6 Quick Tips on Running the Sponsorship Table for Your Hope Sunday

A Covenant Kids Congo picture folder featuring Hermine, age 7

Your Hope Sunday is almost here! Your church has your Hope Sunday kit, a stack of picture folders featuring children who are waiting to be sponsored, and a Covenant Kids Congo video cued up and ready to play. After your Hope Sunday service, members of your church community will come to your sponsorship table to sign up to sponsor a child.

If you’re in charge of the sponsorship table, you might be wondering exactly what that entails. Here are six quick tips to help you run the table and inspire your congregation to sponsor children through Covenant Kids Congo.

1. Gather and train a team of volunteers.

You can run your sponsorship table best when you have a whole team of volunteers to answer questions and collect sponsorships. So ask for help! Recruit several volunteers to staff your sponsorship table on your Hope Sunday, and then set up a time to train them on the basics. You can walk them through answers to Frequently Asked Questions, and pull out a picture folder to show them how to sign up to sponsor a child.

2. Check your picture folders.

When you receive your Hope Sunday kit and picture folders in the mail from World Vision, review the picture folders to make sure that they all have the Covenant Kids Congo logo on the front. The sponsorship card inside the folder should have a price point of $40 a month (not $39). The CKC logo and price point ensure that the child is from the correct region of Congo for the CKC sponsorship program. If you find any picture folders that don’t have the CKC logo, let us know right away and we’ll get it fixed for you. You can call me at 773-442-6578.

The Covenant Kids Congo sponsorship program is located in the city of Gemena in northwest Congo. We call this area development program “Ledia,” which means a new thing is happening in the village in one of the local languages. When you sign up to sponsor a child through Covenant Kids Congo, you’ll receive updates about that child and the Ledia community (called “Ledia 1” and “Ledia 2” because of the program’s large size).

3. Stand up the picture folders on the table.

When you’re setting up your sponsorship table, make sure to stand up the picture folders rather than laying them flat on the table. Potential sponsors will be able to see the children’s faces from a distance, drawing them to the table. You can also hang up the picture folders on a board or make another creative display.

4. Ask your pastor or speaker to give a call-to-action at the very end of your service.

During your service, your pastor (or if you choose, a Covenant Kids Congo guest speaker) might preach a related sermon and play a Covenant Kids Congo video like “The Impact of Sponsorship.” But by the end of the service, your congregation might be thinking about other things. Encourage your pastor or speaker to give a powerful call-to-action at the very end, inviting everyone to visit the sponsorship table and sponsor a child.

5. Make sure that new sponsors turn in their sponsorship cards.

Each picture folder represents a real child who is waiting to be sponsored! When someone decides to sponsor a child, they can fill out the sponsorship card inside the folder, tear it out, put it inside the sealed envelope, and turn in the envelope to the sponsorship table. Then they can keep the rest of the picture folder for themselves.

Please encourage people to only take a picture folder if they’re committing to sponsorship. If the picture folder is lost, it could take longer for that child to be sponsored. It’s especially helpful if your pastor or another speaker explains how to sign up to sponsor a child during the service, so everyone knows that they need to turn in the sponsorship card at the table.

6. Mail in the sponsorship cards and extra picture folders.

All done? For every person who committed to sponsorship, you’ll have a sealed envelope with a sponsorship card inside it. To save on postage, use one of the two large business reply envelopes (included in your Hope Sunday kit) to mail back all the sponsorships together. While the individual sealed envelopes require postage if you mail them separately, the large business reply envelopes do not require postage.

Take your sealed-envelope sponsorships and your extra picture folders and mail them back. World Vision will process the sponsorships, and new sponsors will receive their first letter from their sponsored children within a few months.

That’s it! If you need any help or have questions along the way, don’t hesitate to call me at 773-442-6578 or email covenantkidscongo@covchurch.org. We are so grateful for your efforts!

Cat Knarr is the project manager for Covenant Kids Congo. You can follow CKC updates on Facebook and Twitter.