Back in early April, I used Givology’s message function to send a note to Yincong Fan, a ninth grader from Sichuan, China who I support. I didn’t write anything particularly profound – just a little about myself and my family and a few words of encouragement. Several weeks later I received Yincong’s reply, a two-page handwritten letter (translated by our Givology translation team) directly addressed to me (https://www.givology.org/~yfan/blog/).
Just from that letter I feel like I learned significantly more about Yincong than what her Givology profile provides. I learned that her favorite subjects are chemistry and Chinese, that she hopes to study literature and that she loves to write, and that she has a younger brother who will soon also enter high school. Yincong also sent me her best wishes, saying that she hoped I was happy at college. And now because of this letter, I have more questions for Yincong – what kind of writing does she like? Non-fiction? Short stories? Who are her favorite authors? How has her summer been? Does she get along well with her little brother? I also want to tell her about how I’ve spent the summer in Shanghai interning at a social enterprise, our upcoming New York City fundraiser, and how I’m looking forward to going back to Penn in the fall.
The most unique thing about Givology is not that it allows you to support students in developing countries, or that it uses an online giving marketplace model – it’s that donors can directly message our students and read their updates online regularly, bringing transparency in giving to new levels. Donors don’t just give a few dollars here and there – they can form real relationships with the students, acting as mentors and sharing stories about their lives in various countries all over the globe. Simply by telling a student a little about yourself, your family, your job, and other things that mean a lot to you, you are opening their minds to new ideas and inspiring them to work hard and stay in school. Donor messages humanize Givology and its partners – instead of receiving a scholarship from a faceless organization, students are developing relationships with their supporters and start to feel a real commitment to making the most out of the opportunity they have received. A student is simply less likely to become disengaged from school and drop out if she knows that people all over the world sincerely want her to continue her education and are expecting to hear about her progress. And thanks to our partner organizations in the field, messages are delivered even if the student has no internet access – our partners simply print out the donor messages we forward to them and then scan and email us student responses, which are then posted on the website. To view any student’s past letters, simply go to their Givology profile page and select “View my updates” under their profile picture.
As Givology’s Translation Coordinator, I manage all our correspondence with our students, and recently, I’ve come to realize that we are not fully leveraging our ability to forge real connections between our donors and our students. From now on, we are going to message all donors whenever we are about to send letters to their students so our field partners can deliver all the messages at the same time. That’s not to say that you should wait until we tell you to message your students – we encourage you to take a few minutes to write a few lines introducing yourself and offering some encouragement. That little bit of effort can make both your and your student’s Givology experience that much more meaningful.
29 JUL 2009