On stage

JP

Jakub Parusinski

Moderator · KI Insights

IZ

Iryna Zhluktenko

Dzyga's Paw

ML

Maria Lemberg

Shpyg Foundation

JK

Jeffrey Kramer

Nova Ukraine

The panel examined how wartime giving has evolved from the 2022 donation surge through donor fatigue and back to renewed support. Iryna Zhluktenko described a 2025 rebound driven by political events, while Jeffrey Kramer framed the pattern as a classic disaster-fundraising bell curve and argued philanthropy must earn a strategic "seat at the table" in reconstruction. Maria Lemberg placed Ukrainian philanthropy in a centuries-long tradition of sustaining national identity, and panellists detailed practical obstacles — charity registration, blocked international payments, and the strain of fundraising for the army while sustaining their own organisations.

The substance

Key takeaways

1

Jakub Parusinski quantified the extraordinary scale of Ukrainian self-giving — roughly 34 billion hryvnia (nearly $1 billion) raised domestically in 2022 alone, about twice the humanitarian aid of a country like Sweden or Poland — and joked, with a kernel of truth, that "a tactical nuke would probably take only a few days to fundraise."

2

The Dzyga's Paw representative described how political events drive giving, recounting a record ~$100,000 month in February 2025 after the Zelensky Oval Office clash, when ordinary Americans donated in protest saying they "feel ashamed" of their government — a paradox Parusinski noted, that the president elected on anti-aid populism became "one of the more successful fundraisers" for Ukraine.

3

Jeffrey Kramer explained disaster giving as a bell curve that spiked and "rebalanced" faster than expected, attributing Ukraine's dip partly to Gaza pushing it "out of the limelight" and its recovery to the Middle East situation turning — while arguing philanthropy is finally moving from the "periphery of the table" toward a deliberate, strategic seat at reconstruction forums like Rebuilding Ukraine in Warsaw.

4

The Macclesfield Ukrainian Aid founder gave a vivid grassroots account — a Facebook post that filled his office with donations within a day and grew to 68 volunteers — but reported serious donor fatigue as the war became "the norm," so his charity shifted from collecting household goods to higher-value medical aid, now sustained mainly by friends, family and volunteers.

5

Panellists exposed how legal and banking structures throttle giving: unable to obtain UK charity status because they enter a war zone, Macclesfield had to settle for a non-tax-optimized CIC; the Dzyga's Paw representative cannot access Stripe or PayPal business/charity accounts as a Ukrainian entity and gets payments blocked by both foreign banks (fearing "terrorism financing") and even Ukrainian banks flagging surges as fraud — with the Shpyg Foundation representative solving it via a German partner organization, and adding the historical point that philanthropy "kept the Ukrainian national idea alive" through empire and Soviet rule.

In their words

Key quotes

“

philanthropy in Ukraine is something that kept the Ukrainian national idea alive until the time of independence.

Maria Lemberg

“

There's enough wealth out there to serve every functional charity — I'm convinced of it.

Jeffrey Kramer

“

a javelin, a tank, a long-range missile in the hand of a Ukrainian soldier is the best defense for a Ukrainian journalist.

Jakub Parusinski

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