After ending my sponsorships with Compassion because of their horrific customer service and inability to deliver on their promises to sponsors, it was so refreshing to see THIS in my email this morning.
What a novel idea (insert sarcasm here)--creating a survey to ask sponsors how you're doing! Imagine the results if Compassion would do such a thing! My guess is Compassion isn't doing it because they want to continue to play dumb about all of the dissatisfaction among their sponsors and projects that aren't following the correspondence guidelines.
I've only been sponsoring through Children International for 3 months, but this email, asking for my input in a survey format, with boxes for typed explanations on my answers if I wanted to give additional details made me feel valued and heard as a sponsor. I did have some suggestions for Children International, but it mainly had to do with their website, not with their actual sponsorship program.
Children International is $10 less each month for a sponsorship than Compassion is, yet sponsors get high quality photos printed on photo paper, an online community just for Children International sponsors that is pretty busy, and has CI staff that regularly comment on questions asked, detailed family reports, and from what I've been hearing from other sponsors, just as many or more letters as sponsors receive through Compassion. The children also get things like dental care, medical care, school supplies, etc.
I think, personally, I am more comfortable with models like Children International, because they do not partner with local churches. Instead, they set up centers themselves, and I imagine it's much easier to oversee everything, and ensure that each community is following guidelines. I wonder if sponsors ever hear of community centers being closed because of misappropriated funds? My guess is no, unlike with Compassion.
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