The Ukrainian Studies Fund (a.k.a. Ukrainian Studies Chair Fund and Harvard Ukrainian Studies Fund) is an educational charitable institution created by the Ukrainian diaspora in the USA, which has been operating continuously since 1958 and is designed to support and promote the development of educational programs, knowledge and information about Ukraine and Ukrainians. Its most significant project was the funding of the Ukrainian studies program at Harvard University, but since then support has been given to projects of scholars in North America and Europe, including Ukraine.

In 1957, at the annual meeting of Ukrainian-American students (Union of Ukrainian Student Societies of America, SUSTA ) , a student from New York, Stepan Chemych and his friends initiated a discussion in an attempt to break down the wall of ignorance about Ukraine and Ukrainians that students regularly encountered in their universities. This discussion led to the creation of the Ukrainian Studies Fund (USF). 

USF was established and registered as an educational charitable institution in the state of New York in 1958 under the name "Ukrainian Studies Chair Fund, Inc.". The main goal was to establish a professorship at one of the leading American universities. Stepan Chemych, who devoted the rest of his life to fundraising and managing the activities of USF on a volunteer basis, and his colleagues launched a public campaign in the Ukrainian diaspora to finance the professorship. This campaign caused a stir in the diaspora, especially among displaced persons who arrived in the USA in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Most of the donations were modest, between $10 and $100. Despite the modest donations, after the first decade of its existence, USF raised more than a quarter of a million dollars.

By the mid-1960s, enough funds had been raised to search for a university for the professorship in Ukrainian studies. Among the institutions discussed were Columbia University and the University of Minnesota. USF formed an Advisory Council, which consisted of Ukrainian-American academics, and one of them, Professor Omelyan Pritsak of Harvard University, proposed the following: the USF should finance not one, but three professorships of Ukrainian studies at one university, and it should be Harvard. In addition, part of this plan was the establishment of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard and the development of a a library collection of Ukrainian materials.

After discussions with the leadership of Harvard University, USF approved Omelian Pritsak's proposal and launched a large-scale public campaign to raise funds for three professorships: in Ukrainian history, in Ukrainian literature, and in Ukrainian philology (study of the language in historical Ukrainian documents, chronicles and manuscripts). At that time, the cost of founding one professorship at Harvard was a donation to the university of $600,000. USF took the quarter of a million dollars that had already been raised and with great persistence and enthusiasm recruited dozens of volunteers in various cities across the United States to help raise the remaining amount to fund the three professorships.

What was interesting about this campaign was that it found support among various sub-communities of the Ukrainian diaspora. Support was provided by members of the diaspora from western Ukraine (Halychyna) and eastern Ukraine (Greater Ukraine), as well as supporters of various political diaspora groups. Despite the fact that the actions of the USF were sometimes criticized, it was the only such successful campaign of this scale until the declaration of independence of Ukraine in 1991. This success is equal to another diaspora project, when a monument to Taras Shevchenko was unveiled in Washington DC in 1964 thanks to the efforts of the community .

By 1973, the Ukrainian Studies Fund had raised enough money to establish three professorships. Subsequently, the campaign was directed to the collection of 2 million dollars for the creation and support of the Ukrainian Research Institute, later known as the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI), by the Bicentennial of the United States in 1976.

At times the campaign experienced difficulties as the Institute, established in 1973 with a minimal endowment, required constant financial support to cover the Institute's projects, which began to develop rapidly. Once the collection of 2 million dollars for the Institute's fund was complete, it became self-sustaining. In turn, a number of notable patrons of the USF decided to establish separate named endowed funds at Harvard for the support of specific activities of the Ukrainian studies program. This also slowed down the rate of growth of the core fund of HURI. However, by the end of the 1980s, the diaspora donors of the USF, whose total number exceeded 12,000 individuals and community organizations, donated enough funds for the Institute's core fund and 50 additional named endowed funds honoring USF donors at Harvard. The gifts conveyed as capital for the endowed funds are held by the University in perpetuity.  The income earned annually provides steady funding for the three Ukrainian professorships, Institute funding of fellowships, staff, conferences, workshops, the publication program, research projects  and the Summer School program, and Harvard College Library funding for acquisitions and preservation of Ukrainica across a number of Harvard libraries.

These achievements were possible thanks to the fruitful cooperation between Stepan Chemych and Bohdan Tarnawskyi, who became the head and public organizer of the Ukrainian Studies Fund. Tarnawskyi brought technical skills and basic organizational principles to USF, while Chemych worked on concepts and ideas. Their partnership was quite productive and lasted almost three decades, creating a solid foundation for  Ukrainian Studies in the United States.

The presence of Bohdan Tarnawsky in the USF office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, made a significant contribution to the formation and determination of the direction of the young program of Ukrainian Studies at Harvard. The idea to study the Holodomor of 1933, which occurred in Soviet Ukraine, arose in 1980, was one of such initiatives of the USF, which grew into a project of HURI. This scholarship at Harvard led to the publication of Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow in 1986, and later, in 2017, Ann Applebaum's The Red Famine. This caused a stir in academic circles and especially in the Ukrainian community. Commemorating the Millennium of Christianity in Rus’-Ukraine with publications and a memorable International Congress is another example of USF’s work with HURI. The efforts made at Harvard met the needs of the Ukrainian diaspora, which sought a deeper understanding of Ukrainian history and culture for themselves, and, just as importantly, it informed the general public about the ancient history and rich culture of Ukrainians.

Another notable feature of the Harvard USF project was that, as a result of the existence of Ukrainian studies at Harvard, a whole generation of academics came into the world, who either received doctorates there or completed postgraduate studies. They are Orest Subtelnyi, Robert Magocsi, Frank Sysyn, Zenon Kohut, Olga Andrievska, literary critic George Grabowicz, Oleg Ilnytskyi, Natalya Pylyp'yuk , Roman Koropekyj, and Ottomanists Lyubomyr Hayda and Viktor Ostapchuk.

Despite the fact that most of the efforts were directed to Harvard projects, USF was involved in its own projects to expand knowledge and information about Ukraine and Ukrainians. For example, between 1985-1990, with the efforts of USF, a position was established at the Keston Institute in Britain, where information about religious persecution in communist countries was prepared for the world press and state governments, in addition to research for the non-Ukrainian public about the millennial baptism of Rus’-Ukraine. USF published and distributed a number of information brochures about Ukraine and Ukrainian history through its own efforts.

Since the declaration of Ukraine's independence in 1991, USF has continued its mission of supporting and promoting Ukrainian studies not only in America, but also in Canada, Ukraine, and other European countries, focusing on original source studies and publications. The most obvious is the support and strengthening of the Ukrainian studies program at Columbia University. In addition, support was given to projects at the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta, as well as a historical research project of the Second World War at the Ukrainian Catholic University. USF supports the research and publications of individual scholars who write on Ukrainian topics. In particular, funding was provided to preserve the valuable archives of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in New York.

As an expression of the aspirations of the Ukrainian diaspora to illuminate the Ukrainian narrative in history, culture and literature, the Ukrainian Studies Fund is one of the most significant post WWII diaspora organizations in North America. After the death of Stepan Chemych, the president of the USF was Bohdan Kudryk (2001–2014) and since 2014 Bohdan Vitvitsky. Roman Procyk served as the Executive Director from 1988-2024 at which point Taras Ferencevych became the Executive Director.