Nova Poshta: “Investing in Society, We Realize Our Effort Will Be Rewarded”

Nova Poshta is a business that, through its commitment, not only does important things, but also helps others to get involved. For 10 years, the company has been delivering humanitarian aid free of charge and supporting thousands of charitable and volunteer organizations, participating in large-scale fundraising and vital initiatives, developing communities, training entrepreneurs, and helping the military.

Nova Poshta’s social responsibility is about corporate citizenship, while its philosophy relies on the idea that a company should behave as a full-fledged member of society. Nova Poshta’s mission is to be a support for Ukrainians in difficult times, and this applies to customers, employees, and partners alike.

Olena Plakhova, Director of Reputation Management and Marketing at NOVA Group, told us about the principles of corporate citizenship in the company, unity of communication and values at all levels, partnership options, and notable cases.

Marketing, Reputation, and Social Responsibility within the Company

Reputation management is centralized at my level. All communications, including corporate social responsibility, internal and external communications, social media, strategic communications, and HR brand development, report to me. This ensures a consistent tone of voice, risk avoidance, and smooth teamwork and information exchange.

Our marketing aims at achieving business and product goals. The task is to create products — physical and digital points of contact — and generate value for customers. Each company in the group has its own marketing department.

A separate team of up to 15 people is responsible for managing Humanitarian Nova Poshta.

Helping Ukrainians in Difficult Times Is Not a Situational Decision but a Strategy

The company has a mission, values, strategic vision, brand positioning, and reputation positioning. Nova Poshta is a pillar of support. And if everyone at the board of directors level agrees with this, we must act accordingly in all critical situations and stand with Ukrainians in their most difficult moments.

When there is no light, we provide it. When there is no Internet or mobile network coverage, we share ours. When the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant was blown up, we sent aid to the Kherson region and gave all Ukrainians an opportunity to do the same at Nova Poshta’s expense. We provided help during COVID, we continue doing this during the war, and we will do this in the future.

We cannot be 100% prepared for everything in our daily work, but we try to. If we learn about an unusual situation, we draw conclusions and update our training programs or standards.

We have recently developed a training course on communicating with mobilized and demobilized soldiers, veterans, and people in emotional distress. We now have partners — a community of 100 psychologists with experts working in various fields.

About Corporate Citizenship

We are absolutely responsible within the company. When it comes to external activities, we work primarily with systemic values. These are the fundamental things that are important for us to do for society as a whole: education, health, preventive history, and entrepreneurial culture in Ukraine. Secondly, there are critical situations when we have to react very quickly and lend a helping hand.

Corporate social responsibility is about Nova Poshta and every company in the group behaving in society as a full-fledged member. The greater our influence as a company gets, the greater our responsibility to people is. This includes not only our employees but also their families. We are equally ready to support our customers, employees, partners, and the state, including providing assistance during wartime.

Ukraine is our home market, where we are capable of many things. It is important for us to have customers here. And in order to have customers, we need a society that lives a happy life in Ukraine. Its members must be healthy and have work, income, and education. In that case, they will use Nova Poshta. That is why we invest in society.

We understand that this contribution will come back to us. Hence, we have been running a Business School for many years to increase the number of entrepreneurs in Ukraine. We work with student communities and teach them, passing on our experience. We have been running marathons for about 10 years now — this is a preventive measure.

In general, all our projects are long-term ones and aim at making society healthy. Every person is valuable to us. If a situation arises that is unusual for us, we look at it and make decisions based on humanity and proper ethical attitude.

How Nova Poshta Helps the Military: Supporting Brigades and Providing Supplies to Employees

To help the military, we have a program covering 16 units of the Defense Forces. Among Nova Poshta employees, there are 3,600 mobilized people, who are also fully supported by the company. When a new person joins the army, we provide everything they need: ammunition, basic uniforms, helmets, body armor, and tactical gear.

We have formed an internal volunteer movement within the company called “Ours for Ours.” Every month, we collect about UAH 1.5 million and provide our military with what they need. We have already purchased about 150 cars and a bunch of generators, thermal imagers, and drones.

The company implements its part of the initiatives, while employees support their colleagues through their own fundraising campaigns. If the amount collected is not enough for the planned purchase, the company adds the necessary funds.

Nova Poshta Partnership Options and Implemented Cases

Partnerships can be divided into two categories.

The first option is a partnership where we become conditional donors: logistical, financial, or communicational ones.

In this case, transparency, honesty, and accountability are crucial. When a partner does help the population categories they claim to help and when we see that what they send and report coincides, such a partner is honest and transparent to us.

If a partner uses the program for their own purposes — this has happened to us sometimes — we keep track of that. If “fraud” activities do not stop after the first warning, we exclude such partner from the program. The company allows for mistakes, but they must be one-time occurrences. If a person returns to the right side, we see that and reinstate them in partnership.

Nova Poshta behaves sincerely, honestly, and transparently. We do not violate the rules and agreements we establish, and we expect the same from our partners.

Examples:

“Humanitarian Nova Poshta”

For already 10 years of the project’s operation, we have been cooperating with a huge number of foundations. These include Kryla Nadiyi (Wings of Hope) and Army SOS. Currently, more than 2,000 foundations and organizations are participating in the program.

“Symbol of Invincibility. Azovstal” Project

Metinvest provided the last pre-war batch of steel for the production of bracelets of the same name, the SOVA jewelry house made the jewelry, and Nova Poshta covered all delivery costs. The proceeds from the sale were donated to the Drone Army. Since we delivered bracelets to countries all over the world, our budget accounted for about UAH 6 million. Azovstal’s goal was to support Ukrainians while symbolizing that we will stand strong.

Charity is not a sprint but a marathon. It has to be a very professionally organized effort. When you work like a marathon runner, you have to be ready for it: train your skills, self-motivation, and team, as well as understand how it works and that sometimes, the people you help do not say “thank you.”

The second option for partnership is collaboration.

We choose people who share our values. We analyze their profiles, look at how they behave in life, how they communicate, how accountable they are, what they do, and then we make a decision. It is similar to how we choose a marriage partner — only more rational.

Examples:

The fundraising campaigns we hold with the Come Back Alive foundation to strengthen air defense: “Protect the Sky — Boost Air Defense” — UAH 330 million raised, and “Let’s Ground the Enemy,” which is still raised today.

The “Play for Ukraine” project, which we implemented with tennis player Elina Svitolina. It was about the stories of big and small personal victories, which we encouraged everyone to share, while giving a limited edition red tennis balls autographed by the athlete.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Social Projects

We always measure changes in attitudes and consider only medium- and long-term results, every six months, just to see if we are on the right track. Once a year, we measure changes in attitudes to and knowledge about the company’s projects and meetings. We conduct field research, focus groups, and every day we track and sort all the mentions of us in the online space by tags.

Every year, we see the awareness about the Humanitarian Nova Poshta and our fundraising campaigns increasing. While for the first campaign, “Protect the Sky — Boost Air Defense,” awareness rate was 39%, for the second one, “Let’s Ground the Enemy,” the figure rose to 46% in just three months.

This is systemic work when you do not a one-off project, i.e., today one thing, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow still another, but a focused, strategic, and long-term work. This cannot be called monetization, but this is capitalization of projects — communicational and reputational one. When you work deeply, you can see a change in attitude and awareness.

Business Responsibility and Community Life

We take responsibility for everything that concerns our business, everything that our business affects, and vice versa. If we build a terminal in a village, we are responsible for that village. We listen to communities and learn about their needs. That is a constant dialogue.

For example, we are planning to install gas piston pumping stations, with hot water being a by-product. We calculate how this water can be directed to the village to optimize heating there. This is also about a sustainable attitude toward the territory where you work and its people.

Together with the Rivne Regional State Administration, we have opened a modular cottage town on the territory of a military hospital rehabilitation center, where military and civilian personnel will undergo physical and psychological rehabilitation. This is a very cool collaboration — a real win-win for society, local authorities, and Nova Poshta, as some of the patients are the demobilized employees of our company.

Why do businesses go beyond their boundaries? Because if a business does not take it on, no one will. A business does not know how not to take responsibility. The essence of entrepreneurship is that I am responsible for myself and for that guy. That is why we invest more than society expects from us.

How Does Nova Poshta’s Policy in Ukraine Differ from the One Abroad?

Our approach in foreign markets is just as consistent. In every country, we deliver humanitarian aid parcels to affected regions free of charge, e.g., during floods in Poland, Romania, and Spain. In addition, Nova Poshta independently purchases and delivers humanitarian aid packages containing hygiene products, long-life food, and water.

We study society and see what is important to it. These may be different things than those important to us: carbon dioxide emissions, respect for the old city so that it is not destroyed or defaced by various signs, care for children, or diversity.

But every country is quite different. We will definitely do some projects, but only after we have established a dialogue with society — so that we can be relevant to it and create things that will be truly useful and resonate with people.

Challenges for the Future and Our Focus

Reflections on the future are shaped by observation, knowledge, and experience — of both successful and unsuccessful projects.

Right now, my focus is on bringing people together. This is about warmth, exchange, and unity around something that is very similar and important to each of us. I see the importance of staying in touch with people who live abroad, as three years is a long time. I want to maintain positive connections and positive interest. I want us to stay in touch for them to enjoy communicating with us and for them to want to continue doing so.

I do not expect the situation to get any easier next year — it may be even more difficult emotionally and financially and less optimistic. Therefore, we are planning to create some motivational projects. Perhaps, this will be something that gives people a boost and a second, or even a third, wind.

And, of course, this is about the people we lack to do the work. Maybe, we will need to work with cross-border cultural ties, bringing together different cultures and beliefs. So, we are already working on making this socio-cultural story of diversity happen.