Here’s what we learned from our community survey — thanks to you (Patreon)

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

Twice a year, we ask our members how we’re doing when it comes to running our membership program with a survey — and each year, you show up for us. This time, just over 1,000 of you took the time to fill out our community satisfaction survey. For context, in the last survey, we had about half the number of responses.

A big thank you to everyone who participated in our community survey. We learned so much — and most importantly, we hear you!

We review our survey results with the Kyiv Independent team, too. Pictured above is the meeting in June — about half of our staff joined online and in person to go over your responses.

Your responses inform how we develop our membership and how we manage the community. We wanted to take a second to share with you some of the key takeaways that you might find interesting and what we’re going to be practically doing with the results.

Why do you support the Kyiv Independent? The top three reasons you gave were:

I want to support Ukraine during the war

I think Russia’s aggression is of global concern

I want to support independent journalism

This question allowed you to select multiple reasons, and between 80-86% of our respondents selected these three reasons. In general, our members seem to have a lot in common!

We’re constantly improving based on your feedback — even as the war continues, your solidarity makes a real difference. We’re grateful for your trust, and we can only do this work because of your support.

Here are some other key takeaways from the results:

Most of our respondents live in the U.S., Canada, western Europe, Australia, or New Zealand — a distribution that closely matches what we see on our community map.

Just over 93% of you read the Kyiv Independent at least once a week. In fact, over half of you read us daily, and almost every 10th member checks in more than once a day.

We also asked how you’d rate your experience as a member. Over 90% of respondents gave us four or five stars (out of five stars). That’s incredibly encouraging — and a reminder that we’re on the right track.

Even more: Nearly 90% of you said you plan to keep supporting us in 2025! Your loyalty means the world to us, and we never take it for granted.

Just over 55% of respondents said they had used at least one membership benefit in the past month. The most popular by far? In first place, the weekly community letter, which was read by 50% of respondents, followed by ad-free reading (23% of respondents), and our community map (20% of respondents).

We’ve been sending the community letter every Friday night for over three years now, and it’s encouraging to see how many of you read it regularly. It’s also based on your feedback that we’ve developed new membership benefits, like our “How to Help Ukraine” newsletter, and added more channels to our community Discord server, including one for Kate Tsurkan’s newsletter, “Explaining Ukraine.” We read every one of your comments, and it's thanks to your input that we can develop more useful, relevant membership benefits.

We also know that not everyone uses membership benefits, and that’s okay. They’re always here if you ever want to explore them. If you have any questions about what’s available or how to access something, just reach out to community@kyivindependent.com. We’re happy to help.

We want to thank you, not just for supporting us financially, but for sharing your ideas and suggestions with us. Your feedback and your responses to our community survey help us decide what to change, what to improve, and what to keep doing. Every answer counts!

With gratitude,

The Kyiv Independent team