Frustration with CI's Policy Re Letters Cancel Title is required

I would like more information about the frequency of the children's letters. As I understand it from customer service, besides the child's initial welcome letter, they are only required to write their sponsors twice a year, and that CI tells the children when it's time to reply to a letter. I asked if any of the children write their sponsors more than the required 2 letters, and I was told not usually and that it's pretty uncommon.  

I am getting a bit frustrated by the fact that I am choosing to financially support a child, yet I am told 2 letters is pretty much all I'm going to get each year. I do not feel like CI cares about the bond that could be created between sponsor and child, especially since they only require 2 letters per year, and since they do not encourage the children to write more. 

I have seen people post about this same issue, and also leave CI because of it.  This policy needs to change. 

We know how important the connection between sponsored youth and their sponsors is - which why we promise each sponsor they will receive 2 semi-annual letters and 1 updated photo each year. Of course, some sponsors do receive about 4 letters each year if they write to their sponsored youth and the youth replies, which they are asked to do once every 90-days. 

CI has always been very transparent about what sponsors can expect from their sponsorship and our main concern, has been and always will be, to provide the maximum amount of support through quality programs to the children and youth in our care. To provide more letters and photos each year would increase our administrative costs, which means less funding for programs and that is not something we are willing to sacrifice. 

Over the 32 years I’ve been with CI we’ve tried many ways to improve the communication and connection and moving from 2 letters per year for every sponsor to 4 for those sponsors who write was a huge undertaking for our IT team, the field staff and big change for our families – but it has been a huge success too. We see so many sponsors who genuinely enjoy their sponsorship knowing that they are connected to their youth and family, while their youth are receiving the benefits they need and CI is using their funds wisely.  

We appreciate each and every one of our sponsors and do our best to provide you with information about your sponsored children and youth and of course we take all sponsor suggestions into consideration when we receive them.  I have shared your feelings with our Marketing Team and ask that anytime anyone has frustrations, questions or concerns that they share them with our Care Team and/or send a Website Feedback form. 

Actually I was told that we should only expect 1 required letter a year now and if we wanted more then it requires participation on my end. I appreciated the 2 required letters a year because it's like semi annual check in from them and allowed me to know as much as they care to share.

It's true, during the pandemic when the centers were closed and travel in the communities was difficult for staff and families, the staff in every country got behind in collecting semi-annual letters and annual photos.  To give them a chance to catch up, we changed the requirement for 2022/2023 to one letter per year. We are back to the 2 semi-annual now. However, if you would like more than two semi-annual letters, you can write and we'll ask your sponsored youth to reply once every 90-days.  Hope this helps clarify - thank you!

The '2 required letters per year' and '3 months to reply sponsor letters' policies were in place when I started sponsoring in 2015 and that has never been an issue for me. The only thing I wish would change is the ability to send full size photos.

The photos submitted via the online template always showed up as tiny pictures on the letters sent to sponsored children, so I feel like that was really not a great way to share photos. Before the pandemic, sending physical letters was an option (except to Ecuador, I guess) and that's how I always sent my letters with photos. We can still mail in letters, but they get scanned and forwarded to the children's countries electronically, which means photos cannot be forwarded with them. (CI made an exception for me, because I found that out after I already mailed in a bunch of photos, but I don't intend to continue doing that if it creates extra work for the CI staff.)

However, since that's not really a solution to get around the "tiny photos" issue with the online templates, either, I think the only option left that could work for someone like me who likes to send photos is e-mailing in my letters and attaching the photos as JPG files and hope for the best. The only thing that bothers me is that apparently letters e-mailed in are tagged as "no reply required".  If that wasn't the case and this method works for sending full size photos, then as far as I'm concerned, it's a reasonable alternative to mailing letters to CIKC.

Just my thoughts...

@Gabor, if you have not already please enter a website feedback form about the tiny photos and the need for the ability for photos to be larger in online letters. Our IT team is working on it, the CT does not know when it will change (but I did take some examples to the CEO last summer, cuz you know, if never hurts), but if you turn in a WFF lots of people in the organization are alerted when one arrives. Fingers crossed it will be launched in 2024!

I think the children are being allowed to write more than the required two letters a year, so it might be possible to hear from them more often. The majority of my children wrote 4-5x in 2023, although one wrote only twice. Her letters are wonderful, but the 9 months between them this time was definitely long! I haven't had my USA sponsorships long enough to see how those might go. I did have one write 6x in 2022, but that was a definite outlier.

Yes, it's true, I received as many as 4 letters from my sponsored child in 2022, although in 2020 and 2023 - only one. I personally write often, I counted that Evans received a total of 57 letters from me including congratulations in these almost 5 years!
What I would like, and I haven't received it yet, is Evans' handwritten letter to see how he writes, how he learned to write.. I like writing letters, uploading color pictures although I'm sorry they are so small! I also hope that all those letters were forwarded to him afterwards when the centers finally opened...

@ReaLuu: Please be assured that every online sponsor letter and card that were written during the time that our centers were closed during the pandemic were delivered to the youth. 

Here's the thing CI (like any other charity or business) decides it's own policies, not the sponsors, not  sponsored families, not the big donors, ect. There are thousands of sponsors, I don't know exactly how many. There are over 200,000 sponsored children and each have their own priorities. I've heard the majority of sponsors don't (or seldom) write to their child. CI has always been very generous and transparent  with sponsors regarding finances. policies, requests, ect.  They go well beyond what  most child sponsorship charities allow. Sponsored children write twice a year because they have to  agree to be accepted into the program. Suggesting that CI doesn't care about the relationship isn't true. The closer the relationship the more likely a sponsor will continue sponsorship. For what reason would not care? Other than that, or getting an EG or DP, the families decide if they write, CI allows them to send one letter every 90 days,  You can write as often as you choose or not at all. 

Will use this Forum , and copy/paste a previous post (which never was commented on).

The happiness I felt when I received the personal letters have gone.
The previous letters were with some errors in spelling and grammar errors, and it was just charming.
I am not a native English speaker, but the last years (I know the pandemic is part of it), there is no doubt the letters are either
written by adults speaking perfect English, or they use some sort of AI programs to write them. There is absolutely no personal feel in the letters anymore.
The joy receiving letters have the last years changed to annoyance!
If this is the future, just send me an update-letter about "all my children", instead of these clearly fake letters.

Oh yes, I have contacted CI, and received non-satisfactory replies.

Rgds
Sailor

I'm so sorry we missed your first comment on this subject.  As mentioned in our replied yesterday regarding AI, as an organization, we have benefited from AI, but sponsor/child communications ARE NOT among those advancements.

All our field offices have been asked not to use AI for sponsor/youth correspondence.  While we cannot provide an absolute guarantee that AI is never used by children and families to write their letters, we assure you we educate against it and do not promote it. 

To Everyone in this thread,

I have been a sponsor for at least 20 years now, and I have found that if you write your sponsored children, they write back.  If you do not, then you will get the required two letters a year.  When you do write them, the return letter from the sponsored child can sometimes surprise you in how swiftly you get a response.   It is my experience, that the more I write to my sponsored children, the more they write me.

I have been a sponsor since 1993 with CI.  I have found if I write more, I get more letters. when i send photos, the children write about what I send.  The 2 required letters a year and the progress reports from CI are great, but the more interaction you as the sponsor has, the more you will get from the child too. 

I’m sorry that there are many sponsors with frustrations here, but I have started sponsoring my two girls in March and have already received two letters from each. I have written letters, send cards, and eg and just notes that I’m thinking about them and maybe the frequency of my communication has helped. I think this is a wonderful program and I’d hate to have potential sponsors look elsewhere since I’ve had a wonderful experience so far. I went into it only expecting two a year, and maybe those will be my two, but I still think we’re doing something that’s changing lives.