If you sponsor a kid through Compassion (or one of the other organizations that encourages letters), and you’re anything like me, you intend to write your kid regularly but don’t get around to it. You probably feel bad when you get a letter and realize it’s been ages since you’ve written, but there’s a lot of mental inertia (and, let’s face it, honest-to-goodness busyness) that keeps you from picking up a pen already.
Let’s get over that.
I’ll be writing more (possibly exclusively) to encourage sponsors here in the future, but in the meantime, I want to encourage you stop putting it off and offer a relatively painless plan for getting back on track, starting today.
I’m making some assumptions for the sake of brevity, so feel free to tailor these ideas to your needs.
- Find one or two digital photos of you or a family member doing something that your sponsored kid might find interesting. You don’t have to find it especially interesting (I’m sending photos of my toddler eating). Start with just a few photos so you don’t get overwhelmed. You can always do more once you get in the groove.
- If you’re already planning a trip to someplace like Walmart in the next day or two, plop those photos on a USB stick (or with Costco, you can upload them online) and get them printed while you’re there. If not, upload them to a service like Snapfish that will print them and mail them to you. The key here is convenience… don’t pick a method that will let you put it off. And either way you go, you’ll only pay a few bucks.
- Today, write your letter. Make it easy on yourself and write about the pictures you’re sending. Explain any background information and talk about what you like about the photo. You don’t need to wait for the photos to be in your hand because you already know what photos you’re sending. If you know of specific questions your kid has asked, go ahead and answer them, but if not, don’t put off writing. You can always write another letter if you later realize you forgot something. It’s more important to get it sent than to get it perfect.
- Get the letter ready to send. Fold it up, make sure any relevant sponsorship details are on it (Compassion wants the child’s ID along with the sponsor’s), address and stamp the envelope. The goal is that when you have the photos, you can write the sponsorship details on the the back, stuff them in, and get this thing moving.
I’ll write more in the future about what to put in a letter and other ways you can be a good sponsor, but my fondest hope is that if you’re a sponsor with a letter-starved kid, you’ll take action today. I did. 
