Just take a look at your church.

If it has a senior pastor, five associate pastors, two youth pastors, three children’s ministry directors, two worship pastors, three small group directors and a congregation of 50 people, that’s a problem, wouldn’t you say?

Top heavy, perpetually over budget, ridiculous amounts of overhead.

Now say it’s located near an inner city and its main goal is to do targeted outreach. Now the church is potentially lacking in both talent and funding to achieve its outreach goals.

Mission and budget are crucial pieces of the puzzle for an organization. They drive strategic planning one year and five years down the road and govern the here and now.

They help dictate the best structure of an organization and enable managers to make important decisions around hiring — Who? For what purpose? When?

Last year alone Compassion grew by 371 full-time employees — a 19 percent increase. We have more than 1,500 International Program staff in the field — 67 percent of our total staff is made up of nationals. That says a lot about how we use our resources and go about our mission.

Organizational structure is important, especially for us as we have been growing so rapidly.

You all know we’ve surpassed 1 million concurrently sponsored children. What on earth does it take to support a boatload of new employees and more than 1 million sponsored children?

Well, let’s take a quick look at the mission-keepers and budget preparers at Compassion. They fit under the umbrella title Global Support Services and are one part of what makes things tick here in Colorado Springs.

Global Support Services serves all of Compassion across the board. Made up of Ministry Services and Administrative Services, it is one of four main business units within the Global Ministry Center.

The International Program Group, International Partnership Development, and USA are the other three. (We’ll talk about them another day).

Above those four business units are the Chief Financial Office, Executive Vice President David Dahlin and a small group called MI2 or Ministry Integration and Innovation, which provides across-the-board leadership and coordination for the long-term success of all of our ministries.

Providing oversight and invaluable leadership is the Chief Executive Officer, and the heart of Compassion, the beloved Wess Stafford.

But we wanted to get into the nitty gritty, right? Well, here goes.

The business unit I work in, Ministry Services, is made up of a few different departments. Some are fairly self-explanatory and others might need a descriptor or two.

In no particular order, we’re talking about Human Resources, Information Technology (IT), the Global Strategy Office, Facilities, Travel, the Distribution Center and Procurement. (Apologies if I’ve missed any).

Administrative Services is made up of Finance and the Office of Risk Management. And maybe these sound like laundry lists, but each one is a living, breathing organism. These are some of the gears in the great Compassion machine.

In Administrative Services, take Finance, for example — the budget preparers. (And budget preparation is only one small aspect of what they do). The Finance department alone has a key objective, values and a vision statement.

The Finance function enables the mission of Compassion by

“providing excellent financial services that promote integrity and stewardship while equipping the global organization to make wise ministry choices.”

Its values center on trust, teamwork, communication and being proactive and customer-focused.

Lastly, its vision by 2015 is to transform in order to

“provide value-added, influential and outstanding financial services globally while modeling excellence in customer service, innovation, collaboration and education and training.”

These are talented folks. I’d personally like to invite a few to work some magic with my personal finances, but alas, they are busy serving Compassion’s mission to make sure that we are financially viable now and in the future to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.

In Ministry Services, let’s take a quick look at the Global Strategy Office.

It is made up of the Office of Corporate Planning, the Global Project Office, Global Internal Communications and Business Enterprise Architecture. Intimidating sounding names, eh?

I thought so when first coming on board.

Well, Corporate Planning folks are essentially the mission-keepers. They work to ensure that “both the long-term (three to five years) and short-term plans (within the fiscal year) for Compassion and all Compassion domains are clearly aligned with the mission to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name and move Compassion closer to our envisioned future.”

Biz talk for they keep us on track. They connect our mission to measurable outcomes so we can know we are doing what we set out to do.

Mission. Budget. Organizational structure. There is a lot more to talk about with regard to these things, but I’ll leave us here for now.

Next time we can explore some of the other major business units or dive into a smaller division, like the Distribution Center, to finally figure out how all our child letters get in and out.

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Are there letter-writing genies in the basement? Does Compassion’s headquarters even have a basement?

Do Santa’s workshop personnel kick it here during the off-season addressing and licking envelopes and sleighing over to Togo, India and Honduras to drop off sponsor letters? Payroll and finance must have a tough time keeping up with the influx of elfishness.

No genies. No basement (that I’m aware of). No elves. No sleigh. (Although there may or may not be a task force looking into the cost benefit analysis of said magical sleigh. Postage is expensive.)

Today, I will break this down into a very high level overview. It won’t be totally satisfying but one must start somewhere. We can get into the nitty gritty later.

First the Ministry Paradigm. Or rather, my version of it.

Before you tune out, the Ministry Paradigm is basically a high-level representation of how Compassion is organized to best serve children.

And when you think about it, every organization should have a specific goal: mainly to take the mission and vision, devise a strategy to implement change, employ specific operations to reach the desired outcomes, and measure them along the way to gauge impact. Right?

I think we can all agree that the children are the main focus of Compassion’s work. The children are the reason you sponsor, and it is you who allow us to serve them.

Now, we’ve got two sides of the equation. Two main feeders serving Compassion’s children — church partners in the field and sponsors here in the U.S. (and abroad). A gross misrepresentation, but go with this analogy: hands and money.

First, the hands.

Implementing church partners are those churches on the ground in developing countries that host the child programs. They provide services to children ranging from spiritual education to meals to health checkups and more.

How do they do this? With a lot of help. Undergirding all implementing church partners is an entity called International Program.

International Program’s main function is to implement and communicate programs. There are four programs that holistically serve children from infancy, potentially through college: Child Survival, Child Sponsorship, Leadership Development and Complementary Interventions (CIV).

The diagram below may look familiar to you.

The indiscernible numbers along the bottom represent the ages of children as they move through Compassion’s programs. The red line moving through the model represents Complimentary Interventions that complete the core programming as needed.

Disaster relief, water projects, infrastructure development and income-generating activities all affect the environment in which children live.

Interventions relating to AIDS, malaria or education are activities that supplement development outcomes of children. These are CIV.

We talked about the hands —  now, the money.

If you look back up at the Ministry Paradigm diagram, you’ll find sponsors, donors and supporting church partners play a crucial role in supporting children. Without these key players there would be no Compassion.

So, if you sponsor a kid, that’s you. You in Missouri, you in Canada, you in the U.K.

The Global Partner Alliance is the main body supporting sponsors, donors and supporting church partners. Its main function is to attract and engage sponsors and donors.

The Global Partner Alliance is made up of the 10 partner countries that fall voluntarily under the Compassion International umbrella. That is Compassion U.K., Australia, Korea, Switzerland, Italy, etc.

So, what drives the relationship between the hands and the money? How do you ensure that what’s happening in Togo is the same thing that’s happening in Guatemala, and that Compassion Deutschland is on the same page as Compassion Korea?

Good question. It’s the executive leadership of Compassion International, housed here at the Global Ministry Center in Colorado Springs.

They provide leadership and coordination at the highest level. They are the go-between for International Program and Global Partner Alliance, ensuring long-term integrity of operations and communications. No small feat for an organization of more than 2,000 workers serving more than 1 million sponsored children in 26 countries.

Undergirding it all is Global Support Services. Its main mission is self-explanatory but worth repeating: to provide shared support services across the greater ministry of Compassion International.

That, in its most basic form is the big picture — a high-level look at how Compassion is structured to carry out its mission of releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name.

Tune in soon for a breakdown of life and structure here at Compassion International in Colorado Springs — the Global Ministry Center. We’ll take a deeper dive into Global Support Services.

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While yes, I did most recently come from NYC, it was only a two-year stint for graduate school. An unfortunate amount of that time was spent in a university library.

I grew up in a suburb 30 minutes outside “the city,” as it’s referred to. (There apparently is no other city comparable in the world according to New Yorkers, so the definite article is used.)

My town was pretty standard: backyard, front lawn, dog and cat, older sister who bossed me around, friends “on the block,” peanut butter and jelly in a paper bag, squashed.

I walked to school, played kickball in the street and stoopball at my grandma’s before requisite the 19-course Sunday meal.

And while man’s talent seems to reign supreme in Manhattan’s skyscrapers and Broadway shows, God’s talent reigns supreme here in Colorado Springs at Compassion. From the glory of Pikes Peak and tremendous Colorado thunderstorms, to the daily happenings in the conference room near my desk at Compassion, God is sovereign and present.

Part of my first three months here at work has been spent trying to figure out how Compassion functionally works. And that is what I’d like to pass along to any interested readers.

I won’t bore you with a PowerPoint presentation on the organizational matrix, but I will attempt to scratch the surface of a beloved organization in order to help us all understand what makes Compassion tick and how it actually does the ticking.

But first, here is the surface.

In order to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name, we’ve got to implement programs that reach the children. That requires funding and support.

So, Compassion is set up to do all three: attract and engage sponsors and donors, provide shared support services, and implement programs.

And mind you, my next posts will not be the official version. So please, take this with a grain (lump) of salt.

I’m still getting my bearings here and will be drawing from large corporate documents, orientation presentations and conversations with co-workers.

So, while I’m striving for integrity of information, do not take this as canon, but rather the unofficial version. Understood?

Be assured that it will also unavoidably be tainted with my humor, which often falls flat.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates