Orphan or Child Sponsorship

A brief overview on allowing orphan or child sponsorships at your church, including instructions to set up orphan and child sponsorships.

You can manage this pledge campaign much like any other campaign, and standard reports are available. Use the Selected Pledge Mail Merge report on the Pledges page to produce mail merge data sources to mail donors about their commitment.

If an entire group of people sponsors one child, you need to create a company contact record and use that as the donor record. To do this, use the Add a Company tool.

Tip: If you plan to allow multi-year sponsorships, avoid having them overlap.

If you allow people to pledge to more than one child, be careful during check entry in Batch Manager Tool (BMT). The system automatically attempts to credit pledges when a donor with a pledge distributes to a campaign program. This is done when the deposit is created after a batch is finalized. But the results are not precise if there is more than one pledge by the same donor to the same campaign. Instead, consider listing all child names in the beneficiary field of one pledge record for that donor.

Sponsor Orphans or Children

Consider the following approach if your church would like to appeal for and manages pledges by individuals towards orphans or disadvantaged children.

Create a program from the orphanage.
Create a pledge campaign for each orphanage.
Connect the pledge campaign to the program you created.
1. In the navigation menu, click Contributions > Pledge Campaigns.
2. Click the pledge campaign you just created to open it.
3. Click Edit Record.
4. In the Program field, select the program you created.
5. Click Save.
Connect the program to the pledge campaign you created.
1. In the navigation menu, click Church Structure > Programs.
2. Click the program you created to open it.
3. Click Edit Record.
4. In the Pledge Campaign field, select the pledge campaign you created.
5. Click Save.
Add pledges for each donor.
Note: It is best practice to add pledges using the Create Pledge tool to ensure you correctly enter and connect your pledges. In this case, you can also perform the steps below since you're already on the pledge campaign record.
1. In the navigation menu, click Contributions > Pledge Campaigns.
2. Click the pledge campaign you created to open it.
3. Click the Pledges tab.
4. Click New Pledge.
5. In the Beneficiary field, select the orphan being sponsored.
6. Complete the remaining fields. See this article for more information on pledge fields. If a family made the pledge, select the household's head of household as the donor.
7. Click Save.
8. Repeat these steps for additional pledges.

What would you like to know more about?

Orphan or Child Sponsorship

Sponsor Orphans or Children

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