Sponsoring a child with Children Incorporated is a very simple process. You can sponsor a child in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child in that is available for sponsorship.
choosing a child and setting up contributions
(Explore for yourself at: https://dms.childrenincorporated.org/Donor/CISponsorChild.aspx).
- A web user may opt to sponsor a child by clicking on the blue “SPONSOR” button at the top of any webpage within the Children Incorporated website (or similar links throughout the site).
If a web user says s/he does not see any menu items in the top right corner of the screen, see note here.
A sponsor who wishes to make a child-specific contribution to a child s/he already sponsors should log in and go to his/her “My Sponsorship(s)” tab (Instructions here).
- Clicking the “SPONSOR” button will navigate to the Child Search screen (screenshot below).
NOTE: The website ONLY displays children who meet ALL of the following parameters:
- Not currently Sponsored or “on hold” (reserved to a donor cart);
- Up-to-date Child Photo AND Progress Report (no older than 364 days); and
- Under the age of 18.
NOTE: Photos for children in the U.S. do not display, but rather a generic image serves as a placeholder. A note on the left side of the screen explains that this is in accordance with our Child Protection Policy.
Eligible children will display in random order, changing any time the screen is reloaded/filters are applied.
A web user can use any or all of the fields on the left side of the screen to filter the search results:
Age parameter
Country parameter
Gender parameter
Lastly, a web user can modify the number of eligible children who display at a time on this screen by changing the “Show [#] Children” from the default “4” to another value (screenshot below).
Final result of applied search parameters from above example (after clicking the “SEE RESULTS” button):
- If a web user hovers the mouse over one of the blue “About [Child Name]” links (in each child’s information box), a short blurb pulled from the child’s most recent Progress Report will display in a green dialogue box, as shown below:
- If a web user clicks one of the children’s green “SPONSOR ME” buttons, the Single-Item Checkout will launch.
- Upon returning to the Child Search screen, the web user will notice that the green “SPONSOR ME” button will have changed to a gray “Thank you” field (as shown in the screenshot below) for children whose sponsorships have been added to a web user’s Contribution Cart.
This functionality enables the web user to sponsor multiple children at once without navigating away from the Child Search screen.
- Whenever the web user is ready to submit the sponsorship request(s), s/he may click on the heart-in-cart icon that will appear in the top right corner of the screen to launch the Checkout Module (which, in the above example, would be the Multi-Item Checkout workflow, since two children have been selected at once to be sponsored; but if only one child has been selected, the Single-Item Checkout workflow would launch instead).
CHECKOUT MODULE
NOTE: The Checkout module is an iframe/series of screens that slides up over the existing webpage as soon as a web user opts to make a contribution or sponsor a child online.
Unless interrupted or unless there are already items in a web user’s Contribution Cart, the module is designed by default to cycle the web user through the entire checkout process for each amount/designation that is submitted (Single-Item Checkout).
However, if the web user prefers, the module is also designed to process multiple contributions (including a mixture of child-specific and non-child-specific donations) all at once in a single checkout process (Multi-Item Checkout).
If the web user is not logged in and is making a non-child specific gift (a contribution toward the General Fund or another special fund), s/he also has the option of streamlining the checkout process via Guest Checkout.
All three workflows are detailed below and are solely a matter of user experience/preference. The DMS system will handle everything similarly behind the scenes regardless of the scenery that the web user chooses to encounter along the way.