Goldman Sachs Deploys over $8.8M for Ukraine Relief Efforts
Goldman Sachs fosters a culture of philanthropy, encouraging our people to help support the communities where we work and live through Goldman Sachs Gives and Matching Gift programs. Following the conflict in Ukraine in early March, Goldman Sachs leveraged its people and capital to help support relief efforts for Ukrainian families.
Since March 2022, Goldman Sachs has deployed more than $8.8mm to nearly 50 local, national, and global organizations supporting communities affected by the humanitarian crisis, including the Polish Center for International Aid, Razom Inc., UNICEF and United Help Ukraine, among other nonprofit organizations.
This philanthropic support included a $3.6mm grant from Goldman Sachs Gives to support Ukrainian refugees through a partnership with Welcome.US. GS was the lead partner for this campaign in collaboration with key Ukrainian organizations and Ukrainian American community leaders. The initiative helped build on the White House’s announcement to welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees in the US. Funding was utilized in three ways:
- To create the “Ukraine Hub,” a site and communications campaign designed to encourage Americans to participate in the White House’s “United for Ukraine (U4U)” program by sponsoring a Ukrainian fleeing their country. The Ukraine hub site had over 450,0000 unique visits to the site resulting in over 171,000 applications to the U4U program; to date over 85,000 Ukrainians have entered the US through the sponsorship program.
- Build Welcome Connect, a technology platform that matches Americans with no existing connection to a Ukrainian with a beneficiary seeking refuge in America. Goldman Sachs engineers developed this Airbnb-style platform that would match sponsors and refugees based on application criteria compatibility. The platform is intended to help match Ukrainian refugees with sponsors, and could also be extended for future relief efforts. Welcome Connect registered over 8,200 American sponsors, which led to 417 matches with Ukrainian refugees.
- $1.5M of the $3.6M grant from GSG was allocated to the Welcome Fund which provided funding to smaller, community-based organizations such as faith groups, volunteer and service organizations that work closely with Ukrainians physically entering the country to fund their operations.
Another highlight of this campaign was to help support relief efforts within Ukraine through charities such as Nova Ukraine. Nova Ukraine provides on-the-ground humanitarian aid to the people of Ukraine, particularly to those who reside in cities with no public transport and limited supplies medicine and food including Kharkiv, Izyum, Severodonetsk and Slovyansk. By mobilizing Goldman Sachs Gives, the firm deployed more than $750k in grants, and helped provide food and medical aid to these areas largely affected by the conflict and ultimately to the recipients.
Nonprofit Organizations
We are honored to be able to support a wide range of nonprofit organizations working directly on relief and response efforts in and around Ukraine. A selection is listed below:
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
- American Red Cross
- Bank Żywności w Krakowie
- British Red Cross Society
- CARE
- CARE International UK
- Caritas Internationalis
- Concern Worldwide US
- Disasters Emergency Committee
- Doctors Without Borders/ Medecins Sans Frontières
- Global Empowerment Mission
- Global Fund for Children
- Global Response Management, Inc.
- International Committee of the Red Cross
- International Rescue Committee
- Nova Ukraine
- Polish Center for International Aid
- Polish Humanitarian Action
- Polish Medical Mission
- Project HOPE
- Razom, Inc.
- Refugees at Home
- Save the Children
- SOS Children's Villages UK
- Ukrainian Action
- UNICEF
- United Help Ukraine
- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
- War Child
- World Central Kitchen
- World Jewish Relief