The previous post but one made me chuckle and reminded me of the infamous Karl Pilkington's observations on a similar adoption scheme for Help the Aged.

Apparently he was asked to adopt "Edna" and help her keep warm for the winter. He assumed that this would involve financial support to cover her heating bill, but was motified to receive a postcard update featuring said old lady 'sitting there with a tan and that'. Ricky Gervais then went on to point out that what Karl had assumed to be a suspicious change in pigmentation was, in fact, probably to do with the printing process!

Thanks Appalachian Kid, it was nearly as good as the original.

Don't shoot the messenger

Appalachian kid - so you measure your outcomes simply from how somebody looks in a photo?  My experience of working in charities is that it would be impossibly to run an ethical and accountable child sponsorship programme.  Quite apart from the moral and development critiques of selecting individuals to benefit, how is a charity expected to restrict funding to one person.  It would be an accountancy nightmare, therefore the money is restricted to the specific project or community instead.  Pretending that the money goes to the child in such situations is surely unethical fundraising.

The comments against child sponsorship on this page left me slightly discouraged until I got my focus back. One comment in particular, that donors do it for selfish reasons, was particularly destructive. I don't believe anyone gives monthly money that they could use for selfish reasons. No charity is perfect, but a child starving can maintain life alone for even a fraction of the donation. So what if it takes advertising costs to reach a donor! That is how we are reached. As to the new appoach of supporting a community versus an individual child (portrayed as cattle driven out for a photo here by some), my own experience with the two forms of support (one child on the community approach and one on the individual approach) is that the child on the community approach looked worse in her year-end photo....sad and depressed, thin and sickly. I gave up sponsorship upon arrival of the photo, as the community approach wasn't trickling down to her. The child on the individual approach is thriving well, happy, winning awards at school. I know my money has made her life better. This is what matters, not discouragment from fund raisers.

I have worked in the developing world for many years, and up to recently was a field leader in a large American based child sponsorship organization. I have recently resigned because my conscience could no longer handle an increasing organizatinal focus on what is good for the organization rather than what is best for the child and the community. One local leader of the organization told me yesterday that "the sanitised visions of child development organizations, (both faith based and secular)is making them increasingly irrelevant to successful and sustainable development. They worship their own mythologies."}

Most of child development programs are driven by high powered successful marketing programs that tell the donor what the donor wants to hear and so alleviate thier guilt ("we have so much and they have so little").

These programs also reflect the imbedded American viewpoint that we can save the world and once people understand that we have all the real wisdom; then they will love us and our programs will make sense to them. The old America Knows Best scenario that continues to be played out around the world. In other words, the flogging will continue until morale improves.

Jobs are hard to come by, and so therefore it is very difficult to get at the real information because field workers who know the truth will lose their jobs if they come public. The spout the party line publically in English while switching to the vernacular when talking to their support group.

Child sponsorships programs are big money machines that provide organizations with easy cash flow. It does not matter whether the product is any good. Most of them are not, despite the rosy media releases The marketing team decides what is good program and the stories that need to be told to bring in the money. The Lords of Poverty hand out the crumbs to the peasants and donors feel good.

There are better ways to bring sustainable development down to the poorest of the poor than child sponsorship. I urge readers to put their emotions aside and do some good research on pros and cons. When I first became entered this industry (and it is an industry, not a "ministry"), I drank the grape juice completely and was a strong advocate of what I was doing. But my experiences over the years have brought me to the conviction that child sponsorship as we know have it is one of the evils of our age. They keep people in poverty, they do not liberate children and communnities on the long term despite the trophy stories that are paraded before the public from time to tome. Enough said.. Maybe I should write a book.

Martin comments in another thread that ‘most of us have done fundraising events before - meals, days out and so on”.

I’m not sure who ‘us’ is, but the example he gives – “ie meal £50 cost for the charity, tickets sold for £60+” would give the charity an income, but a poor ‘ratio’, unless big money came from when “people start donating or taking part in raffles.”

But this is exactly why 'ratios' don't work.

Let's say I work for hypothetical charity A, and we need £100k to survive to the end of the year, if we do then this year we'll save the lives of 1000 people. Actually, we only need 50k to do that, but it's going to cost me 50k to raise it, so I need 100k.Why on earth might I need 50k to raise 100k?

Well, no-one's heard of us, no-one knows about the people we'll save and no-one cares, basically, but these 1000 people need us, so we'll do it. However NEXT year, we'll have all the people who gave this year knowing about us, so the costs of saving another 1000 people will be much lower. We're working on regular giving, and most of the people who we sign up at events should stick with us.

So my ratio THIS year, sucks, frankly, but in the future, aha, now that's a different matter. If you think about my long term recruitment costs and long term income to costs, they'll be great, because I'm looking after my new donors right - all very admirable, but not as admirable as saving the lives of 1000 people.

And that's a problem with fundraising costs - they're sunk, they're spent, they’re gone, regardless of the income, and next year might not work out the way we think. Going back to my £500 example.I could spend £500 tomorrow, and it should make me £2500, but it *might* only make me £1000 and it *could* make me nothing because it's a new idea no-one’s done before. Do I do it?

I have a 'personal pain barrier' too but it's more painful when funds don't come in. I'd rather people flocked to my website, signing up to regular giving, but they're not, so I have to spend some money to show them why they should.I don't have the answers, but I obviously have to sit and plan, and budget, and learn and think of the theory, and study why people give, and hone my asks and make my charity as appealing as I can, and make it known.

And if things don't go right, investigate why and improve, but I have yet to find a way to guarantee myself a strong income and a wonderful return. If I could guarantee 50%, I'd be tempted yes. I'd be more tempted if I could guarantee that I'd triple or quadruple my money, and it would simply be done if I had a guarantee of increasing it tenfold, but there are no guarantees.

Apologies, this is long, rambling and bordering on ranty - it has been a long day...

My view of the simplified 'community support versus individual sponsorship' debate is that the former is most definitely preferable both in terms of sustainability and accountability (hey, we all know the odd international development charity that's got itself into trouble by not being able to account for its funds).

Encouraging the well meaning supporter to give their money towards community development means securing their buy in at a more sophisticated level. This has a number of advantages

1) It is easier to continue to justify their investment (beyond little Johnny being cured or completing school)

2) The reporting/update process is far less labour intensive

 3) (An often underrated consideration) You help the supporter to develop a much greater understanding of the impact of your organisation and it is therefore easier to 'upgrade' them or engage them in other ways.

I would, however, say that there are no hard and fast rules and to a certain extent it's horses for courses. You might find that a child sponsorship scheme helps you to attract a certain type of supporter who would otherwise not be interested in your cause, in which case there's a case for using that method of recruitment  to specifically taragetted markets. The other option is to introduce a well written emotive case study into your community support 'product'. You can make it explicitly clear that you are not asking for a restricted donation for the benefit of this one individual, but you are using their story as an illustration of the difference that you can make with regular donations.

 As for the debate about acceptable fundrasing ratios, that just depends on the type of activity being undertaken. It might seem logical to assume that you should only involve yourself in the activities which secure the greatest percentage return - but it really isn't all that simple. You have to take into account your duty to spread the risk in terms of planning for sustainable income growth. It's also true to say that events fundraising in particular often garners far more than its initial take in the long term by building networks of people who then go on to support the organisation in other ways. It's dangerous to simplify, but that's not to say that we shouldn't be engaging in debate. I don't think the public mind different charities taking different position, what they do object to is a lack of honesty and transparency (but that's for another thread entirely!)

Don't shoot the messenger

[quote=Lizzi]In reply to the point made by Mikemuses, I would simply ask you what is the limit to which you would 'hang the ratio' to get donors in?

Well, I'm not Mike, but I'm going to stick my oar in anyway. My personal pain barrier is about 30% overhead costs - including fundraising - depending on the charity. Given the number of charities in the UK and the amount of duplication (I'll come to that in a minute), I would suggest that any charity which has to spend vast amounts of money to raise funds should look at whether it would be better off working in partnership with a similar organisation.

Duplication: Of course, every single charity is unique. Entirely [END sarcasm]. Seriously, although aims/objectives vary, there is a case for many national and international charities to join forces and for the trustees of the organisations to work together to ensure that aims reflect both(all) of the organisations that have merged. Precedents: CLIC Sargent (sp? nevermind). NSPCC and Barnardo's sharing back office functions these days. The greater leverage of people within the same organisation working together rather than competing (yes, competing) for funds in a very crowded "market" would surely make some limited compromises worthwhile? Note that I am talking about merging organisations with very similar aims, not "Oxfam taking over everything". Unfortunately, there are too many egos out there for this to happen frequently enough. Trustee protectionism. Sure, donors have brand loyalty. But they aren't stupid (mostly): explain how much MORE the beneficiaries will benefit and they won't care what colour the logo is. Really they won't - they even hate you paying admin costs fer goodness' sakes.

While I'm on this thread, and on a separate note in response to Anonymous. I must admit that the 'individual' thing doesn't sit well with me. I'm sure that charities ensure that children are fully supported into adulthood even when a donor drops out. Surely they must - otherwise someone would have dug out a scandal. But if a donor who writes letters and sends small gifts suddenly stops, mustn't that make the child wonder? It's all very well for the donor to want a personal relationship, but morally speaking, they should responsibility for their part of that relationship, as well as the commitment of money. Community model for me, every time. Having said that, if I were the parent of a child who could go to school for the first time ever owing to someone's generosity, I wouldn't really care about the donor's motives or even the source of the money, just be grateful that it was there.

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 ... nearly Vlad the Impaler

I think you are making an interesting point. I hope that what came across in the article is that there is a discernible difference between the many child sponsorship schemes out there - and SOS Children's Villages is the only one which offers an adequate description and explanation of their scheme. In this case, as in select others, the privacy of the children are protected. As for those which still 'parade them like cattle' as you wish to describe the method used, I am inclined to see your point.

In reply to the point made by Mikemuses, I would simply ask you what is the limit to which you would 'hang the ratio' to get donors in?

Lizzi - Intelligent Giving

Depending on what the source of motivation is to both the sponsor and the charity organisation, the act of sponsoring can either be good for children concerned or benefit these two to the detriment of the child. Some sponsors do it for tax purposes and others do it for other selfish psychological reasons. Same goes for charity organisations and some fund raisers that I have come to know in highly reputable charity organisations. All this while the children have to be paraded like cattle when reports are prepared for the sponsors.What I say is the bitter truth which also goes for people who do Volunteer work in these organisations. Yes we need more sponsors who give for altruistic reasons.

It is a good article (and thanks for praising our clarity).

On the "more discerning donors should know that an uncomplicated standing order is the more efficient" and the comment by mikemuses I would say two things:

1) The most important thing for a discerning donor to do is come to the charity online NEVER in response to direct mail. It is true it costs us about 5p in the pound to run a sponsorship scheme (spread over 250,000 sponsors internationally) versus zilch for an uncomplicated direct debit. But the (lifetime of donor) fundraising cost for new online DD donors is about 1p in the pound versus perhaps 40p in the pound for the old direct mail route (we've dropped DM now). So eight times more discerning to go online.

2) And Mikemuses, I am sorry, I wouldn't "do it now and hang the ratio". Or not unless the donor knew explicitly so little of their funds were going to what matters. IMHO Lose faith with donors and you might as well stay in bed.

Keep smiling

Andrew

While I agree, that "But more discerning donors should know that an uncomplicated standing order is the more efficient ", the problem facing most charities is simply that they need more donors.

 If I knew I could spend £500 and get £1000 from donors tomorrow, I'd do it, and hang the ratio...