Fundraising Without Fundraising

Worldview, an international child poverty volunteer movement based in Canada, has one purpose - to draw attention to the work done by the world's four largest child sponsorship organizations – Christian Children's Fund, Compassion, Plan and World Vision, and to encourage everyone to sponsor a child. What makes Worldview so different from other organizations is that it refuses to accept donations – something that puts their credibility off the charts but does pose some unique challenges in the marketing of their message. As a true grass-roots movement with no executives, payroll or advertising budget, it relies heavily on word of mouth.

According to site creator Stephen Jarnick “We focus on these four charities because they've all been in existence for over fifty years and their varied approach to child sponsorship means that a potential sponsor will find an organization that's a perfect fit for them. For example, Christian Children's Fund and World Vision are both Christian organizations that do not evangelize to the people they're serving in the field; Compassion projects are more church based, and evangelizing is an important part of what they do, and Plan has no religious affiliation. The Big Kahuna is World Vision, which is larger than the other three combined. For all four charities, a minimum of 80% of donations go to their programs for the poor, and all of their financial statements are government audited.”

Jarnick adds “Sponsorships can be done by individuals or along with family, friends, classmates, co-workers or church groups. It's a real cross-section of society participating in these programs - there's no particular age range or income level. Contrary to popular opinion, sponsors often don't have lots of extra money, but they've made being other-centred a priority in their lives. The daily cost is about the price of a cup of coffee, and a sponsorship can be terminated at any time if financial situations change.”

Worldview started as a group of friends wanting to do their part to end the insanity of extreme child poverty. The original site, which launched in the spring of 2004 with the slightly radical tagline “We Don't Want Your Money…We Just Want Your Heart”, garnered the attention of some of the major international poverty organizations. Encouraged by the hugely successful launch of Make Poverty History the following year, the Worldviewers began developing an animated virtual tour to teach how child sponsorship works. The group was soon contacted by a representative of the United Nations World Food Program in Rome to set up a mutual link to their educational video game Food Force. Worldview's virtual tour is now used as a teacher's resource for the game. Starting this month, the site's featuring music videos by sixteen artists from ten countries who also share their thoughts about extreme child poverty.

To visit the Worldview site, go to www.worldview.ca

The promo video can be viewed on MySpace TV at
http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=13205137

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