By October 2024, Andriy Nemyrovskyy, the chief executive officer and co-owner of Regno Italy UA LLC had spent 10 years growing his company into western Ukraine’s largest importer and distributor of food products and wine from around the world. As news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spread on February 24, 2022, Nemyrovskyy and his wife Marianna mobilized Regno staff members and hundreds of volunteers to rapidly create and scale a new organization called the Volunteering and Help Center. The new organization would receive, manage, and distribute aid to people in need throughout Ukraine. However, as the war dragged on, the flow of international aid and support gradually dwindled and Nemyrovskyy considered shutting down the Volunteering and Help Center. As a potential solution to the desperate need for funding, Nemyrovskyy created Mylanka, a social enterprise designed to provide financial support to the Volunteering and Help Center. Could the new business help the Volunteering and Help Center maintain its attention and focus on providing aid, by engaging partners and collaborators to join the effort?
When Russia invaded Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, it disrupted the life of every person living in the country. In the hours following the initial attacks, Marianna Bilyk drew upon her purpose-driven leadership skills, medical training, and deeply felt passion for providing health care to her patients to help launch Volunteering and Help Center, where she was appointed head of the medical aid division to secure, organize, and distribute war-specific medical supplies to front-line military personnel, people in devastated communities, and displaced Ukrainians. Bilyk also continued fulfilling her responsibilities as head surgeon at her own dental clinic with 48 employees, as well as overseeing the construction of a second clinic. Additionally, in July 2023, Bilyk founded the non-governmental organization Dental Front to provide free dental care services to army veterans and people serving on the war’s front line. Managing all of these commitments within the extreme volatility and uncertainty of a war with no end in sight required an immense amount of energy, leaving her without time to spend with the family members she deeply cared about. As she sat for a few minutes alone to consider her options, Bilyk was wondering how to keep going and avoid burnout.
Orange Sky Australia evolved as an entrepreneurial non-profit organization offering two primary services for the homeless: mobile laundering of clothes and engaging in genuine, individual, face-to-face connections through conversation. In February 2024, with 73 employees and roughly 3,000 volunteers spread throughout Australia and New Zealand, the company’s recent staff engagement data indicated a decline in well-being metrics since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, despite the strong positive organizational culture. The company’s growth strategy to double volunteer numbers within the next two years created additional challenges for how to recruit volunteer team leaders to manage and oversee daily operations as most volunteers did not want leadership roles.