Charity did not give up – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

The new sanctions reality has hit hardest on those areas that you would not even think about in the first place. Among them is the Russian non-profit sector. The partner companies of the majority of NGOs left or relocated, it became impossible to transfer money from abroad, fees within the country also decreased. During the year, the funds lost millions of rubles, and often even the opportunity to help. For example, one of the Togliatti NGOs, in order to pay off the utility bills for June, sold the bus on which they took their children to rehabilitation. On the other hand, support has grown in society for groups that were clearly not among the priorities before: migrants, refugees and military personnel. Now it is charitable assistance associated with the SVO that is the most visible and active social movement in the country.

As early as March 2022, charitable organizations in Russia felt the impact of Western sanctions. Most of the donations stopped coming for technical reasons: all subscriptions through Google Pay and Apple Pay disappeared, money was not debited from linked cards. As follows from the data of the analysis of the To Be Precise platform and the CloudPayments payment service, during the first month of spring, the number of donations to Russian NGOs decreased by an average of 50%. In particular, due to technical problems with payment systems, in just two weeks of March, 1.5 thousand transfers in the amount of 3 million rubles did not go through to the Podari Zhizn fund for helping children with oncological, hematological and other serious diseases. For a month, the organization lost about 10% of subscriptions for 1.5 million rubles. And the Vera Hospice Assistance Fund calculated that due to lost subscriptions to regular payments, they lose about 900 thousand rubles. assistance monthly, or 10 million rubles. in year.

The stronger the crisis developed, the more tangible were the losses of the third sector.

In the spring, large international companies left the Russian market, which, as it turned out, actively supported NGOs.

Among Vera’s partners, for example, were H&M, Cisco, Louis Vuitton, Blanco. The Lighthouse House Charitable Foundation was supported by IKEA, as well as employees of Google, Apple, Netflix, Western Union. The press service of the House with a Lighthouse said that last year they won a $20,000 PayPal grant to support a children’s hospice in Moscow and the Moscow Region. The fund expected to receive funds in the first quarter of 2022 through Benevity, but since March 5, the service has temporarily deactivated the accounts of Russian NGOs, PayPal has suspended work in the country, and the grant has been cancelled. “Give Life”, according to its director Ekaterina Shergova, loses about 80 million rubles due to the departure of foreign philanthropists. in year.

As for domestic business, some companies relocated, some closed, others began to cut budgets for social programs.

In the Help a Child.ru Foundation, Kommersant complained that several partners, fearing the “fog of a special operation,” even asked to return the money already donated.

As a result, as Irina Bakradze, president of the Podsolnukh foundation for helping children and adults with immune disorders, said, NPOs lost 90% of corporate donations and large private donors. Large non-profit organizations were able to withstand the blow, while small ones, primarily regional ones, were faced with a difficult choice: for example, continue to help their wards or pay salaries to employees.

Among these NGOs is the Moscow Two Lives Foundation. The organization closed the shelter for two dozen pensioners who survived violence or found themselves on the street without documents. “The shelter alone needs 800,000 rubles. per month. And now we have a maximum of 300 thousand for the work of the entire organization, ”its director Lana Zhurkina told Kommersant.

Togliatti social-adaptive center “FAITH HOPE LOVE” named after V. I. Zhilin has curtailed a free rehabilitation program for 160 children with disabilities. In order to pay off the utility bills for June, the organization sold the bus that took children to rehabilitation.

The charitable foundation for helping people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) “Live Now” in May was forced to dismiss all nurses who helped 25 patients, including lonely ones, to wash, clean, cook, process masks, clean gastrostomy. According to the director of the foundation, Natalya Lugovaya, this also happened due to the departure of large donors and the inability to receive private donations from abroad: Russians living abroad were more willing to donate to seriously ill adults because, according to Ms. Lugovaya, there is more talk about ALS abroad .

Funds faced the inability to buy foreign medical devices and medicines, or their significant rise in price, or at least the inability to deliver these important goods. And all this despite the fact that this year even more people began to need help.

A Need Help Foundation survey conducted in March found that 65 out of 170 NGOs had an increase in the number of beneficiaries. The spread is wide – from a stable growth for charitable organizations of 5-10% to an increase in the number of those in need at times. First of all, the number of beneficiaries has grown within the framework of the direction of assistance to people who find themselves in a difficult life situation. It is logical to think that we are talking about migrants from the Donbass, but this is not so. More precisely, not quite so. For example, the Chelyabinsk regional public organization “Sunny Day”, which helps people with disabilities and the elderly, after the start of the special operation (SVO) began to receive more requests from the poor for food assistance.

And if there are more people in need, then the number of those who want to help, at least in traditional areas – children, adults with serious illnesses, the homeless, animals – on the contrary, has decreased. A study conducted by the Need Help Foundation in September showed that in just one year the proportion of Russians who regularly participate in charity work fell from 13.2% to 9.8%.

In order to survive, Russian NGOs asked the Ministry of Economy for state support measures – grants, tax breaks and assistance to employees, for example, preferential travel.

However, so far the agency has limited itself to a moratorium on scheduled inspections and a restriction on unscheduled ones, and also exempted NGOs from fines for the first administrative violation.

But here’s what is important: charity in Russia, despite the difficulties, has not stopped. And most of the funds, even those that were going to close in August, continue to work. And besides, there is an obvious sharp increase in the volume of private charity in the framework of a new direction that meets the current social demand – support for immigrants, as well as the warring army and volunteers. The collection figures here are already in the hundreds of millions of rubles, the number of participants is in the tens of millions. Moreover, these gatherings are organized not only by funds – public figures, bloggers, military correspondents. Active citizens gather in urban communities, unite even at entrances to send aid to refugees or to the front.

The same September study “Need Help” showed that areas of charity that are still not very “popular” in Russia – helping migrants and refugees – have grown sharply after February: the number of people supporting such programs financially has tripled, from 2% in 2021 year to 6% in 2022. Director of the Center for Humanitarian Technologies and Research “Social Mechanics” Mikhail Churakov noted that today the organizers, activists and participants of charitable assistance related to SVO are the most visible, active and mobile social movement in the country. According to Mr. Churakov, targeted charity related to the special operation, both civilian and military, will continue to be highly active. And its structure will quickly change in accordance with changes in the requests of beneficiaries.

Natalya Kostarnova