Temporary residence permit in Ukraine through the charity activities

The practice of our firm includes a variety of legal fields. Including registration or legal support of charitable foundations and organizations.

In the course of our work, we have repeatedly received requests from our Clients for assistance in the process of registering a charitable foundation in Ukraine or providing legal support for other activities related to charity.

The reason behind it is that it can help you get a residence permit while bypassing standard schemes.

Today we will talk about the following options:

• registration of a charitable foundation in which the foreigner acts as a founder;
• obtaining the status of a volunteer for a foreigner in Ukraine.

Charity foundation option

One of our Clients wanted to create a charitable foundation with a foreigner as one of its Board members.

We said that it is quite possible, but requires several important steps, some of them performed simultaneously:

• developing a Charter that will contain all the needed provisions; 
• obtaining a taxpayer identification number (IN) for the foreigner, as it is obligatory for him to have it in this case;
• registration of the Charitable foundation in Ukraine;
• inclusion of the Foundation to the Register of non-profit organizations; 
• obtainment of a non-profit status for the Charitable Foundation. 

Even though the obtainment of the status of a non-profit organization has become pretty hard in recent years, we were able to prove our legal position to the tax authorities. Our lawyers successfully registered the Charitable Foundation and were able to help the foreigner obtain the desirable position.

Later we helped him to obtain the temporary residence permit.

Related article: Which positions can a foreign citizen be assigned to in Ukraine without obligatory work permit?

Volunteer status for a foreigner in Ukraine

Laws of Ukraine provide the full list of legal grounds according to which foreigners and persons without citizenship can legally stay in Ukraine for a long time. Among those grounds can be found one that allows a foreigner-volunteer to get a temporary residence permit. 

This procedure includes several stages:

• Registration of volunteer organization. It must be established as a non-governmental or charitable organization. 
• Getting a volunteer status for the organization. It is obligatory if You want the organization to be able to invite foreigners as volunteers. This process requires specific package of documents with information about site, head, contacts of organizations, which must be submitted to the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine. 
• Legal relationship management with the foreigner. Whether they will be managed through signing the agreement or in any other way - it’s for the organization to decide. Our lawyers can help You with this decision depending on the type of organization’s activities. 
• Collecting the documents for temporary residence permit obtainment. Due to the specific reason of coming to Ukraine, the foreigner must submit a wider list of documents: standard documents such as passport, it’s translation, bank receipts, an application etc.documents which confirm that organization has a right to invite foreigners-volunteers.

Commonly it’s the petition and the registration documents of the organization.Both of these options allow to fulfill the main goal - obtaining the temporary residence permit. Although the strict procedure and lots of procedural steps might require some help from specialists in the field. We are ready to help!