Answering member FAQs from our last community survey (Patreon)

Dear Kyiv Independent community members, 

Thank you for your continued support — and thank you to everyone who took our community satisfaction survey! Here’s a small update with some of its findings, plus the answers to some recurring questions. 

We closed the survey in October with just over 1,350 responses — the highest number we’ve ever received. We read every single one of your responses, and share your comments and feedback with the rest of the Kyiv Independent team in a meeting and via a report. 

We know because of our survey that the main reason that our members choose to support the Kyiv Independent is because they want to help Ukraine during the war, closely followed by a belief in independent journalism and recognition that Russia’s aggression poses a global threat. 

We also heard from our survey that there’s a real interest in stories about day-to-day life in Ukraine, how people manage to survive Russia’s war, and Ukrainian culture. We passed all these suggestions and feedback along to the editorial team. 

We had respondents from 55 countries, which is the largest number of countries we’ve had represented on one of our surveys, with some respondents as far away as Syria, Chile, and Vietnam. 

We also had two people take the survey who were under the age of 18 and five over the age of 90.

It’s been incredible again to see responses being submitted from all over the world from people with probably very different life experiences — and knowing that our members are united by a belief in supporting independent journalism and helping Ukraine when it’s needed most. 

Thank you again for taking the time to fill out the survey and for being a part of our community. Your input directly influences how we do our work; for instance how we improve our community management, membership benefits, and website user experience. 

Here are some frequently asked questions from our latest satisfaction survey: 

Question: I’m logged in to the Kyiv Independent website, but I’m still seeing pop-ups, asking me to become a member. 

Answer: We can explain what’s going on here. In short, when the Kyiv Independent launched in Nov. 2021, membership was only offered via Patreon. Later, in May 2023, we started offering membership via the Kyiv Independent website. We don’t plan to change anything with Patreon, and we will continue to post here as usual — however, the two systems are not integrated, which means that your Patreon membership is not recognized by the Kyiv Independent website. All membership benefits — other than ad-free reading and the ability to comment underneath website articles — are the same. We apologize for any inconvenience, but hope this helps explain what is going on! 

Question: How do I join Ukrainian lessons? 

Answer: We have a Ukrainian lesson every Tuesday at 7 p.m. Kyiv time via Zoom, taught by a language tutor Vitalii. Each week, we alternate between beginner and intermediate level lessons, but anyone can join at any time. 

We use this Zoom link, but we also recommend you join our Discord server if you haven’t yet. We not only share homework and quizzes there, but you can ask Vitalii for help, and occasionally, when we have to reschedule lessons, we coordinate there. 

Question: What is Discord? And how do I join?

Answer: Our community Discord server is an exclusive place for our members to connect with each other and with our team. You can find channels there for not only Ukrainian language, culture, and how to help during the war, but also for story ideas — we periodically run polls for our members to vote on what topics our team should cover — and a place to submit questions to be featured on our video show “Ukraine This Week.” 

To join, follow these instructions linking your Patreon and Discord account, then you should be automatically added to our community server.

Question: I’m looking for information on how to travel to Ukraine. 

Answer: We received a lot of questions about traveling to Ukraine on this survey — it’s been cool to see how much interest there is in visiting! We have a few channels set up in Discord for tips on traveling to and living in Ukraine. Our community has shared a lot of helpful information already. If you do plan on visiting Kyiv and want to visit our office, just send us an email at community@kyivindependent.com — we love meeting our members in person.

Question: How can I use my discount for the Kyiv Independent store? 

Answer: One of your membership benefits is a 15% discount on everything in the Kyiv Independent store. You can apply your discount by entering the code WELOVEYOU (we do love our members) at checkout. 

Question: How can I help Ukraine? 

Answer: This is one of, if not the most frequently asked question we get from our community members. Earlier this year, we launched the “How to help Ukraine” newsletter — a monthly letter featuring one organization helping Ukraine, highlighting Ukraine’s civic society and ways you can get more involved. You can read past editions on Discord, here. 

You can also find a channel on Discord dedicated to answering questions about how to help, where our members also share other ways to get involved.

If you have any questions that weren’t answered here — or if you found this update useful — you can reach out to us at community@kyivindependent.com. We always appreciate hearing from our members.

We run our community survey twice a year, and after our survey in the spring, we sent a letter similar to this one, which we heard from our members was valuable. We hope you also found this one insightful!