For the past eight years after living in Ethiopia, I have sat through different church services and conferences where the opportunity to sponsor a child through Compassion International was offered.
Even though I had seen the poverty they promoted firsthand while living five years in Ethiopia and been a part of distributing food from Compassion to their recipients, I never raised my hand.
Because that's how it normally happens - you sit in the service and watch a well-produced video, giving you a taste of their impact through a story or through some data. Then a paid speaker comes out and shares their connection to the cause and offers you a chance to raise your hand, so that all can see how YOU are giving to such a worthy cause.
My personal value of compassion definitely drew me to respond. I mean, I want to help people in need, especially cute, little African children, but my money has a more informed idea now of where it goes if that hand is raised.

It was November 2011, and we had only been living in country for two months when a visitor from Canada came to our town. He was visiting the organisation we were working with but on his way into Bishoftu (47km south of Addis), he stopped off to see his "Compassion child" in the Capital city. As we sat around and discussed his trip, he shared how he was surprised to find out that his sponsor child had two new sisters and that they were living in the slum. Upon his arrival, the Compassion social worker informed him that the father of the newborn twins had abandoned his family the day after they were born and left the mother to fend for her family. The support that Compassion was limited to, was the support for the nine-year-old brother, as their policy doesn't allow for the sponsorship of children under two.
Over the next couple of weeks, Brad, the Canadian sponsor, went back to visit and check in on this family. After his first visit, the landlord had forced them out of their home and the local Church that partnered with Compassion, had housed them in one of their back rooms. They had given her a deadline to find somewhere to stay. Hearing about her story and knowing what it was like to have twins (overwhelming in the easiest of circumstances), I asked if we could house them in our home.
Quickly they were escorted out of Addis, brought into our home and supported there while other sponsors were found for the babies so that their Mama didn't have to worry about how they were going to survive anymore. Six weeks later, they were off to a home of their own and supported to go to school, eat, and have their rent paid. Basic necessities really. In New Zealand, she would have been eligible for that support from the government, but I quickly discovered that social welfare support is not something that their government would supply.
Culture Shock.

Let me rewind a little bit more. Back to July 2009. I was on a two-week short-term trip with an American organisation called The Mocha Club. They were taking us around to see the different projects they support and led us into a project that was also started as a result of another gap in Compassion's policies. This is how:
A local Church pastor who was employed by Compassion to be a social worker, was approached one day by some street boys who had either been orphaned or abandoned. They saw the feeding program happening at the Church and asked the Pastor if they could join Compassion. His heart broke as his desire was to help all of the kids in need, but he sadly had to turn them away because Compassion don't support children who don't have caregivers.
As a community leader and man of faith, he started to serve them anyway. It is innate in Ethiopians, as is part of their culture, to share what they have. We learnt a beautiful aspect of their culture while on that trip called Gursha. It is the act of feeding another from their hand to affectionately show how much they love them. I found even in my time living in Ethiopia, that it was hard to walk past anyone who was eating - even if they didn't know you, to be offered to sit and eat with them. "Inibila" they would say. "Lets eat together!" This is also displayed in their shared meals where they will eat from one tray as a family or group of friends.
So, this Pastor started to feed the street boys that had approached him and connected with them in such a way that his following grew. A couple from the States heard about it and eventually partnered with African Leadership to fund his project. As a team on this short visit, we put some of our funds together to help set up a few of these boys with some housing and bedding to get them off the street. It was a small sacrifice on our behalf, but a huge blessing and had a huge impact for them. There was no admin fee, no fundraising campaigns, just a man on a mission to support his local community.
Now as a professional fundraiser, and a person who has lived experience in financial hardship and mission, I am not saying that fundraising is bad.
Neither am I saying that Compassion is the worst organisation there is or that their intentions are wrong. I only use them as a case study because of my personal experiences. The reality is, that there are a few other large NGO's that work in Ethiopia and other countries who are guilty of the same policy-driven, marketing fueled, humanitarian work.
However, over the last couple of years, Compassion's expense sheet was laid bare in a way that was too close to home for my body not to viscerally respond in a sick-to-my-stomach hurl +insert green face emoji+. I had heard it first in my office (as the organisation I worked for strategized about how we could partner with a particular church) but had read it later online here. All of those very invitations I wrote about in the beginning, were costing Compassion $1million. For one Church alone.
And as the article details, the payment made still kept the margins of fundraising under 20%. But does ONE organisation really need $1.1 billion Annual Revenue? And if it had need of that much resource, then why are there so many limitations to their policies?
These, of course, are rhetorical questions. I am sure they have their reasons, but the amount of money they have is due to their capacity to employ, enlist and enrich their resourcing offices around the world. It is like this vicious cycle of revenue gain, investment in fundraising, building their profile and getting more funds! While the money is being spent on the program, the child on the other side of those photos is only getting a school fee paid, a stipend for food and a group meal once a month.
Compassion's model of child sponsorship is counter-cultural of the many countries they support. They are familial cultures where togetherness and sharing is embodied through their everyday lives. I'm challenging their status quo and wondering if there is a blind spot in the way they address the needs they claim to be impacting. Could they be distributing their resources more towards local leaders or even halting their fundraising campaigns to give the little guys a chance to be heard.
A good friend of mine highlighted to me on a recent trip, how the large NGO's in Ethiopia are actually perpetuating the cycle of poverty as they can afford to pay higher rates to rent buildings for offices and accommodation. As they are feeding into the economy, they raise the price of inflation and cost of living to make it even more unaffordable for the average local salary earner. Unofficial sources say that the leader of their country has challenged them and asked why they don't give the money to their local communities to come up with their own solutions so that they can actually lead change, not receive it. (Someone's spare change at that.)
I'm reminded of a dream I had a couple of years ago where I was back in Ethiopia and two ladies were asking me to buy their eggs. They fought past all of these beggars lying on the street and they insisted that I looked at what they had in their hands. Their eggs were hatching and bearing more chicks. It was significant of the return on investment I would be getting if I bought their eggs. It wasn't just a meal for the day, but it was a mechanism to eat for a season.
This is how we can steward our resources when it comes to giving. Look at what THEY have in their hands and support them to grow those resources and diversify their income. When we give to the community leaders who are familiar with culture, language and the specific relational nuances that exist amongst their community, they retain dignity and empower more leadership. We are 40 years down the track since the famine and little has changed. Living under the poverty line of USD$2 a day right now, would be more common there than our google searches would lead us to believe.
Good stewardship of resources often means taking what you need and stopping when you have enough. As donors we do it. We just give them enough for what they need. But as donors, we don't often stop when we have what we need. The game of fundraising can be exhilarating, releasing dopamine and feeding your reward system, addicting us to the desire to get more. But when is more, enough?
I heard a recent interview with Simon Sinek where he challenged this deeply held belief that profit and gain are the pinnacle of success. He rejigs the priorities to purpose, people then profit, passionately explaining that this should be the standard in business. The same is true in the Charity sector. Charities are looked at as successful based upon their revenue. The top Charities in the Social Change sector in Australia reflect that belief. Bequests and donations alone make up $761,931,721 annual revenue for five charities combined: World Vision, Red Cross, The Smith Family, Medecins Sans Frontieres Australia Limited and Compassion. And people will GIVE to those charities because they are considered successful based on their revenue. Yet that is partly due to the fact that they have enough money to do all the compliance, accounting, advertising and relationship building needed to attract the right governance, pay the right influencers and portray a kind of "excellence" that appeals to the Western philanthropist.
A conversation I had with a pastor during my recent trip to Ethiopia, included his criticism of World Vision. He said "they started well but the vision of the founder has changed." I also used to see World Vision in their expensive vehicles driving around Ethiopia and wonder how they justify some of their spending. Yes, World Vision have a 15 year exit strategy for the villages they set up, but do they have an exit strategy for the countries they go to support? Or is the poverty cycle something that supports them so much that if the problem of poverty was solved, that their business would be closed?
It is true here too. The St Vincent’s Health Australia charity brought in almost $3billion in revenue in 2023. They were started 180 years ago by the Sisters of Mercy with a Mission that still remains to provide care, first and foremost, to the most disadvantaged and marginalised members of our community. I find it hard to believe that this is actually being outworked.
I am encouraging a shift. A shift in the way and places that people gave to, would mean that the scales in Australia could tip from having the top 5% of Charities receiving 80% of the funding and the bottom 66% of Charities only getting 2.7% of the funding, to a more even keel.
The late Efeso Collins, a fellow youth worker in New Zealand who made it into Parliament just a month before his tragic death in 2024, spoke about some research he had done years earlier, during his maiden speech. He shared about the research with youth gangs and young people who ended up in the justice system and concluded, "The youth we spoke to had the solutions and just needed the means to make it happen. Too many of our young people are filling the prisons and it is wasted human potential. Give them the tools, the resources and means to make a meaningful contribution to the world and they will."
I too have seen many people and organisations who have the solutions but they just need the means to make it happen or to make it last. Organisations like Love and Care for His Little Ones who found a way to mobilise young people to visit over 25 orphan homes in Ethiopia so that these young ones have a family they can call on when they need support. Or Ellilta Women at Risk who identified the need of creating pathways for women and their children stuck in the cycle of sexual exploitation and have been working with them for 30 years to rehabilitate and empower them to create generational change. Or Temsalet Kitchen, a social enterprise restaurant created to support underprivileged women to find employment and create new life skills and community.
B4A Collective exists to bring change. Not just in Australia, New Zealand and Ethiopia, but globally. Our goal this year is to find 100 Amazing Grassroots/Place-based Charities who have identified and are working to support social change in their local communities! We are here to support them, empower them, amplify their voices and raise funds for their good work. And we have partnered with the Australian Communities Foundation to do it.
You can find out more below or get in touch to see how you can be a part of a movement. The shift needs to happen and it needs to happen, now. Subscribe to our blog as we bring updates, podcasts and share stories of real place-based solutions being outworked to the marginalised in our communities. It's time.
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