<p>This research investigates the impact of international funding on strengthening civil society organizations in post-Soviet states, focusing on the Commonwealth of Independent States member countries. The project utilizes multi-level hierarchical models comparing the impact of funding within the same country throughout its independence from the Soviet Union over time (“within” effects) as well as to other countries included in the study (“between” effects). The paper makes both empirical and theoretical contributions to the field of civil society studies: empirically, it finds a negative relationship between the availability of funding and the strength of NGO-based civil society. These results hold for most of the other funding recipient countries across the globe for the same period. Theoretically, such a counter-intuitive finding suggests the ineffectiveness of exporting a civil society development model based on the Western experience to non-Western countries with repressive regimes.</p>