Connect With Your Child Through Gift Giving

• You can give online by credit card or an automatic debit of your bank account.

• You can give your credit card or bank account information to a Sponsor Relations Representative by calling (800) 336-7676.

• You can give by check.

  If you choose to send a check, please make it out to Compassion International and mail it to:

  Compassion International
  Colorado Springs, CO 80997
  USA

  Please remember to include your sponsor number on the check. Additional information, such as the child's number and the purpose of the gift (i.e., birthday, Christmas, graduation, etc.), should be included in the memo line of the check or on an attached note to ensure proper handling.

You may give one birthday gift per year to your sponsored child, up to $150, and you may give one general gift per year to your sponsored child, also up to $150.

You may give a total of $1,100 throughout the year to your sponsored child’s family. You may also give a final gift to your child in your child’s final year of sponsorship, up to $3,000.

We request that child gifts, including the graduation gift, be at least $10. Gifts of less than $10 will be donated to the Christmas Gift Fund. Family gifts should be at least $25.

If you would like to give more than appears in the drop-down for Additional Giving within My Account, you can. Please call a Sponsor Relations Representative at (800) 336-7676.

While you may suggest how a gift should be used, the final decision for what is needed most is made by the family with the advisement of a child development center staff member.

Your monetary gift, less 10% for delivery and administrative costs, will be exchanged into local currency and transferred to the Compassion-assisted center for your sponsored child. A child development center staff member will work with the child and a caregiver to make the purchase with your gift money. The staff member will serve as an adviser, ensuring that the purchase is developmentally appropriate.

In the spirit of good stewardship, through minimizing banking fees, monetary gifts are sent with regular sponsorship funds on a monthly basis to Compassion-assisted centers. Based on when your gift is given in this disbursement cycle, it is possible that the child development center will not receive the gift funds for up to two months.

You may give a gift at any time. We suggest sending birthday and Christmas gifts two months prior to the event to ensure enough time for delivery of your gift, but you may give a family or general child gift at any time. A graduation gift may be given during the child’s final year of the program (not sponsorship), and must be processed within three months of the child’s graduation from the program.

You may send a monetary gift to your sponsored child and Compassion staff in country will make purchases for the child and/or family through the local economy. This allows for local economic growth in the area as well as minimal shipping charges for Compassion. Please send your monetary gifts separately from your correspondence to your sponsored child to ensure proper handling in our office.

You may also send scannable, flat, paper items (such as greeting cards, coloring pages or photos) with your correspondence to your child. These items should be no larger than 8.5” x 11”, and will be digitally scanned at our headquarters to be delivered electronically to our national offices. Each letter, and accompanying scannable items, should total no more than six front and back pages. Items received that are not scannable, or are in excess of six front-and-back pages, will be donated to a local children’s charity.

Yes. You may give up to a total of $1,100 throughout the year to your sponsored child’s family. Individual family gifts should be at least $25.

Giving a gift to your child's family helps provide income-generating opportunities the family can use to help support themselves and ultimately be released from poverty.

Family gifts can be used to purchase livestock and household equipment or to establish a small business.

Read about the impact of giving a family gift. 

No, you do not have to give gifts to your child or his family. A gift is truly that — a gift. But if you choose to do so, it will be:

• a memorable experience for the child and his or her family.

• a tangible expression of your love.

• a way to strengthen your relationship with the child.

• and a way to meet a need in the family's life.

Many of the children and families Compassion works with live on less than U.S. $2 a day. We restrict the dollar amount of monetary gifts allowed per child/family to avoid creating opportunities for dependence, and to avoid fostering jealousy within the community, which could place a child and his or her family at risk.

We limit the physical items that can be sent to a child to only paper items that can be digitally scanned in order to reduce the administrative cost of shipping items internationally. Encouraging monetary gifts instead of physical items also allows us to invest in the local economy of the countries where we work.

The Compassion country staff and church partners will attempt to deliver any gift they receive, even if the child no longer attends the center. If the child or family cannot be located, or the center itself cannot use the gift, it will be transferred into the Christmas Gift Fund, unless you request the money to be returned or applied to another fund.

Each year, you may give a gift of $50 to $15,000 directly to the frontline church partner/child development center your sponsored child attends. This is limited to four gifts per calendar year. This gift can be given by check or by calling a Sponsor Relations Representative at 800-336-7676.

We also have other ways to give for you to consider, including workplace giving, non-cash giving, estate and asset giving.

If you have additional questions about giving gifts, please contact one of our Sponsor Relations Representatives at (800) 336-7676 (toll free in the continental United States), Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. MT.

You can also visit our blog to learn more about the whys, whats and hows of gift giving.