Leaving Sponsorship Behind - Pitfalls and Benefits.

Discover the unforeseen ripple effects of child sponsorship programs with Dr. Laura Horvath, Jared Scheppman, and Kelly Strong as we dissect the challenges and triumphs in philanthropy's evolving landscape. As we navigate this complex terrain, our guests reveal how well-intentioned aid can sometimes miss the mark, inadvertently creating dependencies that hobble the very communities they intend to uplift. With a watchmaker's precision, we analyze the intricacies of international aid, focusing on the necessary shift from quick fixes to sustainable, community-driven development.

The journey toward ethical advocacy is fraught with obstacles, yet it's one that our guests and I tackle with unwavering commitment. This episode peels back the curtain on the delicate process of shifting from child-centric to family-centric models, highlighting the language and financial challenges that arise. Our heartfelt conversation extends gratitude to those donors who've held steadfast through the transition, illustrating the power of aligning with shared values over personal interest.

Ending on a note of optimism, we share tales of resilience and hope that fuel our mission for children separated from family care. Kelly and Jared, with their tireless dedication and sharp intellect, embody the change-makers forging a path to a brighter future. By embracing radical honesty and collective action, we underscore our belief that even amidst overwhelming odds, we can make a profound difference in the lives of the most vulnerable. Join us in this critical conversation as we champion ethical and moral advocacy for children worldwide.

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to Optimistic Voices, a podcast of helping children worldwide. We help children worldwide by strengthening and empowering families and communities. This podcast is for people interested in deep conversations with thought leaders in the fields of child welfare, global health and international missions.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Welcome back to Optimistic Voices podcast. As promised, this is a continuation of our last episode featuring Dr Laura Horvath, jared Shepman and Kelly Strong. I'm your host, dr Melody Curtis, if you missed the last episode. These three leaders and their organizations stopped using child sponsorship as a fundraising model for their organization, even though it's an effective and popular fundraising tool for nonprofit organizations like these. These are round-robin questions any of you can answer, and so I'm just going to throw the questions out there and you all can jump in and answer as you're inclined to do so. You all can jump in and answer as you're inclined to do so.

Speaker 3: 1:37

What negative impacts do you think child sponsorship has on the populations your organization serves? I'll jump in and take this one first, and I actually want to kind of answer this from the macro level. You know, I think that there's a lot of, you know, negative impacts that we can look at. But I want to just think through the macro level a little bit, because one of my critiques of child sponsorship and you know you said it when you were reading my bio I'm very passionate about solving root causes of problems. You know, when we do development work and aid work, a lot of the work that happens globally is solving symptoms of problems. Right, it's the surface level stuff, and there's always a deep, underlying cause to why children are separated from family or why a child can't access education or health care, and we need to get to those root causes. And so for me, when I look at child sponsorship, it does not solve the root causes of problems, and I think using an analogy of a watch is a great way to think about this. So a watch has a lot of gears in it Okay. And so if, if one of the gears is broken, the watch doesn't work, right, but if a bunch of the gears are broken. If multiple gears are broken and you fix the most important gear in the watch, it still doesn't work.

Speaker 3: 3:04

Right Now, we hear all the time that education and a lot of child sponsorship programs you know we have residential child sponsorship programs, we have educational ones but this idea of education comes up a lot because we often say that education is the best gift we can give to a child, right, and it'll have the biggest impact, is the best gift we can give to a child, right, and it'll have the biggest impact on the outcomes in their life, you know?

Speaker 3: 3:28

And so if that's the biggest gear in the watch and we solve that, but the other gears are still broken, you know what have we done? You know. So when we're providing healthcare to a child and we're providing education to a child, yes, we are doing great things for that child, but the child is still growing up in a system where a lot of other things are broken. Right, where there's a lack of, you know, child development intention from purposeful parenting. You know they may have access to food, but there's a lack of nutritious food like community opportunities, mentors in their lives, spiritual development opportunities. There's so many other things that you know you could go on and on and on about the things that are needed to turn children into successful adults. Right, and education and healthcare. Yes, they're big gears in the watch, but they're not the only ones, and so we need to make sure that, whatever our program approach is, that we're taking a holistic approach to it.

Speaker 4: 4:38

That's so good, jared, and I think one of the things that Hunter Farrell wrote no-transcript child who say eight years old and remain that child sponsor for 10, 12, 14 years, paying $25 a month, let's say, year over year over year, year over year over year over year, until that child ages out of the program or whatever the exit strategy is. Why is the situation not getting any better? Why does that child continue to need $25 a month for whatever that's providing for 10, 12, 14 years? How is that donation improving anything or making anything better or making that child self-sustainable or moving that child toward independence? You know, how? Is that doing anything beyond providing sort of a bandaid solution to a specific fixing, a specific gear in the watch, like you're saying, and actually also fostering dependency?

Speaker 2: 6:19

Kelly, do you have anything you want to add to that?

Speaker 5: 6:34

Ellie, sorry my mic wasn't working, so I would just say I've personally seen exactly like what Laura and Jared are talking about in regards to this um looking at it from the macro like aspect. I think it's just so important. Often we look so um at this kind of you know the wounds in front of us and we're trying to apply um, and as a former nurse you know I used to do that well, I'd see the issues in front of me and I would try, and, you know, work out how I can bring restoration and healing to that person. But if we do not actually diagnose properly the issue, we are going to constantly just apply surface, you know, plasters, and I think that's a huge issue and it just will trickle on and on and it it goes to um disempowerment, it goes to all the way through to also this external control that um child sponsorship programs may inadvertently reinforce this idea that solutions to these challenges have to come from outsiders coming in and applying that resource to fix this need, and so this can then undermine local agency and perpetuate a cycle of dependence too on external aid which, when you start looking at the macro level, you're then having to start thinking more about the communities and how they've become disempowered through this external control and as they come to rely on outside organizations to meet their needs rather than taking ownership of their own development processes. You know, this can lead to not just a loss of in innovation and and within the community, but also it it distorts the priorities. So instead of looking at, you know, if I love um and I shared this with Laura recently actually the when Helping Hurts book by Brian Ficker um, and it talks a lot about this and it talks um really about prioritizing the short-term relief over long-term development goals. That is happening across the world instead of the other way around. And if we don't change that and we don't shift that and we start looking at the root causes, as a result, communities may focus on meeting immediate needs continuously rather than investing in sustainable solutions that address underlying systemic issues. So I feel very passionate about that.

Speaker 5: 9:10

I think it's a big part of why we felt the need to transition away from the child sponsorship program. And on top of that, you know, I've witnessed this frenzy that happens with what goes along with the sponsorship, with letters being needed to be speaks to me, you know, in regards to what I used to see um happening in kenya on the ground would be it was focused on the don't need to have the donors the donors getting their letters and that we're meeting donor expectations, that we're forgetting about these root causes. Um, and we're trying to meet donor expectations and elicit these warm feelings, you know, in time for their christmas mail out um, hoping we're trying to meet donor expectations and elicit these warm feelings, you know, in time for their christmas mail out um, hoping that that leads to more donations to support more children. But we have to ask ourselves, like who? Who are we actually sponsoring? Are we sponsoring the child or are we sponsoring the donor?

Speaker 2: 10:22

Oh, that's a question that's putting it right out there. It sounds like there have been some real challenges in making this shift, and I'm wondering if you all could be radically honest and talk about whether or not you've lost any money when you shifted your model, because that's the purpose of the model is to raise money for the program. So have there been challenges like that?

Speaker 4: 10:52

Well, you know I'm going to be honest. I will say, yes, you could give even more. If you're feeling generous, you could increase your monthly or your annual gift. But we have lost some donors. I don't think we've lost a lot, but the loss of any donor for a nonprofit is a hard blow and it certainly doesn't make anyone on our development team, and myself included, very happy. I'll also say the shift has been really difficult to communicate, especially to former sponsors.

Speaker 4: 11:35

It's, interestingly, not difficult to communicate to new advocates because you're not having to do the unlearning work and we've learned the hard way. We learn a lot of things the hard way, but we've learned the hard way that it's not a one and done conversation. You don't get to sort of announce hey, we're doing this new thing or whatever. It's a constant, ongoing conversation, sometimes on a daily basis, with our FEA coordinator on the telephone explaining to people. Internally. We've had to do communication sessions where we're like you know, we need to take the word sponsorship out of the things that we send out. We need to stop referring to the individual child and use the family's name instead. Referring to the individual child and use the family's name instead. It's. It's been a difficult, a difficult and challenging transition.

Speaker 4: 12:38

Our advocacy model is different from child sponsorship and we have made a deliberate choice to put that difference front and center rather than try to lean in on like. Put that difference front and center rather than try to lean in on like. It's a sponsorship, like program. That might have been easier for our donors to understand and maybe latch into as a model they were more comfortable with, but we just couldn't do that and be true to what was actually happening, what is actually happening on the ground, which is that, like Jared was actually happening.

Speaker 4: 13:04

What is actually happening on on the ground, which is that the like, like Jared was saying, these donations go into a program, they go into a bucket and those funds are used there, you know, by highly skilled social workers on the ground. They're helping to empower families for their own independence. Um, and I feel like that's God honoring and to be less than completely honest and to try to do the hard work of educating our advocates about that wouldn't be ethical. So one thing that we should have realized and done better in the beginning, I think, is that is to know that we needed to keep educating our donors, or dedicated donors, about what sponsorship really is and why we've made this change to something different and why that matters, and that's honestly why we're doing this episode, because this is this is part of our trying to help our donors and your donors understand this a little bit better.

Speaker 5: 14:08

We also definitely lost money. We had some major challenges in shifting our model and we experienced some financial setbacks during the transition too, the reason really being was when I became the CEO, it was about five years just over five years ago now when I was offered the role. One of the things that I felt that I wanted to do when I had this opportunity of stepping into that position was really challenge this model and to ask the questions. And I think because I'd been on the ground in Kenya for seven years um prior to um working in the UK side of the charity. I had seen so much and I felt compelled that, if I was going to be in this position, that I needed to um to be true to what I believed and why, what I had experienced and why I knew that other, you know, people were experiencing, the children were experiencing Um, and so the first thing that I did really when I entered the role was to abruptly change, and that was I'm very naive. I stepped into the role with um with not much experience. Um and I have learned a lot on the way and um, you know, a lot of CEOs would have probably said what the heck are you doing? Um, and I have learned a lot on the way and um. You know, a lot of CEOs would have probably said what the heck are you doing? Um, but I felt it was extremely um detrimental to continue doing things the way that we were doing Um. So, in all honesty, I I look back and I think would I have ever done anything differently? Um, and the real answer is no. I didn't feel we should have the luxury of time to, you know, prepare and plan out every detail of a beautiful new model before taking action. It was a gamble, it was a risk, but I believed we needed to take that immediate action and address the real issues that were at hand and, as a result, the transition did happen. You know, in one sense, it was very abrupt.

Speaker 5: 16:14

We had financial loss, definitely in the years sort of after that, particularly because we we decided that we really needed to, you know, really revise the landscape, um, and to ensure that we were going to do something that was more ethical, more right, more just um, and so, like laura said when she was talking about spending several years actually revising everything, we went through a big season of deconstructing and then reconstructing um, and we are very proud, in one sense, that we have put children over funds and of course, we need funds to serve children. So it's a complex situation, but we believe that we did the right thing and we do urge other people to consider how far they would go to raise funds for children. Where is your boundary? Where is your? Where's your line? Where are you going to draw that line? Um, it's something that you really need to ask um.

Speaker 5: 17:12

So, again, we we feel like moving away and shifting away from this transitional child sponsorship program far outweighs, weighed, the financial loss and we see it as an investment, actually, um, in a more sustainable and more empowering future for the children and communities that we serve. We're truly, deeply grateful to our donors and supporters for their unwavering trust as we've made the transition and the individuals that have stuck with us through the changes. We're so, so thankful for them. Their support means the world to us and it shows they're giving for the right reasons. They're for the cause. They're not for, you know, agendas, personal agendas, but they're for something outside of themselves. Um, so I can sincerely um say and recognize that we have been dedicated um to bringing that shift and we've not stopped at, you know, trying to bring better practices and we're willing to to kind of suffer for a short term to gain long term benefits.

Speaker 2: 18:15

Kelly, I appreciate that. I know that at HCW with donors as much as we have worked on this change of language and so many people get it and are on board with it and are excited the way they were excited about the change from serving children in residential care to serving children in families. But I know at ACW with donors and some of our staff and some of the staff at the local program level people still slip and they call the dedicated donors sponsors and we're still getting inquiries about my child from donors. Are you finding any resistance or finding it difficult to explain? If so, where do you find the resistance?

Speaker 5: 19:12

Yes, we we have definitely encountered some resistance and lots of challenge in transitioning away from using terms like sponsors and my child when referring to donors and the children that they support. This resistance often arises from ingrained habits and perceptions, both within our organisation and among our donors, but it's also something when you've still got large organisations across the world still basing the majority of their fundraising on child sponsorship programs. That also does not help when we're trying to do something different, especially as a small charity. So one source of resistance comes from the familiarity and the comfort associated with using traditional terminology. But many donors have been accustomed to the language of child sponsorship for years, and adjusting to new terminology can be, you know, a gradual process for them. We have grace for that, but we're also trying to continually challenge and educate. So, similarly, staff members, both at the organisational and local programme levels, may find it challenging to break away from longstanding practices and adopt new terminology too. So for us that took several years of our ground team in Kenya to actually move away from some of these things too.

Speaker 5: 20:36

It wasn't just our donors, but, moreover, there may be a fear of alienating donors or causing confusion by changing terminology abruptly, like what we did, and some donors may have strong emotional attachments to the children that they support and they may struggle to understand the shift in language. However, despite all these challenges, we do remain confident and committed to our goal of transitioning towards more ethical, empowering language that reflects our values and principles. So we recognize the importance of clear communication and consistency in messaging, which is something we're trying to get better at and, again, like what Laura said, it's been very difficult to communicate about these things because it's complex and it touches people's emotions and feelings. So we're actively working to address any resistance through ongoing education, training and open dialogue with both donors and staff members. Ultimately, our aim is to foster a culture of respect, dignity and partnership in our relationships with donors and the children and families that we serve, and by embracing language that reflects these values, we believe that we can create a way more inclusive and empowering environment for all involved.

Speaker 2: 22:01

Thank you, Kelly. I appreciate that. Do we want to check on whether Jared's going to be able to get back to us?

Speaker 4: 22:11

He's in the spreadsheet, yeah he messaged me on WhatsApp and said that he had another meeting and he can do. He can record responses that can be plugged in later if we would like.

Speaker 2: 22:26

I think that sounds great. We'll do that so, and I can, I can work with that at any time, all right, so let's, let's see if we can make these short responses. If we can make these short responses, okay. What do you all wish that donors understood about the difference between child?

Speaker 4: 22:55

sponsorship and your dedicated donor program. What I wish that our donors understood and hope that we will communicate better is that, unlike a child sponsorship model, where your funds might be used to cover school tuition and uniforms and, maybe you know, some meal support, which is addressing the one cog in the watch, the Family Empowerment Advocacy Program our new dedicated program program is about pooling your gift and the gifts of other advocates so that the skilled social work team at the CRC can target the specific needs of a given family with interventions designed to empower that family toward independence. So your money, instead of just paying for tuition, is actually doing things specific to that family that are going to make that family able to stand on their own without needing ongoing support, which to me is a much more compelling thing to put my money in.

Speaker 5: 24:08

I think Laura has said that really well. I think the only thing I would sort of add would just be that I think our models are looking way more at the long term than the short term and they're way more empowering. So supporting initiatives that promote local um, you know, community members and local entrepreneurship, capacity building, self-reliance, you know, all of these things we're doing that too, we're we're we're doing more through through your monthly gift all right.

Speaker 2: 24:41

So um kelly and laura and j Jared, what advice would you give to organizations to enable them to reap the benefits of the fundraising model of dedicated donors, without falling into any of the pitfalls that you all have talked about?

Speaker 5: 25:07

that you all have talked about. My advice to organizations seeking to leverage the benefits of the child sponsorship fundraising model, whilst also avoiding its pitfalls, would be to prioritize transparency, ethical practices and a holistic approach to child welfare.

Speaker 2: 25:21

Anything to add to that Laura?

Speaker 4: 25:23

Well, I think what Kelly's saying is what I would say, which is to focus on what the program is doing first. I mean the fundraising piece, the development piece is important. Obviously you need money in order to have programs that function and change people's lives, but if the program on the ground is set up to empower and strengthen the family and then the community, and then you can align your fundraising practices to that, to ways to support that, I think that's the right approach.

Speaker 2: 25:55

Okay, so I can see that the three organizations that represented on this podcast have each kind of come to the same conclusions about the positives and the harms of the dedicated donor programs to do this work. But do you see the rest of the world responding to any of these concerns and, if so, what do you see changing?

Speaker 4: 26:28

I think there's been a conversation, an increased conversation around.

Speaker 4: 26:33

I've seen conversations labeled healthy child sponsorships or ethical child sponsorships that indicate to me that organizations are starting to recognize some of the pitfalls and concerns around child sponsorship and the ways that they drive programs, sometimes in harmful ways, or create dependencies where you know we're trying very hard to get away from that model.

Speaker 4: 27:02

I think there is starting to be some discomfort around the way in which child sponsorship models might not be aligned with ways of engaging that don't hurt, that are helping without hurting. I think one of the things that we're seeing is that even large, recognized organizations used to do direct sponsorship, where funding was used exclusively for kids in the form of school tuition, nutritious meals, health care etc. Are shifting now to what they're calling indirect sponsorship, and I feel like this is maybe a middle step toward where the three of us have wound up. But in those models funding doesn't directly and exclusively benefit the sponsored child, but it's used. The funding is used, it's given in the name of the child in order to create village level public good projects like school construction or drinkable water projects, things like that. So again, money is pooled but instead of the child receiving tuition support the community receives a school or something along those lines. I think that's one attempt to try to get to disentangle some of the negative impacts of sponsorship child sponsorship.

Speaker 2: 28:29

Anybody else have something to add on that?

Speaker 5: 28:34

I think my only thought on top of that would be you know, for us it was a big transition and we're a small charity and we don't bring in as much as many of these larger organizations that that base their fundraising on child sponsorship, and so I can imagine, behind the scenes and meetings they're having on this very matter, um are probably going to be, you know, really difficult, that they're going to try and find ways that they can retain um as many people that give to their current program as possible.

Speaker 5: 29:10

Um, but my, my question, like I said earlier, is like how far are you gonna go, how long are you gonna take to to bring more ethical practices into your organizations? And um are you still perpetuating um things that you don't want to perpetuate and making things more difficult for some of us, like the smaller charities who have made decisions already um by causing disunity in communication to donors across the world as well? So I think it's difficult, I think it's a complex topic, it's something that must be being discussed at high levels within some of these large organisations, and my prayer is that we will see a shift, regardless of the initial loss that we may see happen, but for the greater long-term good, where do we go from?

Speaker 4: 30:13

here. Well, personally, I'd like to see us redeem our approach. I think there are ways to marry a powerful fundraising strategy and, more importantly, awareness raising and relationship power to what we already know is our responsibility as an organization dedicated to the best possible care of vulnerable children and families. I think we have a responsibility to help our donors know how to help people children especially in ways that are consistent with how God cares for all of his children appropriately, respectfully and by working with families and through families. God set the lonely in families for a reason. We have a blueprint that's given to us in the Bible if we just follow it, and I think that not just parents, but we help best when we care for those who care for others Parents, yes, certainly, and families, but also caseworkers, social workers and case managers, doctors and nurses and community organizations.

Speaker 4: 31:21

There are people on the ground that are doing the hard work, the hard heart work, of helping these families to become stronger and self-sustaining.

Speaker 4: 31:35

And by connecting donors to the child, the suffering, vulnerable child, we've completely ignored not only that child's family, but all of the social workers and the other aid workers that are working to help that child get to a better, more thriving future. We've basically put all of that cast of characters behind a screen and we're not helping donors to see their efforts, and I would love for our dedicated donors, for our advocates, to start being champions, not just for the parents and the families of these children, but for the caseworkers and the social workers who are doing that work every day and advocating for them and supporting them and celebrating them, instead of acting like they're just stepping right over them to give, you know, a gift or this donate donation to this suffering, vulnerable child. It's like we almost cast that child in a in a spotlight on stage by themselves and that's just not the reality I would also love to see some research being conducted on whether shifting a donor model can shift power balances.

Speaker 5: 32:50

I think that Laura spoke early on in this podcast about partnership agreement and we've done the same and I think it's it's important that when we recognize that there's been some things that need change, that we don't go backwards, that we put things in writing to prevent them going from, you know, from one thing to another, um and going backwards, um where we've been before, where it wasn't right and um.

Speaker 5: 33:14

So I'd love to see some research, um to you know, post some of the transitions that some of our organizations have done being able to empower other organizations to make that transition too, but also really getting to understand, you know, the real detail of the transition that has happened from shifting the models and especially around shifting power imbalances, around shifting power in balances. We would, as an organisation, would be up for doing you know, research on this. Definitely, I think it is a topic that needs to be discussed more, it needs to be explored more and I think within that, we really want to recognise the voices of the individuals that have lived experience, that are going through some of these things, that have been impacted by child sponsorship, that have been impacted by um organizations from the global north coming and bringing aid and bringing um initiatives and programs and and working with them here, you know, in terms of not just hearing their voices but also then using their voices to be able to be a part of bringing the change that we all want in this world.

Speaker 2: 34:33

We always end our podcasts with the last question what keeps you personally, optimistic or hopeful about your work?

Speaker 5: 34:42

Well, ultimately, I believe that we're called to be instruments of love and compassion in this world.

Speaker 5: 34:49

By dedicating our lives to serving others, we can bring light to the darkness and spread the love of God to everyone around us.

Speaker 5: 34:58

And it's a calling that gives purpose and meaning to my work and it fuels my hope for a better future for children everywhere. And, honestly, it is primarily God that does keep me optimistic and hopeful. I think the work that we do is very complex and it is very dark at times, and often I feel very faced with the sin in this world you know, right in front of us and many of which, many things that the children have experienced and the children go through that we are trying to advocate to see not happen in their worlds. It can be very challenging. So God definitely keeps me optimistic and he keeps me hopeful. Additionally, seeing the positive transformations that arise from implementing more ethical and empowering alternatives to traditional models of care and fundraising and partnerships, that does fill me with hope. Knowing that we are actively working towards dismantling harmful practices and advocating for sustainable solutions, it installs in me a sense of optimism for the future of children and child protection and family-based care globally.

Speaker 4: 36:21

I don't normally get to answer this question.

Speaker 4: 36:24

It changes every day but today, what makes me optimistic and hopeful about my work, especially around this, are people like Kelly and Jared, who are not only just really intelligent and good at what they do, but who are willing to sit in the hard spaces and wrestle with the hard questions on behalf of the kids.

Speaker 4: 36:51

I mean, I think that I'm struck all the time that the work that we do is for a population that I think are the most vulnerable population on the planet, and that's children, who are separated from family care because they have no voice, they have no agency, they have no power over their own lives, and so it falls to us to do what we can on their behalf. And there are ways to do that that are an inch deep and sort of. You know, I'm going back to Jared's metaphor of a cog in the watch that fix one of the co causes and to look at all of the brokenness and to ask themselves what can we do? What ought we to do? And then do those things, even if it means we're going to make less money if we do it that way, because doing that in an ethical and a moral and a biblical way, and and doing what's right for kids is what matters more than anything else, and that just gives me all the hope in the world.

Speaker 2: 38:16

Thank you both and thank you, jared, for joining us. I really want to say to our audience thank you for joining us for this episode of Optimistic Voices. It's a big messy world out there and there is no shortage of need, but we here at Optimistic Voices believe that with radical honesty, radical courage and radical collaboration, together we can change the world. Thank you, thank you.