GLADWAY Foundation

First of all, because it is a great opportunity for me as a rep of my country. It combines several goals at once:

1. It is important to draw attention to the social economy as a source of innovation.
2. It is important not to limit oneself to the boundaries of the territories of a city, region, country and to feel both neighbors nearby and neighbors on the planet.
3. The residents of Russia now have less opportunity to find support from the international community, and this situation needs to be changed.

The award will help to show the relevance of social change. The transition from a raw material economy to a creative and social economy, to issues of impact and sustainable development is important.

I will direct the resources of the award to:
• Promotion of the best practices from different countries of the world with a combination of like-minded leaders
• Creation of an inspiring and developing environment for the birth of new actors of innovation
• Creation of accessible methods to impact every NGO, social enterprise or change leader
I have the authority, expertise and trust of many actors in Russia and CIS - and I understand that more can be done.

I work in the third sector during the whole of my life. Just after graduation, I created a regional information agency for NGOs. For several years after, I was a head of a Resource Center for NGOs, and worked as a fundraising and PR consultant for Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace, ISAR, CAF etc. In 2001 I was elected as a President of National Guild of Fundraisers. 

From 2004, we started our work together with my partners, developing public service advertising as an effective tool for NGOs promotion, developing social entrepreneurship as one of the model for financial sustainability of NGOs in Russia, then neighborhood centers as one of the forms to support people in their local community, development of sharing economy and helping them to live better. 

As for now, we continue develop all of the programs, but want to open a new one - establish a national media for NGOs, so to help them to improve their performance, and to show their impact.

In 2017 I was honored to be named as one of the TOP-5 Leaders of Social Changes of Russia, amoung several thousands of other nominees. But of course, this is the result of my GREAT team!

In 2004 we figured out that Russian NGOs are invisible for general public. We started development of social advertising (PSA). It was also a start of our current team (we work together for about 15 years). We created a free media library of PSA for NGOs (atprint.ru), an assessment technic (SocResponse) etc. We founded a first contest of PSA ("AdFuture"). We published books about PSA, and conducted 300+ educational programs.

In 2011 we faced the new challenge: foreign aid agencies closed their programs in Russia. We started to develop a new solution for Russian NGOs - social entrepreneurship (SE). We started with the research of international experience, then we launched an educational programs (5000+ participants, Russian and CIS). From 2014, we publish annual catalogue Social Entrepreneurship in Russia, with the best cases of SE. One of the significant result of our activity was the law about SE and a special Agency which has been created based on the one of our studies.

In 2016, we launched neighborhood centers movement. We became pioneers, and happy to see how it is growing. More than 50 centers from 20 cities of the Russia are included in our program ("Cities of the Future") now. 

Thanks to many years of experience working with NGOs, as well as experience in PR and fundraising, I collected a systemic vision of the place and role of the social economy in overall development - and, first of all, focus on the innovative role of the third sector for all other sectors (including government and business). Innovation is created by looking at communities, and NGOs that are closest to these communities. Our work is based on this key approach. This approach makes it possible to achieve the greatest impact, because non-profit organizations always feel and deal with the needs of each citizen, focusing on their understanding of problems and being guided by the principle of "nothing for them without them". Our role is in providing the high level expertise and innovative solutions for NGOs in our country, so that every local NGO, even in a small village, could be able to expand their influence, to grow their impact, to build a new platform for their sustainability - so to make people of their territory happier.

In every program of the foundation - from supporting social advertising to developing a model for impact assessment for NGOs - the main question for us is "What maximum social impact can be achieved?" "Who is the stakeholder of the solution, with whom is it possible to join forces"?

Our Foundation participates in the creation of direct solutions - packaging of successful practices in methodological manuals and courses (for example, methods for impact evaluation of NGOs), removing administrative barriers of a new legal field (for example, the law about PSA). 

The same practice is being implemented in all other areas of our activities, for example: 

- Social entrepreneurship (from the publication of annual catalog to the formation of economic and consumer environment for it's development as a new sector of the social economy). 

- "Cities of the future" (from creation of a neighborhood center in Moscow to the a national platform to support new teams in all cities of Russia and the exchange of experience with other post-Soviet countries). 

Thus, we focus on achieving an impact based on the capabilities and the fund and cooperation with all stakeholders.