By now, you may have heard that we are planning to increase our child sponsorship rates in the U.S. This is true.

We are raising our child sponsorship rate to $38 per month beginning June 1, 2009 for all new sponsorships, and August 1 for existing sponsors.

A rate increase is needed because our church partners in the countries we serve are struggling to provide our children with the services they need. This is due, in part, to the increasing inflation rate around the world and the global economic crisis.

Since 2005, the purchasing power of church partners in their own countries has gone down by an average of 19.22 percent because of the weakened dollar.

For your convenience and for additional information, we have compiled a list of frequently asked questions within the My Account section of compassion.com. Please log in to learn more.

At the bottom of each post, you’ll now find five little stars; five little stars that allow you to say yay or nay on what we’re publishing here.

And in addition to the posts that we recommend you read, your highest rated posts will also be displayed in our sidebar.

There’s nothing in the sidebar now, but there will be soon. Right?

A post needs to receive at least five ratings before it can appear in the highest rated posts section.

The five-star rating is different than the popularity percentage you’ve seen on each post for the past eight months. In fact, it’s right below this paragraph. The popularity percentage is an algorithmic rating that determines a post’s popularity, relative to other posts, based on homepage views, RSS feed views, comments, trackbacks, etc.

October 5, 2009 – The popularity percentage functionality has been removed from the blog, and a post now needs to receive at least five ratings before it can appear in the highest rated posts section.