World Vision’s innovative new approach to sponsorship

World Vision, the leading Christian international relief organization (and one of the world’s only Billion Dollar charities) – and the pioneers of Child Sponsorship fundraising, just turned 70 years of child sponsorship on its head.

And I think it was a brilliant move.

My wife and I were sitting in the sanctuary at Woodbury Lutheran Church this weekend (ok, we were actually in the outer area where the parents with loud children sit. ‘Cause, have you met my kids???) when someone from World Vision took to the podium.

The guest speaker this week was someone who had run 1,000+ miles to raise money for clean water through World Vision. He was there to share with us what’s going on at WV and in the communities they serve. And to make an ask for child sponsors. I’ve been through the child sponsorship ask a few times, and it’s always a strong ask from World Vision.

But today was different. The offer was different from any that I’d ever heard before – so simple, but it felt much stronger.

In the traditional child sponsorship model, the donor looks through a catalog (either online or in print) of children in need of sponsorship, selects one that catches their eye, and goes through the process of becoming a monthly child sponsor.

However, their recent innovation gives power back to the children they serve by photographing donors and allowing the children to choose the individual or family that they’d like to be sponsored by.

They call it Chosen: The power to choose in a child’s hands.

Think about that. The children World Vision serves rarely have an opportunity to choose anything. They are victims of famine, of global conflict, of disease, etc. They often can’t even make the most simple of choices like what clothes they want to wear or what they’ll have to eat during the day.

But this simple act of flipping the sponsorship model gives these children the power of choice — maybe for the first time in their entire lives. Handing this power back to the children is critical, I think, in allowing them to begin taking emotional ownership of their lives. 

This got me thinking…what else can we be doing — can you and I be doing — across our sector to give more of the power back to those we serve, so that we as service providers and donors aren’t the exclusive holders of the power in these relationships?