Picture it: it is February 2022, a cold winter, a full-scale invasion is beginning in the country, and most world leaders are saying the country will hold out for only 2–3 days. Against this backdrop, your society mobilises to the maximum in every sphere of life: people join the army, donate every spare hryvnia, host in their homes people they are seeing for the first time, and do everything they can to hold on for as long as possible. But almost 5 years have passed since the start of the full-scale invasion; some things have become irrelevant, others — on the contrary — have evolved and transformed. So in this material I will give a brief overview of how Ukrainian philanthropy has changed over these years and what in it may be relevant for others.

How Ukrainian philanthropy has changed: the numbers

The number of organisations in the non-profit sector has grown

As of the beginning of 2022, there were 20,498 charitable organisations registered in Ukraine; by July 2024 there were 31,122 — an increase of almost 1.5 times in two and a half years (Forbes Ukraine). According to a civil-society study by the NGO “ISAR Ednannia,” it was the number of charitable organisations that grew the most among all types of third-sector structures — by 43% over 2021–2023, whereas civic organisations grew by only 6.1% (source). In 2022 alone, more than 6 thousand new charitable organisations were registered; in 2023 — almost 5 thousand more.

Volumes of donations — now measured in fractions of GDP

By Forbes Ukraine’s estimates, in 2023 Ukrainians and business directed 2–2.5% of the country’s GDP to charity, and in total that year all charitable organisations raised 105–115 billion UAH (Forbes Ukraine). According to statistics from Monobank, one of the most popular banks for fundraising, more than 145 billion hryvnias have been collected through their services from 2022 until now.

International recognition

In 2018 Ukraine occupied only 81st place in the World Giving Index — the annual charity ranking by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), which, based on Gallup surveys in 140+ countries, measures not institutions but the behaviour of ordinary people: whether they helped a stranger, donated money, or volunteered in the past month. In 2022 Ukraine entered the top 10 for the first time — the only European country on the list; in 2023 it rose straight to second place in the world (62 points out of 100: 78% of Ukrainians helped a stranger, 70% donated money, 37% volunteered); in 2024 it settled at seventh.

This is a fundamentally different type of confirmation than the first two points. The growth in the number of organisations and in the volume of donations shows that the institutional infrastructure of philanthropy is being built up. But the jump in the World Giving Index is an independent, external confirmation that a mass, grassroots readiness of people to help arose not only thanks to this infrastructure, but itself became the demand for which organisations, standards and donation tools had to be quickly built out. In other words — Ukraine did not simply grow the number of foundations; it showed the world that society at the grassroots is already ready to become philanthropists.

What our own research shows — “Ukrainian Philanthropy 2024 and 2025”

In 2024 and 2025 we decided to conduct our own research and look at how Ukrainian society understands philanthropy and why it decides to get involved. According to our data, 76% of Ukrainians as of 2025 donate their own resources for the public good (74% — money, 51% — material things, 24% — time on volunteering, which is 3% more than last year), and at the same time 21% of respondents reduced their philanthropic activity over the year, while only 14% increased it. Among the reasons for the reduction, in first place is not fatigue or disappointment but a direct lack of funds (61%) — that is, this is rather an economic effect of a protracted war than a fall in the readiness to help; nevertheless, 21% still cite emotional burnout, and 49% — distrust of organisations. It is this last figure that explains why transparency has turned into the decisive factor of choice: 76% of Ukrainians choose an organisation guided above all by the transparency of how funds are used, and 56% refuse altogether to support an organisation if there is the slightest doubt about it. In other words, distrust does not lead to a rejection of philanthropy as such — it leads to a stricter selection of exactly whom to trust, and this is the very pressure under which the sector has to develop. However, together with this, trust in the very institution of philanthropy is also growing in the behaviour of Ukrainian society: 77% consider it important for the country’s development, and the share of those who believe in its ability to influence the solving of social problems grew from 61% to 65% over the year.

What of this may be useful to other countries

The Ukrainian experience is not simply a story about war, but an instructive case of how quickly philanthropic infrastructure can grow under the pressure of necessity. A few conclusions that go beyond the Ukrainian context:

• A crisis accelerates professionalisation rather than destroying the sector — provided that there is a baseline of public trust in the institution of charity even before the crisis.
• Reporting standards appear from the bottom up, and not only at the regulator’s demand — transparency ratings and public reporting arose as the market’s response to donors’ demand, not as a bureaucratic requirement; 76% of donors already vote with their wallets precisely for transparency.
• Local philanthropy is more resilient than international aid to the ebb of external attention, because it is rooted in the community rather than dependent on the global news cycle.

This is the second material in the series about Ukraine’s philanthropic ecosystem. In the material “Ukrainian Philanthropy: How Community Foundations Turn Local Trust into Recovery Capital” we showed exactly how the community foundation model works — local management of resources, transparency and accountability to the community — on which many of the figures cited above rely. In the next materials in the series we will show how these same principles work at more specific levels: YouthBanks of Initiatives — tools that raise a new generation of local leaders and donors — and the agricultural project “Harvest Way,” which gives families food security and financial independence in a difficult time.