Ask HN: Donating to the Ukraine army – how to allocate funds?
So I support Ukrainians in their fight against the Russian aggression. There are multiple ways to do so and I decided to donate money.
There are at least two possible options: the official central UA account and some smaller scale actions organized by people who I reasonably trust.
My thinking so far:
Pro central account - pooling resources means they may have more leverage in buying stuff wholesale. Also, they have the global view so can direct the support where it's needed the most.
Pro local actions - they work directly with Ukrainian units and know what is needed locally. Small scale also means they can scrape the long tail of resources like buying a used truck from a local person.
Neither seems like a very clear win, so I split randomly.
Any thoughts on addressing this (admittedly not very precisely defined) optimization problem?