collaborative posts with the pages from our team. Because we already had an audience, we decided it would be good to start telling who Zbirolovy are and showing that we are part of it and that we are related to volunteering. But there was no advertisement. To be honest, I’m sure that sort of thing needs advertising, it spreads pretty quickly anyway.
It works as a sort of word of mouth.
Well, yeah, something like that.
How many people are you in the Zbirolovy team?
Now there is me, Lyosha, Misha, Marina, Katya… Relatively speaking there are roughly seven people in the team. Some of us are more active and involved in the processes, and others cover particular needs.
How many joint fundraisings have you completed so far?
To date, we’ve done 12 fundraisings with a total amount of 10.4 million hryvnas [≈250 000$].
You now have so many people who are constantly joining and starting their small fundraisers. If you say that you founded Zbirolovy in August 2023, then when the project gained popularity that a lot of people started to join.
I think it happened at the end of autumn [2023]. Around that time we realised that we could raise a million hryvnas a month. I think somewhere at this stage, more people started participating. Because at the first fundraisers, it was mostly our friends who took part.
Do you see a problem in joint fundraisings? If so, which one? It seems very noticeable to me that with each time it gets harder to raise funds. Why do you think this is happening, and do you see any possible solutions?
The thing is that there are actually a lot of fundraisings. There are really many of them. Therefore, you [the person who raises money] need to interest people in some ways. Right now, there is a struggle to win a person’s attention. And the issue is not that people do not donate, but that they donate specifically to you. Therefore, we need to come up with some incentives. It could be something creative or it could be some sort of a story, or, maybe, an emotional trigger. For example, it may be a story for example ‘my father’ or ‘my friend’ – people react quite well to that sort of thing. The fundraising culture has now moved into the realm of creative agencies and marketing, because if you look at them, they actually work the same way – you just have to fight for people’s attention.
Do you think it is a positive or negative thing that there is so much competition?
I’m sure it’s natural. Sooner or later when there’s a lot of something, you have to somehow attract people’s attention so that they notice you. I cannot say that what is happening to the fundraisers is either positive or negative. Yes, it was really cool when there were fewer fundraisings and we completed it faster. Though we all understand that the needs are increasing, therefore the amount of fundraisings are increasing…
What plans does Zbirolovy have for the future?
Our priority now is to close this current fundraising [for 3 million hryvnas], and then we will reorganize the team a little, maybe we will be looking for some new people in the team. We also understand that we need to look for some other connections and go out into a wider space. We are thinking of registering Zbirolovy as an official GO or a charitable foundation. Now there are certain problems with communication with businesses or other potentially large donors, donors who wouldn’t join the project because we are, relatively speaking, a voluntary initiative. We want to be more official, so we need a paper to become official. This is all bureaucracy, but this is the development plan.
We also thought about manufacturing FPV and we talked a lot about it with various troops and realised that it was not an option for us. That is why our goal is to develop a larger fundraising area and try to reach some permanent partners. There is another option, that we might narrow the focus to specialise in certain areas. For instance, we wouldn’t collect money for everything at once but focus on vehicles or drones, etc.
Danyil is currently raising funds for a vehicle repair for his friends. You can support it with your donation here. Zbirolovy’s Instagram page is through the link.
Translator: Anna Konovalenko
