Since 2011, Tabletochki has worked to transform paediatric oncology in Ukraine, improving the quality of treatment for over 60,000 children with cancer. Olya, could you tell us a little about the charity and its history?

Yes of course – but first an explanation about our name! In Ukrainian, tabletochki is a kid’s word for a pill, like saying kitty for cat, or doggy for dog. I founded Tabletochki at the end of 2011 when I was 23 and a PR manager, after I discovered that many drugs for children with cancer were not available in Ukraine, with parents often having to find them overseas and bring them into the country themselves.

Back then, we didn’t hear much about helping others through philanthropy, or about charities and foundations because of Ukraine’s Soviet heritage – in the Soviet Union there were no problems the government couldn’t solve. It was something I really wanted to help with so I decided to use my PR skills to start talking publicly about how people could help to change the lives of kids with cancer.

The first big success I had was when I asked Ukrainians traveling in Europe to donate their unused Euro cents so we could use them to buy pills that were not available in Ukraine – and that is why we called the foundation Tabletochki. In the first month, I raised $1,000 and being young and naïve, believed I had made a huge difference! I soon found out that the problem was much bigger and if I wanted to change survival rates for kids with cancer in Ukraine, I had to do more. So I left my corporate job to focus on Tabletochki Foundation: building a team, fundraising, and learning everything I could from the UK and US about childhood cancer and how foundations in these countries provide support.

So how does Tabletochki work?

Our vision is that no Ukrainian child dies from cancer so we help in four ways. First of all, we provide direct support and relief – we buy pills and pay for diagnoses, and we offer the only palliative care programme for kids with cancer in Ukraine. We also provide support after treatment, no matter how that treatment ends, which means we help families in grief, and with rehabilitation when children survive. Whatever a family needs during and after treatment, we provide it. Secondly, we work with hospitals, improving infrastructure, funding repairs, and buying medical equipment and supplies – everything that a hospital needs to provide the best possible treatment.

Thirdly, we provide an educational programme for doctors and nurses, helping them develop their skills in oncology. We translate useful resources from the UK and US into Ukrainian, offer workshops and internships, and partner with international hospitals that can also help to further their learning through internships.

Last but not least, we advocate for kids and their families. For example, intensive care units used to be closed to relatives in Ukraine, meaning children in ICU were alone at a time when they really need their families, which was incredibly traumatising for all. We ran a nine-month advocacy campaign called Open Doors to ICU, and through this we changed legislation, enabling parents and relatives to visit. More recently, and another big achievement, our foundation has just succeeded after 10 years of work and of fundraising first to pay for it ourselves, to get the government to buy an important cancer drug from the UK.

Overall, since 2011 we have raised more than €25 million and improved quality of treatment and access to treatment for more than 60,000 children with cancer and other illnesses.

That’s an amazing sum of money – how have you raised it?

Primarily through individual donors. Our strategy has been to get as many people to give a small regular donation as we can. Pre-war, 60% of our income came from individuals giving an average of €8 a month, 20% came from corporations, and 20% from major donors. We didn’t have any income from international partners, and we had never applied for grants. We have always believed that Ukraine is capable of supporting our own kids with cancer.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, it was immediately evident that urgent action was required to ensure that Tabletochki’s work could continue. Olya, please tell us what happened.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, we were deeply shocked, and our thoughts were immediately on how we were going sustain the foundation and continue supporting our kids because of course so many people in Ukraine suddenly needed support that our cause was no longer on anyone’s agenda.

One of our biggest assets has been our international partners and last year 60% of our income came from outside of the country. Mostly, the funds came from long-term partners who had never donated financially to us before. In 2018 for example, we established a partnership with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the US and on the first day of the war, we set up a global initiative with them, called Safer Ukraine, to move kids with cancer out of the country. We have moved 1,200 so far, to 16 countries – 14 in Europe, along with Canada and the US so they can continue treatment.

The patient’s family or clinician contact the Tabletochki Charity Foundation, then we obtain their medical records and send this information to SAFER Ukraine for translation. The child and their accompanying family members travel to a safe and central departure point in Ukraine where they and others meet their assigned transportation. Once across the border, they travel to a central triage centre to rest and await transfer to a clinic where they will continue treatment. At the moment, we are supporting 500 children and their families every month.

Oleksandr Usyk visits children at the OKHMATDYT, National Children’s Hospital in Ukraine. 15 February 2022.

How has the war impacted your fundraising? Have you seen donations from people in Ukraine fall as a result?

No – actually individual support has stayed at the same level because we have a really deep connection with our donors, and take care to engage with them all the time with personalised messages. However, we lost all of our income from our major donors and corporate donors, because their priorities have understandably changed to supporting their companies and employees, and of course the war effort.

We’ve also lost income in other ways – for instance, November was always our lowest month for fundraising so pre-war we brought Giving Tuesday to Ukraine and started to do gala events. In 2021 our Tabletochki Giving Tuesday Dinner raised almost €1 million in one evening so you can imagine how important that was for us. And secondly, we had a partnership with the biggest supermarket chain in Ukraine, supported by celebrities and on TV, where for a month they sold branded products, which also raised more than €1 million. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we knew we would not have this event or partnership in 2022, which meant a loss of around €2 million in income.

That’s a significant loss. How are you responding?

Before the war, we were the biggest foundation in Ukraine, but when Russia invaded, everything changed. This meant that we too needed to change to continue meeting our responsibilities and start asking those we had never reached out to before for support.

I established a foundation in the US which now has 501(c)(3) status, called Kids of Ukraine, to enable people and organisations in the US to give and for their donations to be tax deductible. In the past year I have raised almost €100,000 but there is still a lot of room for growth.

So we still have the foundation, which is our main foundation helping families in Ukraine, but we also now need that support from abroad.

So how do you find the support you need in the US?

First of all, I’m just reaching out to everyone I can. We received donations from family foundations and cancer-related NGOs. Maybe it’s not the right strategy, but I’m still figuring out how to do it and I have high hopes – I always have high hopes!

What are your plans then for the next year?

This is a strange thing to talk about in our current situation because of course our ambitions are no longer what they were. In 2020 for example, we decided to build the first ever children’s oncological hospital in Ukraine to try and improve the survival rate for kids with cancer. At that time it was 50% while in other developed countries it was more than 80%. So, for two years, from February 2020 through the pandemic, to the Russian invasion, that’s what we were working on – now it sounds like a fantasy movie! On 15 February last year I received the first commitment gift for €19 million out of €62 million from a Ukrainian company. Nine days later the war started and that gift is no longer available. So our overall foundation strategy right now is quite simply to provide our kids with the best treatment possible – in Ukraine, or abroad.

This might not sound ambitious, but for us right now, it’s actually really ambitious because of all the challenges Ukrainians are facing – I’m talking about blackouts, about lack of drugs, disrupted logistics, and everything else that comes with this war.

In terms of fundraising, to sustain our work today we need €330,000 per month. How this will evolve and change we will see, because the demography and territories of Ukraine have changed and it’s impossible to tell what the situation might be in a year. At home, our kids are now mostly concentrated in two hospitals, in Lviv and Kyiv, instead of in 20 across Ukraine because it’s easier to focus our resources this way. But this brings other challenges – for example, we have to rent more apartments in Kyiv for families so they can live near the hospital. We have always had a housing programme for families coming from different cities, but rented a maximum of 10 apartments. Right now we’re renting 20 and we’re still looking for more.

I really love this quotation by Churchill – if you’re going through the hell, keep going. Our goal for this year is just to keep going.

About Olya Kudinenko

Olya is the founder of Tabletochki, Ukraine’s largest charity supporting children with cancer, and of Kids of Ukraine. Since 2011, Tabletochki has transformed the field of pediatric oncology in Ukraine, improving the quality of treatment for over 60,000 children with cancer. A board member of the Ukrainian Children’s Hospital, OKHMATDYT, Olya currently manages Kids of Ukraine from New York as she raises funds for the situation children are facing in Ukraine.

A graduate of the Fortune-U.S. Department of State Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership, Olya received the C4F-Davos “Relations of the Future Award.” Olya represented Ukraine at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos in 2019, and was named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Ukraine, NV Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in Ukraine and Focus Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women in Ukraine.

The GfK survey Balance Sheet of Helping: Trends and Forecasts is carried out annually on behalf of the German Donations Council. The most recent report also reveals that around 18.7 million people donated money to charities or churches in 2022, with an average donation of €43. This is the highest since the survey began in 2005, with the previous maximum €42 per donation in 2021.

Martin Wulff, Managing Director of the German Donations Council commented:

“We are pleased about the very high willingness to donate in Germany in 2022. Over €5.7 billion were donated. In particular, donors have provided help for people who have fled from Ukraine.”

Donations in support of Ukraine

Donations in support of Ukraine played a big part in this. Overall, 76% of donations went to humanitarian aid, slightly up on the previous year, with the majority directed towards emergency and disaster relief. In fact, after 2021 saw twice the amount of donations directed here as in 2020, last year saw a further increase of €117 million.

The majority of donations also came in the months of February-April 2022 – at the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

The report says that it is therefore reasonable to assume that the increase in the total volume of donations to emergency and disaster relief is primarily a result of donations for refugees from Ukraine. This assumption is also underpinned by the fact that the number of donors in this area rose from 2.3 million in 2021 to 7.2 million people and their average donation increased from €45 in 2021 to €69 in 2022.

All other areas of humanitarian aid (such as development aid, education or child and youth welfare) on the other hand, saw donations fall – both in terms of volume of donations, and amount donated.

Other than humanitarian aid, the only other cause to see an increase was animal protection, which received €8 million more than in the previous year. The culture/monument preservation sector recorded considerable losses with its share of total donation volume falling from 3% to 2%. In 2021, €153 million was donated to this causal area, falling to €102 million in 2022.

Donations by age group

The 70+ generation continues to donate the most. As in the previous year, this age group accounted for 4% of the total volume. As previously, the amount donated annually in this age group grew again, to €421 per person from €416 in 2021 – by far the highest level of all age groups. However, the number of donors in this age group fell by a further 235,000, following a drop of 244,000 in 2021.

The 40-49 year old age group is described as ‘the problem child’ of all age groups in the report. While this age group contributed 16% of the total volume of donations in 2019, this had dropped to 9% last year. Their total annual donation also fell, from €320 per person in 2019 to €234 per person in 2022. All other age groups have increased their annual donations significantly compared to 2019’s figure.

While acknowledging that predictions are difficult, the report suggests that 2023 could be another good year for donations. It highlights that in November 2022 43% of people were still planning to donate as much money in the next 12 months as before, 12% more or even significantly more. 32% of people said they planned to donate slightly less or significantly less.

Picture by Pixabay on Pexels

In May, the government submitted a proposal to parliament for the temporary amendment of the VAT Act and this has now been accepted.

Under the change, domestic sales of goods intended as donations to those fleeing Russia’s attack on Ukraine, as well community purchases from other member states are VAT free. Services related to the delivery of such goods are also included.

The tax exemption mainly applies to sales to nonprofit organisations. Under the exemption, a company registered in the VAT register can deduct the value added tax included in the purchase of these goods and services in its VAT return.

Eligible goods include food, hygiene supplies, medicines and medical supplies, clothes, blankets and emergency accommodation supplies. An example of an eligible service could be one providing meals. The amendment complements a tax exemption applicable to the import of these goods.

Both exemptions took effect on 1 July this year and apply to the sale, importation and corporate procurement of goods or services between 24 February 2022 and 31 December 2022.

Picture of Helsinki by Tapio Haaja on Pexels

The study by Kyiv-based Zagoriy Foundation also demonstrated that charities have become more prominent and more trusted since Russia began hostilities on 24 February.

Charity in times of war is based on a survey of a random sample of 1,605 adults in Ukraine in late June and early July. It shows a massive rise in the visibility of charities, especially among younger and more affluent audiences.

According to the survey, 74% of Ukrainians have done something to help their country’s army, whether making a monetary donation or providing food, clothing or voluntary services. The most popular way is by transferring money to the bank account of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, something which 37% of respondents said they had done.

Confidence in charities has improved in the past year, with respondents giving a score out of five for how much they trusted different types of nonprofit. The average score was highest for international charitable foundations (4.15), followed by volunteer initiatives (4.02), Ukrainian national-level charitable foundations (3.98) and then local charitable foundations (3.73). Those scores had all increased by at least one point since Zagoriy ran the same research in 2021, with the exception of volunteer initiatives, which were not included last year.

“Although Ukrainians trust international foundations the most, they would rather give their money and effort to local foundations,” the report notes. Overall, 42% of respondents said that their first preference would be to give money or volunteer with a local charity, followed by 27% for national-level charities and 8% of respondents preferring an international NGO. There is also a preference to support volunteer initiatives rather than charities.

Writing on LinkedIn, Zagoriy Foundation CEO Eugenia Mazurenko says:

“We have been researching charitable giving since 2019, and it has always shown positive dynamics, although not as active as we would like.

“February 24 changed everything, including the dynamics of charity development. My colleagues and I understood that radical changes had taken place, but only now when we have the study results, do we have an evidence base for further analysis and planning.”

Picture by StayerImpact on Pixabay

However, as a result 14% of these donors (and 32% of the high earners) plan to give less than usual to other causes.

Stéphane Dauge, director of fundraising and communication for Apprentis d’Auteuil, notes:

“Our fellow citizens are once again showing that they are there when a crisis occurs. But in an anxiety-provoking context where deep crises follow one another, it is essential that the most fragile among us are not doubly penalised.”

Apprentis d’Auteuil surveyed 1,000 people for the third edition of its Generosity Barometer, focusing in particular on 500 people with a net annual household income over €120,000.

Overall, it found that donation intentions remain fairly stable for all French people, with half saying they planned to donate during the remainder of the year in March 2022. This is the same as a year ago. Again though this rises among high earners, with 82% of this group stating an intention to give.

For those who think they are likely to donate less in 2022, the rise in prices and drop in purchasing power are the biggest issues.

Donation intentions for the remainder of 2022

Despite the current crises, ‘traditional’ causes remain popular. Health and medical research remain top of the list for those intending to donate this year:

1. 32% intend to give to health and medical research
2. 27% to poverty relief
3. 27% to emergencies
4. 20% to animal-related causes
5. 17% to childhood, youth and education

These are all slightly lower than the previous year, except for emergencies, which is a new entrant in the top five.

In April 2022, 1,000 members of the public were surveyed by independent research agency IRO Research Oy about their giving habits, exploring the effects of the crisis in Ukraine on attitudes to giving in Finland. The results were compared to a similar study conducted two years ago, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Almost twice as many Finns donate

Respondents were asked about their support for charity during the last two months. The proportion of people saying they had donated in that timeframe had almost doubled from 23% in 2020 to 43% in the 2022 survey. The most popular causes for donors were helping those affected by the war in Ukraine (49%), and delivering humanitarian aid or responding to emergencies (41%). Respondents were most likely to have been prompted to help by seeing appeals on social media (26%), through broadcast and print advertisements (26%) and in news reports (22%).

The proportion of people giving regularly remained the same during the two surveys at one fifth (21%), while those giving on an ad hoc basis increased from 30% to 38%. For these occasional donors, the Ukraine crisis has been a major spur for their giving, while other causes such as helping vulnerable people in Finland (falling from 45% to 26%) and those abroad (dropping from 33% to 21%) are losing their share of the market.

Participation in volunteering remained at its previous level – at 10%, while those who had neither donated or volunteered decreased considerably from 47% to a little over one third (35%).

Commenting from the University of Helsinki, Professor of Urban Theology Henrietta Grönlund and Professor in Church and Social Studies Anne Birgitta Pessi, report:

“The first step in all giving is the awareness of need. People are fundamentally compassionate and willing to help, but we need reminders that our help is needed. In the context of the war in Ukraine, the need for help has really come to everyone’s attention through many channels, and the Finns have exceptionally set out to help those in need.’’

Public support for Ukraine and people affected by the war

During the war in Ukraine, Finns have shown an unprecedented desire to help and support those affected by the war. Nonprofits in other fields have also shown strong solidarity with those organisations, with some deciding to cancel or postpone their own fundraising appeals and have even encouraged their donors to support those responding to the Ukraine crisis.

The survey also explored how the situation in Ukraine is likely to affect donation decisions in the future. More than half of respondents said they plan to maintain or increase their donation levels in future, with almost one quarter (23%) intending to donate more and 28% saying they would retain their donation levels. None of the respondents indicated that they would reduce or stop donating.

Pia Tornikoski, VaLa

In future, respondents say they are likely to continue donating towards humanitarian aid and emergency appeals (37%) and to support those affected by the war in Ukraine (36%). One-third of the respondents said they would help vulnerable people in Finland in the future, down from 42% two years ago. Donors also indicate they are less likely to donate towards the prevention, treatment, and support for various diseases (20%), vulnerable people in developing countries (20%) and the environment and nature (19%).

Pia Tornikoski, Secretary General of VaLa, adds:

“Almost 30 communities are raising money to help Ukraine and Ukrainians, and currently they have raised more than 55 million euros. NGOs hope that citizens and businesses continue to provide valuable support to Ukraine but will also remember the importance of other causes too.”

Main photo (a tram on a crowded street in Helsinki) by Tapio Haaja on Unsplash

]]> https://efa-net.eu/news/ukrainian-nonprofits-express-need-for-support-partnerships-as-war-drives-expansion-services/ Wed, 27 Apr 2022 08:28:29 +0000 https://efa-net.eu/?p=9898 […]]]> The majority of charities and foundations in Ukraine have continued to support their usual beneficiaries whilst also helping those impacted by the war, resulting in a widespread need for more support and cooperation, a study has revealed.

Zagoriy Foundation surveyed 98 charitable foundations and NGOs in the Ukraine, with the objective of identifying their needs in wartime and helping donors and charities understand what support to offer.

Impact of war

Out of the 98 Ukrainian nonprofit organisations that took part, 60 said they had so far continued all their usual activities during the war. 32 have partially continued and 6 had suspended operations. In terms of staffing, employees of 32 had remained fully in place, while those of 52 had been partially moved to a safe place, and the teams of 14 had been evacuated.

While vulnerable people were the main beneficiary area for the majority of the organisations in peace time, followed by youth and children, this has shifted during the war with the main work area for 68 of those surveyed currently the collection of humanitarian aid.

At the same time, 65 also said they were continuing to help their usual beneficiaries, while 45 were continuing to provide information. Many are also additionally helping those impacted by the war: including the internally displaced, those left without access to basic necessities, military and territorial defence participants, and children and adults injured during the war, as well as representatives of other nonprofits.

Geographically, the impact of the war is also clear. 33 of the organisations surveyed were working on a nationwide level (or across most regions), with slightly fewer (21) active in the Kyiv region, 14 in Kharkiv, and 13 in the Lviv region. No more than three said their activities extended into the Kirovohrad, Khmelnytsky, Rivne, and Odesa regions.

Support for Ukrainian nonprofits

In terms of the help received by nonprofits in Ukraine during the war, humanitarian aid is most common, followed by useful contacts and connections, and financial assistance. Quite a few – 29 – however, have received no outside help.

Most expect support to come from government agencies, and most again would like financial support as well as humanitarian and informational support.

In fact, the largest number of requests for help were for financial support, from 81 of the nonprofits, followed by humanitarian support. The greatest needs were funding to enable them to retain staff and continue their work, funding for logistics and humanitarian aid for beneficiaries, and the organisation of humanitarian aid.

Partnerships are also seen as very important, with 84 of those included in the survey considering them. None said they would not consider them.

When asked what assistance they were able to offer to other organisations, joint coordination of actions came top, followed by information support and the provision of useful connections and contacts.

In a post about the report on LinkedIn, Eugenia Mazurenko, the Foundation’s CEO, shared her personal insights on the findings and drawing attention to the need for support and cooperation, saying:

“85% of surveyed organisations said they were considering partnerships. Coordination of actions is the most common answer to the question: “How can NGOs be useful for other institutions?”. The nonprofit sector is open to cooperation to meet charitable needs.”

With life having changed insurmountably since the Russian invasion, the needs of the sector and its workforce have shifted fundamentally, the foundation’s CEO Eugenia Mazurenko tells EFA.

Eugenia Mazurenko, Zagoriy Foundation

“Every non-profit organisation in Ukraine is facing the new realities of war,” she said. “The country’s needs are constantly changing. One day, it might be about providing medicine, the next its logistics.

“Today, we need to fundraise for ourselves if we are to be able to continue our work. Civil society has twice as much work on its hands – continuing to provide our normal services, but also to deliver humanitarian assistance.”

Pivoting in a time of war

Before the invasion, the Zagoriy Foundation worked to develop a culture of charitable giving across the nation, providing grants to nonprofits to promote civil society and to help them meet their philanthropic goals. The foundation conducted research on giving, developed institutional philanthropy and sought to build trust in foundations.

While staying true to its mission of supporting civil society and promoting a philanthropic culture, the organisation has now pivoted its services to address the nation’s new and increasingly urgent needs.

Mazurenko explains that the organisation is focusing its work currently on the logistical coordination of international support for Ukraine, channelling funding to the transport of humanitarian aid, medicine and supplies, and to humanitarian headquarters and hospitals – all amid harrowing conditions. These needs are likely to evolve and grow as time moves on.

She highlights the foundation’s role in forming a bridge between organisations operating at a local level and international bodies, saying: “Grassroots organisations in Ukraine work hard every day to support civil society and its needs. However, their voices are often not loud enough to be heard both in Ukraine and abroad. Humanitarian agencies aren’t always visible at local level. There seems to be a wall between the two, so we act as a bridge between the two.

“The Zagoriy Foundation team is collating details of urgent funding appeals from its grantees and partners to address those needs as efficiently as possible. “

Thankful for support

Grateful for the support for her country, Mazurenko adds:

“We are incredibly thankful to the international community for the enormous support our nation receives these days, wherever we are. At the same time, the scale of needs is growing, so we continue to inform our international partners about the activities, and the collected list of sector needs to raise financial support to reliable NGOs and charities operating in Ukraine centrally through our foundation.”

She highlights that Information, partnerships and financial assistance from the international community can all be vital for the Zagoriy team in strengthening the sector and protect civil society.

Mazurenko herself had to flee her home in Kyiv a few weeks ago, seeking refuge in a village in the Western part of the country, where she lives in a small house along with ten of her family members and many pets. She expresses concern for her colleagues, who are all facing similar challenges of finding a safe space to live and work, to care for the families and access the support they need amid the crisis.

She concludes: “It is my biggest nightmare to think about myself as a refugee. Today, I‘m not. I’m a fighter. All Ukrainians are fighters and we are fighting for European peace. We believe in our victory. We will win.”

To find out more about the work of the organisation and how you can support their work, visit Zagoriy Foundation.

Or to hear more of Eugenia’s story, tune into the first episode of the new European Fundraising Podcast series, produced by David Klajman of Fidelis in France:

Photo by Rostislav Artov on Unsplash.