I’m thinking of donating medium to long term to a charity, and I’m leaning towards sponsoring a child. I’m using Charity Navigator to help me find charities. Generally, how effective are the ‘sponsor a child’ charities? I’m new to all of this, so I don’t know how to make sure my money is spent in the most effective way. Does anyone have any experience with these kind of charities? Any recommendations on what resources I should use to learn about charities?
I, personally, donate to Heifer International, and I urge others to donate in my name. Many of the “sponsor a child” charities spend some of their money on proselytizing, rather than material goods. Frankly, I’d rather donate a goat (or a portion of a goat) to a family, so that they can drink the milk or make cheese from it, and sell off the excess. HI also requires that the people it gives animals to “pass along the gift” by having them give the first offspring of the animal to another family. HI gives a hand up, not a hand out, and it always provides training in addition to its gifts.
You can make a one time gift, or a monthly gift, as you desire.
You might want to think about microcredit programs.
You donate money that poor people borrow. It can be very small (like $20) and people apply for loans. A small loan in a 3rd world country can start a business. Most microcredit loans are repaid.
However, the big plus is that you know exactly where your money is going. You can see their business plan, see a profile of the borrower, and get updates about how their business is going.
Plan International is a child-sponsoring charity you might consider looking at - they don’t proselytize.
Plan International is relatively well respected, but as with all “sponsor a child” charities keep in mind that contributions may be pooled for general community improvements rather than going to an individual child.
Personally, as a returned Peace Corps volunteer I am a huge fan of Peace Corps Partnerships, which allow you to fund a project overseen by Peace Corps volunteers. PCVs spend two years living and working in the community, so they know better than any charity what that community (which usually just do a few quick assessments) of what that community really needs most. Projects go through a rigorous screening process and are required to have at least a 10% community contribution (ensuring the community really needs the project and does not just want free stuff) and community parters to maintain and continue the project. All projects are expected to be sustainable and continue to benefit people after the PCV leaves.
You can choose what interests you from a long list of projects- from building classrooms in Cameroon to a tree nursery in Ecuador. 100% of the money is put directly towards the project under the supervision of the Peace Corps volunteer. All money is accounted for, and there is little chance that any will be spent on corruption or administrative costs.
We’re very happy with Compassion International. They are not a proselytizing organization (the money goes to child, family and community support, development and relief) but they are an overtly Christian organization so if you share Lynn’s perspective you might not be comfortable with them.
Thank you for the replies. I’ll also take a look at microcredit programs and the Peace Corps. I would rather not donate to an overtly religious charity as long as there is a comparable secular alternative.
Edit: Does anyone have experience with Save the Children? I find their website to be somewhat difficult to navigate and find in-depth information.
For direct sponsorship of a child*, I can personally recommend PLANinternational. It’s a non-religious org.
The german-based SOS children’s village org. now offers also sponsorships in two varieties: for one individual child, starting with 31 Euros per Month, or for a whole SOS village, starting with 26 Euros a month. They do not guarantee that the child will send you letters regularly. You can communicate with the children in English if you state this in your preferences (they let you also state preferences for gender and country). However, the main site and org. is German-speaking (the information material). I’m sure you can communicate via Email in English and ask them.
Another big org. is World Vision. They used to have very bad, because manipulative, advertising, but they changed that in the last years. They are christian-oriented.
Smaller charities often also offer some kind of sponsorship, for example, my Haiti children’s help org. offered sponsorship for the lunch of one school child for one month or one year.
- Generally, sponsoring one child means that this child acts as an ambassodor for a family or village, to give a personal face to the bigger projects. It usually doesn’t mean that the child gets handed 20 Euros at the start of the month; instead, the village assembles and decides on which projects are going to be implemented in what priority. So the sponsorship money will be used to drill a well for clean drinking water, or train better teachers, or stock health posts, and so on.
As for how to find charities: the German branches of the above-mentioned org. all have the DZIseal that means that their bookkeeping and practises were controlled and found to be correct and good, and that their projects are true and good. (The DZI is an independent control). Of course, all offical charities are also controlled by the tax office, so that donations can be claimed on income tax deduction.
Generally, a good charity will spend from 7 to 20% of donations on unavoidable things like office, paper, bookkeeping, ads (to get donations in the first place) and a few professional employees. Between 20 to 30 % is the upper limit, everything above that is fishy - either it’s a scam, or they are horrible at management.
Church-based charities like Brot für die Welt (Protestant, non missionary) and Miseror (Catholic) can give 100% of donations to the poor, because the Churches pay the overhead.
If you like Lynn’s idea, Oxfamhas “unwrapped” gifts - you “buy” a goat or school desk that is given to a poor person in need, and you get a nice certificate.
UNICEFhas the same idea with inspired gifts.
The Christian Blind Mission (Christoffel Blinden Mission) is christian oriented, but not very missionary. They also have a “store” for gifts.
I don’t have direct experience with them; but IKEA partners with them (and UNICEF) for the SUNNAN reading lamp program.
What’s the benefit of donating in your name?
Kiva is a micro-finance. I’ve only heard good things about it. You get to directly help a person in the field/area of your choice.
Huffington Post did a nice story about Amazon Promise, the founder is a woman I went to elementary school with.
I’ll plug Operation Smile. They provide surgery for kids with cleft lip and palate. I like how the charity provides a tangible life-changing benefit to a specific child, and they’ll tell you about the kids you helped.
It’s a little different, but along the same lines: the OLPC project (“One laptop per child.”) A couple of years ago, I bought two laptops for children: one in my dad’s name, and one in my husband’s. My dad’s hard to buy gifts for: he has everything already and the money to buy whatever he fancies, so it’s difficult. Plus, the last thing they need is more stuff. OLPC was great, and he really appreciated it.
You get a nice thank you card, but you don’t get any information on where your laptop went or which child received it.
I knew people who worked for Orphan Sponsorship International when I was in the Peace Corps (and I met some of the kids they work with) and I feel pretty confident in recommending them as a worthy organization that helps children who are in a really shitty situation.
If you want to contribute to more sustainable development, I second even sven’s recommendation. PCPP is usually a good program, and it’s definitely supporting projects that the local people want. (It’s not uncommon for volunteers to think that their projects are not the thing that the community needs most, but hey, the community gets to decide, not the volunteer. The volunteer is just the facilitator in helping them get it done.)
I pretty much have everything I need, and most of what I want, as regards to material things. However, if I say that I really don’t want anything for my birthday, people insist that there must be SOMETHING I want. So I tell them to donate to Heifer International in my name, or rather, in my honor. I get the satisfaction of knowing that they didn’t blow their money on something that I really don’t need (and probably don’t want anyway) and a warm fuzzy feeling, and they can get a tax deduction and a warm fuzzy feeling. I mean, sometimes I do want something, specifically. But lots of times I really don’t, so I’d rather that some poor family gets a goat that they can get milk from.