Energize

The project

Energize Ukraine is a Ukrainian World Congress humanitarian initiative funding the restoration of energy infrastructure: solar panels, batteries and microgrids for the communities, schools and hospitals hit by attacks on the grid.

The subject is genuinely hard to fundraise for. Electricity is infrastructure, and infrastructure is abstract. "Help restore the power grid" asks a donor in Toronto to imagine a substation. The platform's whole job is to convert that abstraction into something a person can picture, price and pay for.

What we did

DForce built and supports the fundraising platform.

• A tiered marketplace of equipment. A $50 solar panel, a $100 battery module, $1,000 of logistics, a $2,500 school control system, alongside custom amounts. The site is explicit that these represent contribution levels rather than an invoice for one specific device, which keeps the framing honest while still giving the donor something concrete.
• Multi-region checkout across Canada, US and international, and Australia, each with its own payment path.
• Personalized peer-fundraising campaigns, so a supporter can raise inside their own network instead of only giving once themselves.
• Donation modals with payment-method selection, keeping the donor on the page they were reading rather than pushing them into a separate checkout site.
• About, News and FAQ content, with the news feed carrying the evidence: generators delivered to a hospital near the front, energy aid reaching 60+ schools.
• Seasonal campaign structure, because this is a fundraiser with a deadline set by weather. Winter and emergency campaigns have to be launched quickly and changed while running.

Engineering notes

• Concrete beats general. Every design decision pushes toward a named piece of equipment with a price on it, because that is what makes an infrastructure appeal legible to an individual donor.
• Region determines the payment path. Canada, US-International and Australia differ in methods, currency and receipting, so region is resolved before the donation flow rather than inside it.
• News is not decoration. For this initiative the news feed is proof of delivery, and it feeds directly into whether the next appeal converts.
• Built to be relaunched. The platform is designed to spin up a new campaign around a strike or a cold snap without engineering involvement.

Highlights

• Concrete, tangible giving: donors fund a specific piece of equipment
• Multi-region payment flows for a global donor base
• Built to stand up fast around winter and emergency campaigns

Services: Product, Design, Engineering. · energizeukraine.com