I would sponsor a couple more children, and a couple LDP students. I would split the rest between the Where Most Needed Fund, and the Unsponsored Children Fund.

Now, I would try to figure out, how I could invest it, so that it would support my minimum living standard and one trip/year to visit the children. Let’s say that for illustration that it would be about $2,500 to visit the children and $27,500 for me to live on. So, now let’s say that I could invest $415,000 to get an annual return of $30,000, which would pay for the visit and my costs.

So, then I have $500,000 left over. So, now I would invest them in continual sponsorships at $7,500/per child, which would 60 children, that I could continually sponsor. That would cost $450,000. Then I would use the $50,000 left over to invest that too, for needs such as birthday gifts and any special things that might come up.

Then I would consider it my full-time job to write these children at least 2 times a month and pray for each of them daily by specific needs. The rest of the time, I would want to devote to reaching people locally in the area.

I don’t know how it works with Compasssion as far as if I were to die with these continual sponsorships, but I would want the record to say that if I were to die, that correspondents would be found for all of the children.

Outside of that, I think it would be a blast to call Compassion and to sponsor every single child of a specific country on the website. I’m really curious what the website would do, if there were no children from a specific country. I.e. what error message it would give! LOL!

Anyone wants to give me $1,000,000, so that we can find out? LOL!

Blessings,

Kees

I am a Compassion employee. I work on the Writing and Visits team in our Sponsor Donor Services area.

Compassion combines all Christmas donations into a fund so that every child receives a Christmas present, whether they are sponsored or not. Child development center staff purchase gifts of equal value for each child in our program so that no child is left out and so that some children are not receiving more presents than others. The recommended amount is $18 because that is the approximate amount that will be purchased per child. Children who are sponsored, are told that the gift is from their sponsor.

If you would like to do something for your child above the $18 donation, you could always send a child gift as well (similar to a birthday gift) and try and time it to arrive at Christmas time.
I know the desire to give my children an amazing Christmas, but understand that normally, in addition to the gift from the sponsor, the project has a Christmas party for the children and sometimes the whole family. Try writing your child and asking how he or she celebrated Christmas. You might be surprised to hear all that you sponsorship provides.

I think the decision to put the money in the bank would be best left to the Compassion folks, not me. I have a hard time justifying earning interest for the future while kids are starving RIGHT NOW.

Perhaps I’d use some money to lobby Western governments to cut government programs and massively reduce taxes… thereby increasing the pool of money folks have to give to people like Compassion.