Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, Gifts of Compassion donations are tax-deductible. A charitable tax receipt for all donations made in a calendar year (excluding donations made through Text to Give or an online fundraiser, which are receipted separately) will be issued no later than February 28th of the following year.

Funds raised from the Gifts of Compassion catalogue are used to support Compassion’s Response Programs. Should excess funds be raised in a particular area, we will meet other urgent needs as they arise.

While gifts can be ordered year-round, if you require gift cards for Christmas, we recommend you make your order by December 15th. Digital versions of the cards tied to each gift are available at any time for download through the website. Please allow at least 10 business days for your card to arrive.

You can change your automatic withdrawal information through the Payment Methods section of your My Compassion account or by calling our office. Thank you for supporting Compassion.

Though you and your spouse may sponsor together, My Compassion is set up so that each spouse has his or her own account rather than a shared one. This allows each spouse to manage their preferences individually. If you have any comments or suggestions on this feature, please connect with our office.

Children don’t necessarily write back to you on the same day that they receive your letter. Instead, they reply on a scheduled day when all the children at the project write to their sponsors. Your sponsored child may have proudly taken your letter home to share with family & friends and may not have it handy to remind them of the questions you answered. Please remember that it can take up to two months for your letter to be translated (if needed) and delivered. Please check the date of your sponsored child’s letter so you can work out whether he or she would have received your answers before they last wrote. Compassion is working on a program to ensure that answers are recorded by project staff, so they can ensure that the children know them. You can help in this process by underlining or highlighting your answers in your letter and making them easy to understand.

Compassion’s child development ministry is not based on material handouts. We facilitate individual child development by providing learning opportunities that a child may not encounter in another situation. Learning is central to Compassion’s mission-we provide life skills that foster each child’s success. Learning opportunities also are provided for parents, which enables them to improve their parenting skills and provide for their families. Therefore we do not allow extra money to be given every month, but there are several opportunities over the year for you to bless your sponsored child and family with a special monetary gift.

To give a child, family or project gift online click here or connect with our office directly.

There are a number of reasons why we ask that you do not communicate directly with your sponsored child. One of the important features of our program is that it enables centre workers to understand the child’s struggles and to provide help and support. Having your sponsored child’s letters processed through Compassion allows the centre staff to become familiar with your child’s needs, and to help them appropriately. Corresponding directly with your sponsored child would prevent the centre staff from knowing what support the child is requesting and may limit their ability to act on any child protection concerns. By limiting all correspondence through Compassion centres, we are also able to protect sponsors from receiving unsolicited or inappropriate requests from members of your child’s community who may otherwise gain access to your personal details. Most sponsored children speak other languages, so by having the correspondence go through Compassion, we are also able to translate the letters, from your child, for you.

You can update contact information through your My Compassion account or by contacting our office directly.

To set up a My Compassion account, you will need your supporter number, the one that starts with 8-.

1. Click “Register here.”
2. Click “Register”
3. Enter your supporter number and click “Validate.”
4. Confirm if you want to use the email we have on file as your username; click “Yes” or “No.”
5. Check your email (may be in junk mail) for a message from us.
6. Click the link in the email to complete the activation process.
7. Enter your supporter number and create a password (upper and lower case letters and number).
8. Click “Set up account,” which will forward you to the login screen.
9. Log in and enjoy the many features of a My Compassion account.

Sign up for a My Compassion account today.

Children don’t necessarily write back to you on the same day that they receive your letter. Instead, they reply on a scheduled day when all the children at the project write to their sponsors. Your sponsored child may have proudly taken your letter home to share with family & friends and may not have it handy to remind them of the questions you answered. Please remember that it can take up to two months for your letter to be translated (if needed) and delivered. Please check the date of your sponsored child’s letter so you can work out whether he or she would have received your questions before they last wrote. In some cultures children are rarely asked about what they think and do, which may explain why your child doesn’t always answer your questions, or has difficulty expressing an answer. Compassion is working on a program to ensure that questions are recorded by project staff, so they can ensure that the children answer them. You can help in this process by underlining or highlighting your questions in your letter and making them easy to understand.

Sponsorship plus Urgent Needs provides funds for additional benefits for sponsored children, their families and communities that cannot be provided by child sponsorship funds alone. While sponsorship funds provide activities which directly benefit your sponsored child, the extra $10 from Sponsorship plus Urgent needs is used to fund initiatives and programs which sow further into the lives of Compassion assisted children, their families and communities.

As Compassion raises more funds for these activities, we will be able to assist more sponsored children with these additional benefits.

Some of these include:

• Emergency medical care
• HIV and AIDS Initiative – includes education on prevention as well as care
• Education and training programs for parents of sponsored children
• Partner church development – including church partner staff training

We understand your concern for your sponsored child. Our staff are working hard to provide us with specific information concerning Compassion children and their families. Communication is difficult as many centres do not have a phone. We are in regular communication with our office and they will let us know which children have been directly affected in time. As we gain specific information that would relate to a particular Compassion child, we will let sponsor’s know by email.

We do not facilitate children visiting their sponsors in Canada or elsewhere because of several factors:

Cost – The cost of flights, passports, accommodations for child, guardian and translator would be extremely prohibitive.

Culture Shock – Few Compassion-assisted children have ever been more than 3 – 4 blocks away from their homes. While Compassion programs have implemented outings so children can see a little more beyond their immediate community (such as city park and zoo trips), North American culture would be too challenging for a child.

Although your child cannot visit you, you can go and visit your child in their country. You can learn more about different travel opportunities with Compassion here.

Absolutely!

Online – you can submit a photo through the letter section of your My Compassion account. Just above the box where you can type out your letter to your sponsored child, there is an “Upload a Photo” button. Use it to select the photo to add to your letter. Once you are ready to send the letter, click on the “Send Letter” button

Printed Photos – If you want to send in a physical copy of a photo, simply include it in the mail with your next written letter. It is helpful if you can write your supporter number and the child’s name and number on the back of the photo. Please do not include any photo descriptions as these will not be submitted for translation.

Yes. We encourage sponsors to write to their sponsored child, to include photos and cards and encourage them in their spiritual journey. Children love to receive letters and cherish them.

You can send a letter, card, paper play set or poster to your sponsored child through your My Compassion account.

See how letter writing impacts a child in Ghana.

Read how receiving letters affects in child in Nicaragua.

Your privacy is important to us, which is why My Compassion is subject to a very high level of security and operates under the same security principles that apply to online banking. My Compassion uses secure and encrypted communications between your web browser and our servers. When using My Compassion, you should see a yellow or green security padlock or a blue tab indicating the name of the site’s security certificate. These indicators are your assurance that My Compassion is running in a secure environment, and may appear differently depending on which web browser you use.

You can read more about our privacy policy here.

In the event a sponsor misses a monthly donation, Compassion has a fund that covers the sponsorship cost. We realize that credit card changes and other financial complications are an inconvenient reality for many of us. Our goal is to ensure children receive the same benefits and attend the program as usual while we try to contact the sponsor to resolve the missed donation. Please note, Compassion cannot cover a sponsorship indefinitely and if we were unable to contact the current sponsor, we would have to find a new sponsor for the child.

You can update your financial information through our secure website.

Communication within many of the countries where we work can be extremely slow. All letters to and from the children can take two to four months to arrive. They are couriered to the Compassion office in each country where they are translated. As projects are often very remote, the head office will wait until they have received a reasonable number of letters before they are delivered to a particular project. A member of staff will then hand deliver them as mail systems can be very erratic and unreliable. Many sponsored children do not have a postal address in the way that we do in Canada. Please be assured that we will do our best to make sure that your letter will arrive as soon as possible. The exchange of letters is a crucial element of sponsorship and it is an area we are constantly working to improve.

Check out this detailed description of the letter writing process in Ghana.

Follow a letter from a sponsored child in Guatemala to her sponsor.

Many of the children who Compassion supports have received no, or only very limited formal education prior to being registered in the project. Many are therefore not as advanced in their learning as a child of the same age from Canada. Many are the equivalent of at least two or three years younger in their educational development. If a child is unable to write their own letters, project staff will sit and talk with the child and ask what they would like to say in their letters. Writing letters is a new skill for many children and therefore many will be unfamiliar with how to go about it. The project staff will then write up the letters which are translated and then sent on to us to forward to you. Some projects will also use letter writing as part of their curriculum to help children develop their reading and writing skills, therefore the letters may seem a little formal. Please do be patient as your sponsored child learns to write and is then able to write to you personally. Many children will draw pictures or write their name or a few words that they can, to share with you what they are able to do. Rest assured that the letters you write to your sponsored child will be greatly valued, and will really help to remind your sponsored child that they are precious and loved.