A year after the closure of USAID, the largest donor of American aid, the conditions for the work of thousands of Ukrainian NGOs have changed. Contracts were severed in the middle of projects, some teams were left without salaries, and the leaders of public initiatives began to seek funds where they had never looked before. A year after the agency finally stopped working, the Ukrainian sector of civil society is living in a new financial reality, where the role of the main partner has passed to Europe, and survival is increasingly dependent on the ability to earn a living on its own.
What Happened to USAID
The US Agency for International Development was curtailed in stages. First, the administration of Donald Trump froze funding for 90 days at the beginning of 2025, after which most programs were not resumed. From July 1, 2025, the agency stopped implementing international aid programs, and its functions were transferred to the State Department. The coordination of the liquidation was entrusted to the Office of Management and Budget, which was publicly announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The scale of the decision went far beyond Ukraine. Researchers from the medical journal The Lancet calculated that the reduction in USAID aid could cost the world up to 14 million premature deaths over five years. The agency had worked in over a hundred countries and was considered a key instrument of American “soft power”.
In Ukraine, USAID funded programs for the reconstruction of schools, repair of energy infrastructure, medical services, support for local self-government, documentation of war crimes, reintegration of veterans and internally displaced persons. Each program had Ukrainian partners who received funds in the form of grants. When at the end of January 2025, organizations began to receive notifications about the need to stop activities, for many of them it meant stopping work almost instantly.
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How Much the Ukrainian Sector Depended on American Money
The picture of dependence turned out to be more complex than the widespread notion of a “grant needle”. International technical assistance funds formed about 25.4% of the budgets of Ukrainian public organizations. The rest, three-quarters of the sector, was covered by other sources, so it is difficult to talk about a total dependence on external donors. The impact was distributed unevenly and most strongly affected those who built their model around American funding.
The most vulnerable were media and human rights initiatives. A survey by the Institute of Mass Information showed that 59.2% of journalists considered the stoppage of American support programs potentially catastrophic for independent journalism. Only about one-sixth of the respondents reported that they had never received grants from American organizations. The multimedia project Ukraїner publicly acknowledged that American funding provided about 80% of its budget.
Among the Ukrainian structures that lost access to American funds were the Center for Counteraction of Corruption, Ukrainian Pravda, hromadske, the charitable foundation “100% of life”, the human rights organization “Legal Hundred” and dozens of smaller organizations across the country. A separate study found that 75% of the surveyed civil society organizations began to actively seek alternative funding sources as early as the spring of 2025.
The Effect That Went Beyond the Public Sector
The consequences of the agency’s closure were felt by people who had never heard of the USAID abbreviation. The mechanism of these losses unfolds in a chain: enterprises that depended on grant funds reduce their activity, and along with them, their suppliers, landlords, printing houses, and service companies lose their orders.
The situation with demining was particularly striking. The stoppage of specialized programs meant that some mined fields remained unprocessed, and therefore without a harvest. A farmer who previously could receive a grant to purchase equipment is now forced to take out a loan, and the cost of the loan is included in the final price of the product. Thus, the decision to reduce aid has become a factor that puts pressure on prices in stores.
The medical sector faced disruptions in the purchase of medicines and medical supplies under programs that were previously covered by the American budget. Staff losses added a social dimension: thousands of people who worked on USAID projects found themselves on the labor market at the same time, and some of them began to look for work outside the public sector.
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Who Fills the Gap
The place of the main partner of Ukrainian civil society was taken by the European Union. The Ukraine Facility program with a volume of 50 billion euros, designed for 2024-2027, has become the largest mechanism for supporting the country. As of February 2026, 36.8 billion euros have been mobilized within its framework. In total, the international community has confirmed its intention to direct more than $15 billion to Ukraine’s needs in 2026 alone through various channels.
The role of individual European countries has become more prominent. Germany has expanded direct support for Ukrainian organizations, in particular through embassy programs for micro-projects and channels of the German Red Cross, which focuses on transferring powers to local partners. This model of cooperation implies that decisions on the use of funds are made by Ukrainian organizations themselves, which are closer to the needs of the communities.
Part of the gap is being filled by private donors, corporate funds, and charitable collections. For many organizations, this means rebuilding the entire logic of planning: instead of one large contract, it is necessary to collect a budget from dozens of smaller sources with different reporting rules and deadlines.
Turn to Self-Sufficiency
The shock of 2025 accelerated a conversation that had been going on in the sector for years – about the financial independence of Ukrainian organizations. Instead of waiting for the resumption of American programs, some leaders began to build models that combine state funding, income from their own activities, philanthropy, and membership fees. Foreign experience suggests guidelines: in several European countries, the state covers from 35 to 55% of the budgets of public organizations, and the rest they earn on their own, maintaining independence.
Ukrainian reformers are discussing the creation of national mechanisms for supporting civil society, following the example of the Croatian fund, which finances organizations for several years in a row and gradually transfers powers to regional structures. Such a duration of funding gives organizations the opportunity to plan ahead and be less dependent on the fluctuations in the moods of individual foreign donors.
The venue for agreeing on new rules of the game will be the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2026, which Gdansk will host at the end of June. The agenda of this year’s conference includes veteran topics and security and defense issues, and Ukrainian authorities are forming a list of communities and organizations that will represent the country. It is on such platforms that it is decided which sectors will receive targeted funding and how clearly documented needs of specific areas will be transformed into real money.
The first year after the exit of USAID showed the Ukrainian sector both its vulnerability and its reserve of strength. Organizations that managed to diversify their sources and build connections with communities passed the turbulence with fewer losses. Those who relied on a single donor received a harsh lesson in the cost of such dependence. Where civil society will move further depends on whether it can turn a forced crisis into a sustainable funding model.
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