State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman published an audit on June 30, 2026, regarding the state's relationship with volunteer groups, charities, and civilian initiatives that assisted the home front after October 7, 2023. The audit stated that the government entered the crisis without a body responsible for coordinating the civilian response.

The volunteer and donation effort in the first three months of the war was estimated at NIS 14.78 billion. This total included approximately NIS 8.56 billion in the assessed value of volunteer labor and NIS 6.22 billion in money and in-kind donations between October and December 2023. The estimated value was approximately NIS 3 billion more than the NIS 11.8 billion the state allocated for civilian needs during the same period.

More than 1,000 civilian emergency rooms, volunteer networks, and community initiatives operated during the first three months of the war, assisting more than two million people. About 80% of these emergency volunteer initiatives were formed spontaneously. Nearly half of Israeli adults volunteered in October 2023, with an average of 2.23 million people volunteering and 3.6 million people donating between October and December 2023.

From 2018 until the audit's conclusion in July 2025, no central government authority was tasked with coordinating governmental activity with donor and volunteer bodies during an emergency. The National Emergency Authority's resilience division, which previously coordinated part of this work, was closed in 2018, and no replacement body was appointed. The government attempted to create a central coordination mechanism after the war began, but the effort failed. A 2007 comptroller report identified major coordination gaps related to northern residents following the Second Lebanon War.

Seven of the 15 ministries examined had no designated official responsible for coordinating with volunteer and donor bodies. Ten of these ministries had not mapped, before the war, the fields in which outside organizations might be needed. Organizations frequently struggled to identify the relevant official within a ministry, and ministries lacked a comprehensive understanding of active organizations or where help was required.

The Prime Minister's Office unit for cross-sector partnerships, established under a 2008 government decision, was unprepared for the crisis. Before the war, this unit employed only a director and coordinator, and in the initial months of the war, it operated with only the director. The unit had not completed a digital system to connect ministries and civilian groups, nor had it appointed ministry-level contacts or compiled information about relevant organizations. Additionally, it had not established a central public information line for donors and volunteers.

A government emergency fund for nonprofit organizations, established during the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed about NIS 50 million to 302 organizations affected by that crisis. Many nonprofits expanded their work when the war began yet faced income loss due to suspended contracts and frozen government budgets. The Treasury could not quickly activate the existing emergency fund because problems identified after the pandemic had not been resolved. The Treasury subsequently published a separate NIS 40 million support initiative for nonprofits in December 2023.

Englman called on the Prime Minister's Office and the National Emergency Management Authority to decide which body will be responsible for coordinating government activity with volunteer and donor organizations in an emergency. He wrote that such a body should possess clear authority, staffing, funding, digital tools, and established working procedures. He added that this body should be trained during routine periods rather than formed only after an emergency has started.