Supporting communities
within Ukraine
Ukrainian coworking and flex workspace teams have mobilized to provide space & support to their communities & refugees within a war zone.
#withinUkraine makes it easier & faster to directly support these teams through coworking booking platforms and aggregators.
Below you can learn more about why, and how, competing flex space platforms are cooperating to get funds & support directly to the operators of coworking spaces in Ukraine.
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The situation on the ground.
In times of real hardship, coworking leaders can always be found stepping in, and stepping up, to support those around them.
Whilst hundreds of spaces across Europe have opened their doors, and shared resources, to help those displaced by the war in Ukraine, millions of humans cannot or will not leave.
Many community leaders within Ukraine who once focussed on providing entrepreneurial and flex workspace access shifted rapidly to support their communities in other urgent and critical ways.
Here’s a few, of the many, examples of how coworking spaces in Ukraine have stepped in to provide space and support to those around them:
We also provide humanitarian aid to the Ridni Charitable Foundation. In addition to their usual care for children from low-income families and orphans, they now help transport kids from destroyed and bombarded cities to safe shelters in Western Ukraine and Europe. We buy them food, medicine, hygiene products, and everything they need.
We could not stay indifferent to people’s woe and started to help refugees, migrants, and everyone in need.
The kitchen of our restaurant stayed idle, so we started to cook hot lunches for hospitals and just hungry people. Today we cook and deliver 100-150 hot lunches every day.
After the hostilities in Gostomel, Bucha, and Irpen, many people lost their homes and evacuated to the city. WORKIT is quite close to these locations, so we started to help all migrants.
In addition we actively collect, sort, and send clothes for refugees and migrants and raise funds for all victims of the war.
Members that still work in our premises also don’t keep away from volunteer work. For example, our biggest tenant, Lviv IT Cluster runs multiple volunteer projects to support refugees, Ukrainian army, and territorial defense forces.
Companies that don’t come to their offices, such as andcards, still pay for them to support us. This is a huge help as we need to get some income to pay our bills and staff salary.
Members and guests can stay at our comfortable bomb shelter during alerts. It offers heating, electricity, warm water supply, and Wi-Fi.
The idea: direct urgent support.
We believe these spaces, and their teams, are the best route to getting funds and support directly to those who need them the most.
Recently guests on Airbnb contributed over $15M directly to hosts within Ukraine via the platform.
What impact could we, as the global coworking community, make if we got behind supporting the leaders of coworking communities in Ukraine?
In a recent call hosted by the Coworking IDEA Project with The Ukrainian Coworking Association, we asked if they could share a list of workspaces that take bookings online so that folks could support them directly through buying day passes or memberships.
A list of spaces that could accept online payments was put together, verified by the Ukrainian Coworking Association, and published online.
You can see this constantly updated list on this coworking software co’s blog, the European Coworking Assembly website, and it was also made easily embeddable so that any website in the world could promote the idea of supporting Ukrainian coworking spaces.
It was a great start, but there were still some challenges. Namely:
- 1. Not all coworking spaces in Ukraine were set up to take payments online.
- 2. There's no dominant "Airbnb for workspace" in the country.
- 3. Community leaders don't have time to setup new systems/platforms.
The global cross-platform plan
As we get to work with leaders of some of the most used, innovative and forward-thinking booking platforms for flex workspace on the planet.
So we posed them this hypothesis:
What impact could we all make if Ukrainian spaces could be quickly onboarded, or a pooled mechanism setup, to enable flex workspace users to contribute directly towards Ukrainian spaces?
We’ve worked with every participating platform to make the setup process as effortless as possible for Ukrainian operators, making it possible for members of different (often competing) apps to easily contribute directly to these operators.
An integration with local community management platform andcards has been prioritized to introduce live data-syncing for the flex spaces powered by their software.
Not only will this make updating participating platforms with critical information effortless for operators during these dark times, but will also be able to help with increasing reach and revenues when the time comes to rebuild.
All Ukrainian spaces using andcards, cobot, Nexudus, OfficeRnD, or Satellite Deskworks can also get free upgrades for their Syncaroo accounts for the duration of the war + 1 year afterwards, to help keep things in sync.
Support local spaces today.
Here’s how you can support Ukrainian coworking spaces, teams and their communities through a platform or medium of your choice.
This page will continue to be updated as participating platforms launch their campaigns to support coworking spaces within Ukraine.
Don’t see your booking platform? Please do forward this page to them, and ask them to check their email for our invite to join this global cross-platform campaign.
Support Ukrainian spaces directly through Upflex.
Direct new and existing Upflex app users will be able to contribute via in-app bookings to specific Ukrainian spaces.
Types of contributions: Direct.
What goes to Ukrainian spaces: 96%
All Ukrainian booking revenue will be sent directly to operators, minus fees charged by Stripe on bookings and the transfer fee charged by the payout system.
Contribute directly to Ukrainian spaces via Popdesk.
Existing and new Popdesk users will be able to contribute to a pooled Ukrainian resource via in-app purchases.
Types of contributions: Pooled.
What goes to Ukrainian spaces: 97%
All Ukrainian booking revenue minus the transaction fee charged by Stripe on bookings will be sent directly to Ukrainian coworking spaces. We’re confirming payout fees now.
Aiming to raise $1M with the FLOW WITH UKRAINE NFT.
The FLOW WITH UKRAINE NFT is a collection of 10k NFTs created to fund coworking spaces across Ukraine that are still providing support for their local communities.
The NFTs are designed to send funds to real people that are doing everything they can to help their fellow Ukrainians survive the war and rebuild a thriving community.
Types of contributions: Pooled.
What goes to Ukrainian spaces: 97.5%
Everything from the initial sale of the NFTs, less 2.5% in fees going to OpenSea, will go to Ukrainian coworking spaces.
Contribute through the Coworking IDEA project.
The Coworking IDEA Project is an International alliance of coworking operators and organizations who are working to make the industry more Inclusive, Diverse, Equitable and Accessible.
The IDEA Project is facilitating and coordinating fundraising and relief efforts (outside of Europe) for Ukrainian Coworking Communities, and will donate the funds received directly to the Ukrainian Coworking Association. Funds will then be distributed directly to coworking spaces across the network to support the community-led relief initiatives they are organizing in their cities.
Types of contributions: Pooled.
What goes to Ukrainian spaces: 97.8%
All contributions to the Coworking IDEA Project, less PayPal fees, will go directly towards Ukrainian spaces.
Run a booking or flex workspace platform and want to get involved in supporting local coworking space operators? Let us know, and we’ll get you all the info you need to quickly set up and begin collecting contributions.
The future - beyond the war.
We’re hopeful that the people of Ukraine will not need this kind of support for much longer, and that the country’s inspiring people can return shortly to doing what they love.
However, this is unfortunately not the only current humanitarian crisis, nor will it be the last time that humans will need to be supported by their communities within inaccessible or unsafe regions.
We hope that this infrastructure and campaign can serve as a template and inspiration to enable the global flex workspace community to rapidly support other humans and their communities through cross-platform collaboration.
#WithinUkraine is a global campaign coordinated by Syncaroo, in partnership with Ukrainian Coworking Association and supported by the European Coworking Assembly and The Coworking IDEA Project.
Each booking platform is operating its own contribution drive, with pledged amounts being transferred to spaces in Ukraine either directly or pooled through the Ukrainian Coworking Association.