Shaun Groves
Currently, Compassion International relies heavily upon speakers and singers like me to introduce people to their work with children and ask them to become partners in that work through sponsorship. Those artists and speakers generate most of the tens of thousands of sponsorships necessary to maintain Compassion’s ministry to the poor in 24 countries.
Here’s one problem with that: The music industry is sinking (not so) slowly. Artists are losing their deals. Show attendance is shrinking. Labels are going belly up. Call me an over-thinking pessimist but my fear is that Compassion’s sponsor numbers will go down over time as a result – it just seems logical.
Time to build some new wagons and hitch ourselves to them I think.
I’ll tell you about one of those wagons tomorrow.
Joe says:
This is totally true Shaun!! The economy has been deep six’d—Gold hit a record $914.00 per ounce yesterday!! Contrary to popular belief, we have been in a recession for a while & are heading towards a depression. People don’t have that disposable income that they used to have back in the 90’s when record labels were on top of the world financially. File sharing hasn’t helped the issue either but not as much as the U.S. economy. People don’t have the frog skins to drop on a $20 CD or a $60 ticket for a popular artist concert or even $30 for an indie artist @ a small venue. I live in Chicago & over the past 8 years, I have seen the music scene in this town whither away like a flower garden in november here in Chicago.
I know so many people who are in the middle of a financial crisis or are in miser mode because of increases in living expenses. Myself included!! I personally know 6 people who are out of work for various reasons (none of them where it was their own fault—all lay-offs due to out sourcing or their job went over seas).
I believe that your intuition maybe highly accurate & you may see a decrease in sponsors. All we can do is be creative & brainstorm for other conduits for the C.I. electrons to flow as well as pray our back sides off!!
Keep up the great work Shaun & I’ll see you in Elgin!!!
Joe
Tracy says:
This is going to be an exciting journey! I can’t wait to follow it with you guys.