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0 points3pt141594y ago0 comments

How do I know that this money is going to where they say it is going? I'm happy to support it at the top level, I just want to make sure I'm not accidentally funnelling money into Russia's disinformation campaign.

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8 comments · 4 top-level

capableweb4y ago· 2 in thread

Indeed, some external validation would be great, from Patreon or any other organization.

The membership levels are also.. Disturbing? If I select "Projectile" membership (with a picture of a grenade missile or something) it says "You started saving lives!". All memberships are munition for weapons ("Bullet", "Projectile", "Bomb" and "Missile"), not exactly something you associate with "Saving lives".

Seems to be run by Come Back Alive Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Back_Alive) but I can't actually verify that they link to the Patreon from their website (https://savelife.in.ua) as it seems to be offline right now.

Not to say it's sketchy to use Patreon for something of that importance, since Patreon has a reputation of pulling funding for organizations by now.

neonbones4y ago

>The membership levels are also.. Disturbing?

Yeah, it feels strange to have these images. There are already discussions to change them in Ukrainian community because it's not really connected to what organization do.

People from Ukraine IT community don't care because they got all the information about the organization without language barriers, but this images seems to be a problem from the outside perspective as this is the first thing that people would notice.

Anyway, thank you for your feedback (I'm not from the organization, I know a few people who help there)

tekknik4y ago

> All memberships are munition for weapons ("Bullet", "Projectile", "Bomb" and "Missile"), not exactly something you associate with "Saving lives".

In a simplistic view they don’t save lives, but without them what do you fight with? What keeps Russia from thinking they can just easily take over a country?

ohwellish4y ago· 2 in thread

(sorry for delay, my account is for reads and I hit the limit of replays in HN, had to wait)

back in 2014 when sht hit the fan and Ukrainian army was very weak, ppl made it back strong with everything they could, donating money equipment and food, there was alot of volunteer organizations back then and these ones was one of the most well know, still operating to this day

tbh Idk how to reassure you they are true but here's their fb page with 3mln+ followers https://www.facebook.com/backandalive/

and here's the link of that IT community thing I've mentioned before https://dou.ua/forums/topic/36494/

hopefully those will provide some validation for you

3pt14159OP4y ago

Ok well that wasn't quite enough for me to believe you 100%, but it was enough for me to believe you 98% and that's enough for me to sign up for the top teir. If you're lieing to me or if someone is lieing to you, then even though I'll be dissapointed I'll forgive them or you.

I wish there was a better way of scaling trust online right now and I hope this war ends soon.

Edit: But I'm happy to believe I'm really supporting Ukraine with this donation.

ohwellish4y ago

I do not know any of them personally but I do trust them, as far as I remember back then they've started as one of the projects on Ukrainian crowdfunding website https://biggggidea.com/project/blagodijnij-fond-povernis-zhi...

I'm a vet of this war and few mins ago I've was called back to service and most likely I'm about to go back at war zone again pretty soon

so for me personally your support of Ukraine means a lot, thank you man

1 more reply

osynavets4y ago

Savelife service continuously publishes financial reports for all their activity. You can find that on their website. (We know that it's not user-friendly especially for English speaking users, updates will be soon). For example, this one is an income and expenses report for 2021-2022 years [1].

[1] - https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=B0264747CBB7E393!1...

milkymoo4y ago

Same. Not knowing anyone in Ukraine to validate, I am unsure.

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