revisiting child sponsorship programmes

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Revisiting child sponsorshipprogrammes

Willem van Eekelen

Child sponsorship programmes have long been criticised for their conceptual and programma-

tic flaws. In response, organisations changed their programme designs to minimise negative

side effects, or even stopped providing direct support to individual children altogether. This

paper outlines the evolution of sponsorship programmes; discusses advantages and drawbacks

of today’s one-to-one sponsorship methods; and explores how progress may be possible. It con-

cludes that such sponsorship programmes will never amount to sustainable development but

can, if designed well, make a credible contribution to complex livelihoods in environments

that lack adequate safety nets.

Repenser les programmes de parrainage d’enfantsLes programmes de parrainage d’enfants sont depuis longtemps critiques pour leurs

defauts conceptuels et programmatiques. En reponse a ces critiques, les organisations ont

modifie la conception de leurs programmes pour reduire au minimum les effets secondaires

negatifs, et ont meme parfois completement cesse d’apporter un soutien direct a des enfants

individuels. Cet article decrit dans ses grands traits l’evolution des programmes de parrainage,

traite des avantages et des inconvenients des methodes actuelles de parrainage individuel et

examine les manieres dont il serait possible de progresser. Il conclut que les programmes de

parrainage de ce type ne constitueront jamais des formes de developpement durable, mais

qu’ils peuvent, a condition d’etre bien concus, apporter une contribution credible a des

moyens de subsistance complexes dans des environnements qui ne sont pas pourvus de filets

de securite adequats.

Revisando nuevamente los programas de patrocinio a la ninezDurante mucho tiempo, los programas de patrocinio a la ninez han sido objeto de crıticas

debido a sus fallos conceptuales y programaticos. Frente a esta situacion, las organizaciones

han modificado el diseno de sus programas, con el fin de minimizar sus efectos negativos, o han

detenido totalmente el apoyo brindado a ninos de manera individual. El presente artıculo

esboza la evolucion experimentada por los programas de patrocinio, a la vez que examina

las ventajas y las desventajas de los actuales programas de patrocinio individual, analizando

como pueden hacerse avances al respecto. La conclusion surgida del artıculo establece que

estos programas de patrocinio nunca seran parte del desarrollo sustentable aunque, si se

disenan bien, pueden contribuir de forma verosımil a la creacion de medios de vida complejos

en entornos que carecen de programas sociales adecuados.

468 # 2013 Taylor & Francis

Development in Practice, 2013

Vol. 23, No. 4, 468–480, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2013.790936

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Revisitando programas de patrocınio as criancasOs programas de patrocınio as criancas tem sido ha muito tempo criticados por suas falhas

conceituais e programaticas. Em resposta, as organizacoes mudaram seus projetos de pro-

grama para minimizar os efeitos colaterais negativos, ou ate mesmo deixaram de fornecer

em geral apoio direto a criancas individualmente. Este artigo apresenta a evolucao de progra-

mas de patrocınio; discute as vantagens e desvantagens de metodos atuais de patrocınio indi-

vidual; e avalia como o progresso pode ser possıvel. Ele conclui que tais programas de

patrocınio nunca atingirao o desenvolvimento sustentavel mas, se forem bem elaborados,

podem oferecer uma contribuicao confiavel a meios de subsistencia complexos em ambientes

que nao possuem redes de seguranca adequadas.

KEY WORDS: Aid – Aid effectiveness, Monitoring and Evaluation; Civil society – NGOs; Methods;Labour and livelihoods –Poverty reduction

Introduction

Child suffering anywhere inspires compassion and an eagerness to “do something”.

NGOs enable comparatively affluent individuals to fund programmes that aim to alleviate

such suffering.

When choosing from the many options, people find it easier to empathise with an individual

than with a group, and are thus attracted to programmes in which their contributions benefit a

needy person with a face and a name (Vedantam 2010). No programme utilises the marketabil-

ity of the individual-in-need more than sponsorship programmes that link individual sponsors to

individual children. Consequently, such programmes are popular, and have an estimated joint

annual turnover of some US$3.2 billion (Wydick, Glewwe, and Rutledge 2011). This amount

includes child sponsorship programmes that merely maintain, for marketing purposes, the

impression of an individual link between sponsor and child. They link sponsors with model

or ambassador children who do not receive individualised support but represent the commu-

nities they live in.

This paper focuses on one-to-one child sponsorship programmes, defined as programmes in

which individuals make periodic payments that organisations transfer to the (foster) parents of

particularly disadvantaged children. The time may have come for NGOs to rehabilitate such

programmes, as cash transfer programmes are gaining in credibility and popularity (Coady

2004) and some types of one-to-one programmes are growing very rapidly indeed (e.g. the

Kiva model of microfinance and the unconditional cash transfers of Give Directly).

The aim of this paper is to provide NGOs that are implementing or considering child-focused

cash transfer programmes with the lessons learnt by organisations that have implemented and

gradually improved such programmes over the past three decades. The paper describes how

these sponsorship programmes have evolved, looks at both the commonly perceived and the

actual advantages and drawbacks of such programmes, and at ways in which these programmes

have been or could be improved.

Methodology

This paper is based on literature and on research that Islamic Relief (IR) commissioned to the

author. This research lasted from initial interviews in February 2010 until a progress review in

October 2011 and consisted of:

Development in Practice, Volume 23, Number 4, June 2013 469

Revisiting child sponsorship programmes

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1. A comparison of sponsorship programmes of 30 nongovernmental organisations (NGOs)

in the UK, USA, Belgium, Germany, and France.1 Data gathered were related to size (of

organisation, programme, and monthly contributions); nature of support provided (such

as cash, in-kind, and counselling); overhead costs; the sponsors’ choice options (such as

sex, age, and country of residence) and entitlements (such as reports, letters, presents,

and visits); sponsorship eligibility criteria; marketing approach; standards or codes

adhered to; and programme implementation (directly or through local partners).

2. A review of eight previously conducted process and impact evaluations of IR child spon-

sorship country programmes.

3. A focus group discussion with IR’s Child Welfare Programme Team; open interviews

with 11 IR employees with different roles and at various levels; and meetings with repre-

sentatives of two software development companies.

4. An IR sponsor survey with 35 closed and three open questions which were developed and

tested in-house, refined, piloted in four countries, tweaked, and used by a team of trained

interviewers in telephone interviews. The 115 interviewed sponsors were women (52 per

cent) and men (48 per cent) from the UK (39), USA (26), The Netherlands (22), Germany

(18), and South Africa (10). There were selected through proportionate systematic

cluster sampling.2 An online database allowed for single transfer coding and for inter-

views to be conducted simultaneously in different parts of the world.

5. After the completion of the research, and to assess its wider relevance, IR conducted two

internal sponsorship evaluations in hitherto unevaluated country programmes. These

internal evaluations verified the research conclusions and recommendations, and

found them to be relevant for these two newly assessed programmes too. Lastly, the

author shared a draft version of this paper with peers in Muslim Aid, EveryChild, Invest-

ing in Children and their Societies (ICS), and Oxfam (as a comparison organisation that

does not have a sponsorship programme). Their feedback strengthened this paper and

confirmed the wider relevance of the main research findings.

One-to-one child sponsorship over time

The child sponsorship model has grown ever since an American journalist witnessed the plight

of Korean orphans, established World Vision, and introduced a sponsorship programme in

1953. The initial model provided direct support to children in orphanages. The model was

replicated and modified, and over time these sponsorship programmes grew in number, size

and diversity.

Three major sector-wide developments impacted upon these programmes in the 1980s and

beyond.

1. Partly because of real-time media reporting, disasters and poverty worldwide have

become more visible. This led to a growth in the size and number of NGOs and their

child sponsorship programmes.3

2. This growth was accelerated by increasing institutional support for NGOs. First, the

neo-liberal ideal of a small state and the accompanying Structural Adjustment Pro-

grammes caused a transfer of basic services from the state onto NGOs in the 1980s

and early 1990s. A decade later the national PRSP processes caused another boom. Insti-

tutional donor agencies do not provide direct support to sponsorship programmes but

their emphasis on accountability has impacted on all NGO operations, including their

child sponsorship programmes.

470 Development in Practice, Volume 23, Number 4, June 2013

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3. The way NGOs viewed recipients of aid changed fundamentally. They are no longer seen

as stand-alone victims but as potentially resourceful – albeit disadvantaged – people

who are embedded in wider communities. This resulted in modifications in both the pro-

gramme and marketing designs of sponsorship programmes.

The one-to-one sponsorship programmes also changed because critics argued that their

conceptual foundation requires and fosters dependency and fundamental inequality between

the poor child and the rich adult (as was most famously argued in a text titled “Please do not

sponsor this child”, in New Internationalist 1982). This criticism, together with evaluations

that highlighted practical flaws and a few high-profile scandals related to extreme bureaucracy,

excessive salaries, and child abuse, caused the image of sponsorship programmes to

deteriorate.4

In response, many organisations reduced the sponsorship principle to a fundraising tool: they

maintain a one-to-one relationship that includes photos, letters, and even the option to visit, but

do not actually provide direct support to individual children. NGOs that do still provide direct

support to individual children on behalf of individual sponsors – Opportunity House, IR, Com-

passion, and many smaller NGOs – have often modified their programme and marketing

approaches, and sometimes adhere to sponsorship standards, in order to minimise negative

side effects.5

The following sections present the advantages and drawbacks of one-to-one sponsorship pro-

grammes, and discuss the ways in which NGOs have tried to improve their programme designs.

Strengths of the sponsorship model

Apart from NGO responses to sudden-onset disasters, sponsorship programmes are the most

easily marketable of all humanitarian and development interventions as they have great intuitive

appeal and lead to long-lasting funding commitments.

Intuitive appeal

People know that the plight of many is more important than the plight of one person, but they

are subject to the ‘empathic telescope’ effect: by nature, people are most easily persuaded to

assist when they hear a cry for help from a single individual.6 Some one-to-one sponsorship

programmes give this individual a name and face even before the sponsorship has started, by

allowing the sponsor to select a child on the basis of photos and other personal information.7

More commonly, NGOs combine the focus on the individual with a sense of urgency (she

needs you now) and with a long term perspective (if you sign this form, she may become a

teacher). Once a sponsorship has been agreed on, the sponsor may build (request, one

might say) a personal relation with the child. The charity’s bureaucracy becomes invisible:

“it is just Tamara and me”. NGOs tell each sponsor that much depends on his or her

monthly contributions as nobody else sponsors this child, and this causes the sponsorship

to feel more important than donations to programmes that are financed by an anonymous

funding pool.

Durability of funding, development education, and cross-selling

Humanitarian and development NGOs operate in a sector with volatile income streams,

as countries and sectors rapidly go in and out of fashion. Amidst this volatility, sponsorship

agreements are very stable as sponsors believe that “their” child’s progress directly depends



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on their monthly transfers, and are therefore disinclined to terminate support. In IR’s sponsor

survey, 88 per cent of the respondents stated that they had “never considered cancelling the

sponsorship”.

This loyalty makes sponsorship an unusually lengthy and stable source of NGO income. In

addition, the sponsorship provides the sponsors with a window into the lives of people in a

developing country. This may lead to a more active interest in international development

efforts, which may cause a cross-selling multiplier effect: people sponsor a child and make

other donations to the same organisation.

Common conceptual criticism

One-to-one sponsorship programmes are criticised – and have often been terminated – because

of conceptual issues that have to do with power relations, dependencies, externalities, impact,

and religious agendas.

The inequality in sponsor-child relations

The traditional sponsor-child relationship is an unequal one as its continuation depends on the

child’s and organisation’s ability to keep the sponsor content. This generally translates into a

one-sided obligation to send letters and progress reports. This sense of inequality is reinforced

by letters about sponsors’ wealthier and seemingly happier lives; the censoring of the child’s

letters; and the one-way option of visits.

Sponsorship programmes are not unique in their obvious inequalities. Termination of other

types of projects is common and generally equally outside the recipient community’s

control. What sets sponsorship programmes apart is the personalised nature of this inequality.

Although more distant and corporate, sponsorship programmes are similar to the financial flows

from affluent relatives and sugar-daddies that are a common part of complex livelihoods, and

these programmes often come with similar – though typically more subtle – expectations of

gratefulness and subordination.

Careful programme design reduces the perception of inequality. First, these programmes do

not have to rely on the continued commitment of a single donor: IR now has a system where

cancellations are subject to a notice period during which a new sponsor is identified, and a

financial reserve that bridges unsponsored periods. Second, the potentially awkward personal

touch may not always be necessary. IR’s survey amongst sponsors showed that less than a third

of the sponsors felt they had “a personal relation with the child” and none of the sponsors con-

sidered cancelling sponsorship as a consequence. Moreover, most sponsors felt comfortable

with modifications in reporting if such modifications enhance IR’s efficiency. This suggests

that argued requests to allow for minimal reporting, combined with software that registers

each sponsor’s minimum demands, help to reduce the sense of inequality that detailed personal

reports may bring. Third, the actual support delivery does not have to be embarrassing. IR’s

receiving process became less awkward when the monthly queuing-for-cash was replaced

by bank transfers, and home visits became less invasive when IR employees stopped

parking their four-wheel drives in front of the sponsored homes and instead arrived on foot.

Fourth and last, it is possible to reverse the tables. Rigorous, functional, and well-known com-

plaint procedures (included, for example, in a new family’s welcome pack and explained to

illiterate fosters in face-to-face meetings) help establish a sense of control on the side of the

receiving family.


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Dependencies

In a process that started in the late 1970s, most one-to-one sponsorship programmes have

moved from a patronising “helping helpless children” to “facilitating self-reliance, self-help

and popular participation by empowering individuals and communities” (SAAS/InterAction

2008).

Still, there is the bottom line of financial transfers that may or may not continue until

they cease to be useful. The SAAS/InterAction child sponsorship standards state that an

NGO should have “clear policies and procedures and/or criteria, guided by program prin-

ciples, that enable it to move in and out of communities in an effective way when appropriate”.

In reality, the exit strategy is often simply to stop the sponsorship when a child reaches adult-

hood. This is the flipside of the durability of funding: NGOs rarely risk upsetting the sponsors

and recipients alike by acting upon the assessment that continued sponsorship is no longer

required.

The age- rather than income-based continuation of support has many drawbacks but one

advantage: the support does not constitute a disincentive to seek other sources of income

(other than possibly the disincentive to migrate, at which point sponsorship would typically ter-

minate). This means that the sponsorship will create a mild and inevitable dependency in the

sense that a family will grow accustomed to this monthly cash insertion, but is unlikely to

create the more serious “dependency syndrome” in which the support acts as a disincentive

to seek other sources of income and development. On the contrary: NGOs often allow or

even encourage sponsored families to utilise livelihood-enhancing facilities such as

microfinance and training. Both the sponsorship and any support to generate an income feed

into complex livelihood strategies in which income from any source (including a monthly

sum that is formally earmarked for an individual child) rapidly trickles down to a group that

generally consists of more than the core family.

The in-crowd and the others

A pure one-to-one sponsorship programme is inherently discriminatory in two ways: one

or more children within a family are sponsored and their siblings are not; and some families

are sponsored and their neighbours are not. At both levels, the programme potentially

creates a miniature us and them, where sponsored children and families are privileged but

also potentially stigmatised, and their unsponsored peers may be jealous or have a sense

of superiority.

The views on this inherent discrimination became apparent when World Vision transformed a

one-to-one programme in Peru into a community support programme. An evaluation noted that

“what also became extremely clear . . . was that some . . . community members who did not

have children in sponsorship programs expressed a particularly negative view of World

Vision and its work . . . This was in spite of the reality that both sponsored and nonspon-

sored children were . . . benefiting from the . . . various initiatives.” (Pratten et al. 2007, 22)

The sponsorship-related friction within families and communities was highlighted in publi-

cations in the 1970s and 1980s. While this inspired many NGOs to terminate individualised

giving, some NGOs – including IR – continued and further expanded their traditional cash-

to-child programme. Within this programme, IR evaluations found that much depends on the

approach of the country office. Some offices systematically encouraged parents and guardians

to treat all siblings equally and ensured that non-financial support was either benefiting all sib-

lings or eliminated. In those countries, no friction amongst siblings was observed. Other offices

did not explicitly encourage such equalising measures. In two towns in Bangladesh, 90 per cent



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of in-kind support (such as tables and chairs, school dresses, and shoes) was provided only to the

sponsored child. Though mothers tried to utilise other sources to compensate for this inequality,

jealousy was observed amongst the siblings of the same age group, and sponsored adolescents

were sometimes seen to try playing a disproportionate role in family decisions. When interview-

ing neighbours, no similar friction was observed as long as sponsored families were not better

off than most families in their community. Sponsorship was merely one of the many ways in

which families scraped their income together, and not seen to be different from the income

obtained from affluent relatives, or through micro-enterprises or salary income.

Imposing faith

In one-to-one child sponsorship programmes, religion plays two roles. First, it may direct the

selection of beneficiaries. Several Christian NGOs work through local churches, which

causes an inherent bias, and most Muslim NGOs favour support to orphans (who, in the case

of IR, are selected irrespective of their faith). Second, several NGOs consider religious mess-

ages to be part and parcel of their sponsorship programme. This is sometimes admitted

freely – “Far more important than any material benefit we can provide children is the life chan-

ging message of hope presented in the Gospel”8 – but often shows more subtly, through Eid or

Christmas cards and the contents of letters.

Both the faith-inspired selection criteria and attempts to convert or strengthen the faith of

sponsorship recipients are controversial. They are not in line with the Red Cross Code of

Conduct, which resonates across the sector, or with the SAAS/InterAction standards that

demand that “child sponsorship programs assist those who are at risk without political, reli-

gious, gender or other discrimination” (SAAS/InterAction 2008).

Impact on individuals and the communities they live in

If designed wisely, targeted carefully, and implemented efficiently, sponsorship programmes

usefully add to the livelihoods of disadvantaged families in environments that lack alternative

safety nets.

These programmes do not and can never amount to sustainable or integrated socio-economic

development. The reason is that sponsorship programmes neither address nor outweigh the

many and mutually reinforcing root causes of poverty at the level of the individual family

(caste, social strata, orphan-related stigma, HIV), community (environmental degradation,

gender-related obstacles, systems of land ownership, heritage conventions), country (oppressive

regime, geographical and urban biases, infrastructure), and international realities (trade system,

wars).

A consequence is that sponsored children are unlikely to escape a life of poverty. Where the

sponsorship does have a long term impact, by enabling children to remain in school or orphans

to stay out of institutionalised care, the programme will have an impact at the level of the indi-

vidual or family, not at the level of the community. Even this individual and family impact is not

certain as NGOs do not normally baseline a family’s situation; systematically measure progress

over time; and compare the findings with a credible control group. An exception to the rule was

an evaluation that used 13 measurable criteria related to child welfare to compare some 9,000

sponsored children with a control group of children that were not sponsored but on waiting lists.

The study found that:

“Of the 16 projects analysed, 11 displayed significant improvements in the lives of the

sponsored children when compared with the waiting-list control group . . . The trend analy-

sis showed that the main effect of the programmes was received quickly after programme


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admission, with only slight improvement noted over time.” (McDonnal and McDonnal

1994, 199–200)

Programmatic challenges

One-to-one sponsorship programmes face the usual problems in relation to overhead costs,

targeting, impact analysis and sustainability. In addition, there are a few issues that are specific

to this particular type of programmes.

Overhead costs

The stated percentage that goes to the child ranges from 72 per cent (Plan US) to 100 per cent

(SOS UK). There is considerable financial creativity behind these percentages. They may

exclude tax relief; calculate in-kind donations at 100 per cent of their formal value; quietly

insert supplementary funding from an NGO’s general fund (so that a sponsor pays £20 and

the family receives £20, but this 100 per cent transfer is only possible because of an unreported

insertion of funds from other sources); and/or categorise field office and local partner costs as

direct child support rather than programme support costs.

Realising low overhead costs is an achievement as many individuals are involved in one-to-

one sponsorship programmes, and their involvement comes with three types of overhead costs

that other projects do not have.

First, identifying eligible children and monitoring their progress once they are sponsored

typically includes home and school visits, and these visits require staff time and money. This

is the area in which, at least in the case of IR, the largest efficiency gains could be made,

simply by adhering rigidly to catchment areas beyond which nobody is eligible for sponsorship,

and by situating the sponsorship officers in the middle of these catchment areas.

Second, individual reports need to be written and communication between child and sponsor

needs to be ensured and managed. This typically requires both translation and editing services.

The traditional solution has been to work with volunteers, which are rarely entirely free of

charge and generally require paid supervision. The more contemporary solution is to standar-

dise reports and communication with the help of specialised software that did not exist when

most organisations dismantled their one-to-one sponsorship programmes in the last decades

of the past century.9 Such software facilitates the use of report templates and, if such templates

are used, automatic translation. Equally significantly, it allows for differential treatment: spon-

sors who insist on regular reports will receive them, and sponsors who do not, will not. When

combined with gentle persuasion, this can reduce the reporting requirements dramatically: the

IR sponsors’ survey suggest that sponsors are receptive to efficiency arguments, and other

reductions in service (e.g. the possibility to send presents and to visit sponsored children)

have not led to notable levels of cancellation.

Third, a lot of staff time is invested in difficult cases. These can be children who drop out of

school or abuse drugs or do not meet the feel-good expectations of the sponsor in other ways,

but also sponsors who insist on visits, individualised presents, and/or excessive communi-

cation. For sponsors, the solution is straightforward: clear information from the outset prevents

unrealistic expectations and if sponsors nonetheless take too much time their sponsorship can be

terminated (politely, to avoid negative publicity). For sponsored children it is not quite this easy

as there are ethical difficulties in terminating children’s sponsorship on the basis of loss of their

‘cuteness factor’. For now, good or even just clear practice on possible grounds for sponsorship

termination seems absent, and none of the inter-agency standards mentions the issue.



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Utilisation of funds

Pure cash-to-child programmes are rare. Sponsorship programmes commonly have a commu-

nity development component, and the direct support of IR, SOS, Muslim Hands, Compassion,

and Muslim Aid all includes educational support, clothing, and/or health care.

None of the options is without its drawbacks. Cash-to-child (or, better, cash-to-family) can

and does lead to better housing and nutrition, but may also lead to parents’ cigarettes rather

than children’s education. In-kind donations are prone to corruption and generally inefficient

compared to straightforward financial transfers, and they may cause resentment if the parents

or carers do not agree with the NGO’s priorities or do not like the presents. Dedicating part

of the sponsorship funding to community development lessens the one-to-one link and

makes direct impact harder to measure. For each of these options, the importance of verifiable

impact is emphasised in the SAAS/InterAction standards. Home visits could play a major role

in systematically assessing such impact, but these visits are rarely used for this purpose.

Cash transfers are the best option for efficiency-related reasons; because a sponsorship pro-

gramme should not disempower the head of the household by taking over the family’s priori-

tisation; and because even books and desks can be converted into cash to feed a parent’s

addiction. In high-risk family environments, these cash transfers could be combined with

basic and easy-to-verify conditionalities such as school enrolment and attendance, annual

health checks, or even the presence of a study table. Community development programmes

can be very useful indeed, but NGOs should be transparent and treat a one-to-one sponsorship

and a community development programme as two different programmes.

Targeting

There are three common problems in the targeting. First, there is the risk of favouritism. Field

office staff is often recruited locally and family, tribal and other loyalties may well impact upon

the selection of children. Outsiders may not recognise such biases unless the evaluation includes

interviews with community members who are not directly affected by the sponsorship

programme – which means that such interviews should be a standard element of any such

evaluation.

Second, there is a risk of families learning the tricks of the trade and receiving sponsorship

from more than one NGO. This type of system manipulation is possible as NGOs rarely share

their sponsorship details, and double or triple funding may go on for years.

Third and related, most sponsorships programmes are implemented by the NGOs themselves,

without systematic links to local or national institutions or government structures, and without

coordination with other NGOs. This means that the programmes are – needlessly – separate

from other parts of a community’s social safety net or development efforts. Francophone

NGOs appear to be the exception to the rule: the sponsorship programmes of Vision du

Monde (France), Partage (France), and Association Angkor (Belgium) all emphasise their pre-

ference of working with local partners to strengthen the community. The other exception is

formed by organisations that work through local churches, with Compassion being the

biggest example of this by far.

NGOs can help ensure sound targeting by sharing their databases and evaluations. Alterna-

tively, problems can be minimised by NGOs sticking to well-defined and mutually agreed-upon

catchment areas; working closely with this area’s public authorities; and making their eligibility

criteria known to the area’s inhabitants and to other stakeholders (such as other NGOs and local

authorities). Within IR, the only country programme that came close to doing so was the one in

Sri Lanka.


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Child protection

The consequences of child protection failures can be grave, and such failures attract media

attention. This has led NGOs to frame their work with children within child protection laws,

policies, and procedures. Child sponsorship programmes are no exception.

Guidelines such as the ones of the Keep Children Safe Coalition help ensure child safety.

They cover themes such as recruitment, training, and recognition of, and response to, child

abuse. Sponsorship-specific guidelines – such as the ones of UNICEF (UNICEF n.d.) and IR

(Islamic Relief 2005) – address these same issues but also cover home visits, risks related to

sponsorship requests, and the nature and contents of communication between sponsors and

children.

None of these guidelines mention the issue of catchment areas. In some cultural and security

contexts, women’s mobility is limited and the need to travel to isolated areas often translates

into the recruitment of men only. Narrowly defined catchment areas help ensure that sponsor-

ship officers are female. This is important to minimise the risk of sexual exploitation: most pro-

grammes’ target groups are child and female-headed households, and the power imbalance

between them and the sponsorship officers means that home visits of male sponsorship officers

pose a risk.

Fundraising challenges

Issues of image

In the 1980s and 1990s, conceptual criticism and a few sponsorship scandals crippled individual

agencies (the Dutch wing of Foster Parents Plan lost more than half its sponsors when the

CEO’s salary caused a media storm) and damaged the image of the entire one-to-one sponsor-

ship sector. In response, most large NGOs modified their programme approaches or moved

away from the one-to-one concept altogether – though even those organisations maintained

their one-to-one appeal by coining phrases such as ‘ambassador children’ (Save the Children)

and ‘global parents’ (UNICEF).

Issues of imagery

Images of needy children give the comparatively well-off adult an implicit sense of superiority

and parental urge to help. Such images, with their emphasis on helplessness and vulnerability,

had a massive return on investment when they were first used on a large scale in the 1950s and

1960s, with Oxfam’s campaigns reaching a high point of £31 raised for every £1 spent on adver-

tising (Burman 1994). Then two things happened.

1. Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer-prize winning picture of the dying Sudanese child with the

vulture was a money-maker for Save the Children, but also gave fame to the phrase of

“hunger porn” and led to Carter’s suicide a few months after he had taken the picture.

The use of this picture for fundraising purposes started a process that led to the develop-

ment of a number of tools and codes in relation to the use of imagery in fundraising, such

as the “Tipsheet on Portraying Famine Victims with Dignity” (Alertnet n.d.), the “Code

of Conduct on Images and Messages” (Concord 2006), and the Pictures for Change

Initiative (Pictures for Change n.d).

2. The overall development discourse changed and came to focus on empowerment, self-

help, and self-reliance. The discourse subsequently moved on and widened, locally

focusing on a rights-based approach to development and internationally focusing on



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trade and migration systems and the like – but it never lost its disapproval of approaches

and imagery that emphasised helplessness, passivity, and dependency.

These developments led NGO advertising campaigns to change in tone. Typical slogans that

started appearing in the early 1990s emphasised empowerment: “She was sponsored when

she was six. Now she teaches sixty”; “If you sponsor Shomita no one will have to sponsor

her children” (both quoted in Burman 1994). The children still featured and still had names,

but they were now placed in their actual context and empowered to find a sustainable way

out of poverty. Two decades later, the children in the pictures do not look particularly dis-

tressed, are often with their families, and the texts still have a similar tone: “Love, protection,

food, shelter, cloths and education. I believe with these things, my dreams and goals can be

achieved” (Plan UK n.d). The exceptions are in the fringes of the NGO community, where

some organisations continue to shock people into giving money: in 2010, Carter’s picture reap-

peared on a Belgium NGO poster. The picture had been doctored for extra effect: an animal

skeleton had been added to the vulture and the dying child.

Conclusions

The consensus in the literature of the 1980s and 1990s was that the advantages of traditional

one-to-one sponsorship programmes do not outweigh their drawbacks and challenges. Conse-

quently, many NGOs have transformed their sponsorship programmes and, though they often

continue to use a face-with-a-name for marketing purposes, no longer provide substantial

direct support to individuals. NGOs that did continue implementing one-to-one sponsorship

programmes have learnt, over time, to avoid some of the conceptual pitfalls and programmatic

challenges of these programmes.

Overhead costs are often high, but do not have to be. The most cost-effective programmes

are the ones that have a well-defined and respected catchment area and a modest sponsorship

office in the middle of this area. This limits staff travelling, which is often the biggest part of

overhead costs. Another major cost-saver is related to reporting. Sponsors tend to trust the

organisations they transfer money to and are likely to listen to well-argued requests to limit

reporting and communication streams. Today’s sponsorship software solutions do much of

the rest, as they allow for instant translation of template reports and for tracking the

minimum reporting requirements of each individual sponsor.

There is another advantage to minimal reporting: it is unlikely to exceed what parents feel

comfortable sharing with strangers, and this helps to avoid – or at least minimise – a sense ofinequality. The narrowly defined catchment area has a similar effect, provided that the

programme’s eligibility criteria and complaint procedures are both widely known, as

this combination turns the sponsorship from a favour into an entitlement. The certainty of

this entitlement is strongest if the organisation has a sponsorship termination period

during which it can find a new sponsor, and a financial reserve that bridges unsponsored

periods. Other measures that limit the sense of uncertainty, inequality, and imposition to

the extent possible are the use of bank transfers instead of queuing for cash payments, and

sponsorship officers who make their home visits on foot instead of by logo-sporting four-

wheel drives.

As the sense of inequality may never disappear completely, and as sponsored children often

live in child- or female-headed households, child and mother protection requires that sponsor-

ship officers follow sound protection principles (captured in a variety of codes and policies) and

are female. Once again, a well-defined catchment area has its use: in many countries, long tra-

velling hours are an impediment to the recruitment and retention of female sponsorship officers.


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A well-defined catchment area and commonly known eligibility criteria also help ensure

appropriate targeting, and make inappropriate targeting, sponsor duplication, and corruption

easier to detect. For additional certainty and partly because external assessors might not be

aware of family and tribal loyalties, evaluations should always include interviews with community

members who are not directly affected by the sponsorship programme. This may also help to

uncover any resentment amongst people who do not benefit directly from the sponsorship pro-

gramme. Resentment within families is possible too, and detecting it requires delicate interviewing

of parents and siblings. Any such resentment is best prevented by avoiding child-specific presents

(such as bags) and conditionalities (such as school enrolment), or by applying them family-wide.

Some of the common criticism no longer applies to most of today’s one-to-one sponsorship

programmes. For most mainstream organisations, accusations of the use of unethical imagery

are no longer warranted as they systematically follow ethical guidelines on the depiction of chil-

dren. And, lastly, accusations of sponsorship programmes creating dependency by serving as a

disincentive to find and utilise other sources of income are unwarranted as they underestimate

the complexities of a poor family’s livelihood.

It is time to consider whether one-to-one sponsorship programmes could, after all, have their

use. The IR evaluations suggest that this is indeed the case, and that impact on a family’s

housing situation and nutritional status, and on children’s school enrolment can be strong

and positive. Sponsorship will never amount to sustainable or integrated development, but it

can be a credible part of the complex livelihood strategies of disadvantaged families in environ-

ments that lack alternative safety nets.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the children and (foster) parents who participated in the programme evaluations that

underpin this paper; the 115 IR sponsors who agreed to an interview; the interviewers; IR’s Child Welfare

Programme Team and its Performance Improvement Team, for their open and welcoming attitude; and

Oxfam, ICS, Muslim Aid, EveryChild, and Marja van der Knaap for their useful feedback to the draft

version of this paper.

Notes

1. Action Aid (UK and USA), Association Angkor (Belgium), ChildFund International (Germany and

USA), Children Incorporated (USA), Children International (USA), Compassion (Germany, UK and

USA), Islamic Relief (Worldwide), Muslim Aid (UK), Muslim Hands (France and UK), Opportunity

House (USA), Partage (France), Plan (Belgium, Germany, UK and USA), Save the Children (UK

and USA), SOS (France, Germany, UK, USA), and World Vision (France, Germany, UK, USA).

2. Cluster sampling: to avoid a country-specific bias, interviews took place in five of the 13 countries in

which IR markets its sponsorship programme. Proportionate sampling: the sponsor population is

divided equally in men and women, and to ensure proportional representation in the sample the

group of female respondents (which filled up more rapidly than the group of male respondents) was

closed when it reached 50 per cent of the total sample. Systematic sampling: to ensure randomness

within each cluster, every 20th person on the sponsorship list received an invitation for an interview.

3. An estimated one million children were sponsored in 1982 (New Internationalist 1982). The number

increased to 8.36 million children in 2010 (Wydick, Glewwe, and Rutledge 2011). The estimates are

rough and do not follow the same methodology.

4. Excessive salaries and bureaucracy are not specific to sponsorship programmes, but they are relatively

easy to trace because of the straightforward bottom line that can only partly be stretched by creative

accounting: the percentage of one’s monthly transfer that ends up in the hands of a child’s parent or

carer. The risk of child abuse is not specific to sponsorship programmes either, though there are a

few programme-specific risks (see later).



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5. The best known standards are from SAAS/InterAction and from the ChildFund Alliance. The most

recent set of commitments is the 2011 inter-agency “Child Sponsorship Charter” (FRSB 2011).

6. As confirmed by elaborate tests by Slovic, who found that people give more to a few than to many

needy people; and that they give more to a boy or a girl than to a boy and a girl (Vedantam 2010).

7. Allowing sponsors to select children on the basis of photos breaches the individual’s privacy, but it is

also a powerful marketing tool. Perhaps this is why changes are slow and gradual. In 2011, the IR Neth-

erlands was the last IR member to stop offering picture-based choices on ethical grounds. Children

Incorporated stopped showing pictures of its US-based sponsorship candidates some time ago – but

continues the practice for children in other countries.

8. The quote is from the website of Tearfund.

9. The IR evaluation identified ten applications that are or could be customised into a sponsorship CRM:

Raiser’s Edge, FundRaiser, PledgeMaker, Sage Fundraising, eTapestry, Donor Perfect Online,

SugarCRM, FatFreeCRM, Microsoft Dynamics, and CiviCRM.

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The author

Willem van Eekelen is a development economist who built his experience within and outside the UN

system before turning to full-time consultancy work. ,[email protected].


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http://usf.usfca.edu/fac_staff/wydick/csp.pdf

http://usf.usfca.edu/fac_staff/wydick/csp.pdf

revisiting child sponsorship programmes

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