The actual level of civil society organizations' (CSOs) involvement in providing social services funded by local governments or state is relatively low. CSOs rarely view the provision of social services supported by local or state budgets as a promising source of organizational budget. Register of Social Service Providers and Recipients contains only 12% of active CSOs, making them the minority among all other social service providers. These are the results found by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on request of ISAR Ednannia in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Policy in the report based on the outcomes of the sociological study “Interest and Capacity of Civil Society Organizations to Provide Social Services”. Organizers recently presented this study at the ISAR Ednannia Civil Society Home.
By the end of 2023, the State Register of Social Service Providers and Recipients had only 525 CSOs, both active or passive, out of 3,491 social service providers - 15% of the overall number. According to the survey of CSO and volunteer organizations or initiatives representatives conducted by KIIS in 2022-2023 o of ISAR Ednannia's request, only 8% consider providing social services as one of their priorities, and only about 3% view this as one of the organization’s funding sources, while 10% of active CSOs believe they should develop social services as a funding direction.
CSOs generally prefer applying for grants from international donors to conduct activities related to providing social services. Almost 59% of CSOs see developing international grants as a way to fund their activities.
"A few organizations provide real social services in Ukraine. Without support for developing such organizations' capacities and creating conditions for their activities, these CSOs will not help the state to provide quality social services where they are most needed," emphasized ISAR Ednannia Executive Director Volodymyr Sheyhus.
Learn more about trends in CSO involvement in providing social services and possible changes at ISAR Ednannia Analytical Library, which includes other sociological studies impacting changes in Ukraine.
Ministry of Social Policy supported the conduction of this expert discussion. The research was conducted by KIIS at the request of ISAR Ednannia as part of the "Initiative for Sectoral Support of Civil Society in Ukraine" project, implemented by ISAR Ednannia in consortium with the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research (UCIPR) and the Center for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM) with the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
