Child sponsorship: is it the best way to help a child?

Child sponsorship appeals because of the bond it promises. Before you sign up, let's look at what it really changes for the child, who offers it in France, and how the same budget could help in ways you can actually measure.

Romain Barbe

Founder · Mieux Donner · 9 min read

How does child sponsorship work?

The idea is simple. You make a monthly donation, often between €30 and €50. In return, a charity matches you with a child: a first name, a photo, sometimes letters and a school report. You follow their progress, and the commitment usually lasts several years.

One point is less well known. Your money doesn't go to the child or their family. It is pooled to fund development programmes (schooling, healthcare, access to clean water) that benefit their whole community. The child you sponsor is the face of those programmes, not their sole recipient. There's nothing illegitimate about this, but it does change how this kind of donation should be judged.

Which charities offer child sponsorship in France?

Sponsorship is run by well-known charities, often among the most visible in the sector. Here are the main ones, along with what they say about themselves.

Child sponsorship: is the promised bond real?

The bond is at the heart of sponsorship's appeal. It is also, quite literally, what you're being sold. So it's worth asking whether it always matches reality. Sometimes it does. Sometimes, much less so.

A model designed first and foremost to raise money

Individual sponsorship wasn't invented because it was the best way to help a child. It was invented to raise funds. Save the Children launched individual sponsorship in 1920 to help children after the First World War1, and the principle hasn't changed since: pair a donor with a face, with photos and letters, to create the feeling of a personal relationship. It's a particularly effective fundraising marketing technique.

Development economist David Roodman, who has worked with GiveWell, sums up the tension well2: sponsorship has to keep up the experience of connection that brings in the money, even if that experience drifts away from the realities of fighting poverty. The emotional bond isn't a side effect of the model. It's what drives it.

One detail confirms this. In many cases, you can sponsor a child with any amount you choose. If the child's support really depended on your donation, that wouldn't be possible. In reality, your money is pooled to fund programmes that benefit a whole community1. The child you're matched with adds the emotional connection that will probably keep you giving for years. GiveWell describes this as a 'donor illusion'.

When the bond was simply made up

It's fair to ask: is the bond at least real? Not always. And there have been cases where it was staged.

In 1998, a year-long Chicago Tribune investigation into four major sponsorship organisations uncovered troubling practices3. Donors kept paying for children who had already died, and letters to sponsors were forged, including some written in the name of a child who had died. For years, one family received New Year greetings from a boy in Mali who had died long before. Elsewhere, a teacher admitted that he wrote most of the letters supposedly sent by the children himself, for a few dollars a month, often without asking them.

The catalogue problem

There's one last point that makes us at Mieux Donner frankly uncomfortable. On some websites, you choose your child from a kind of catalogue: a photo, sometimes their age, sex and country. You pick one according to your preferences. Some sites go further and show, for each child, how many days they have been 'waiting' for a sponsor.

The model ends up suggesting a picture that, of course, doesn't match what happens on the ground: teams photographing the children of a village, then helping only the 'chosen ones' while the others wait on a website. That's not how it works. But it's the impression the catalogue gives. Nor is this anything new: as early as the 1980s4, observers described forms on which prospective sponsors ticked boxes to choose the sex or origin of 'their' child.

The real problem isn't sponsorship

Ultimately, sponsorship isn't the culprit. It simply reveals something about how we give: we're more willing to support what moves us than what helps the most. If nobody gives to 'pay the bills' because there's nothing moving about it, charities will keep selling sponsorships to cover those very bills. Several would rather focus on their most effective work than handle the logistics of letters. But sponsorship raises more money.

This emotional reward comes at a quiet cost: it can make us miss what matters most. Faced with a child who has a name and a face, one question comes naturally: how could I not help? Two other, more important questions then fade into the background. What is the real impact of this donation? Could you help more in another way?

Helping children differently: a question of numbers

If your main aim is to help children, one simple question is worth asking: how many children can your donation help? Sponsorship often costs around €30 a month, or €360 a year, for help that is real but spread thin, and whose effectiveness is rarely measured.

By contrast, some programmes have a proven effect at a tiny cost. Vitamin A supplementation costs less than €2 per child per year. Clinical trials show that it reduces child mortality8, and GiveWell counts it among the most cost-effective programmes it recommends.

In other words, with a budget similar to that of a sponsorship, you could potentially help far more children. So why do people still choose a single child?

The identifiable victim effect

A very human tendency explains it. A face, a name and a story move us far more than numbers, even when those numbers represent a hundred times as many children. Psychologists call this the identifiable victim effect. It isn't a moral failing. It's simply how our attention works. But being aware of it changes things.

In practical terms, an insecticide-treated bednet costs about €5 and covers around two people for roughly two years. Enrolling a child in New Incentives' vaccination programme costs around €20. For those who like the numbers, GiveWell estimates the cost per life saved at roughly €3,000 for vaccination9 and €5,500 for bednets7. Our article on why some lives can be changed for just a few euros goes into the detail, and also explains how much impact varies depending on the charity you choose.