Children International uses Copilot to bring a more human touch to combating childhood poverty worldwide

As a 10-year-old, Loreen joined the poverty-fighting nonprofit Children International in the Philippines and was sponsored by a generous supporter. She took part in multiple programs, from empowerment workshops to a youth council. Later, she received a scholarship and help when taking her educator board exams. Now the 24-year-old is a teacher and shares her own life story to inspire her students, some of whom are also involved in Children International programs.

“I am one of the living testimonies of the success of Children International producing successful individuals,” Loreen says. “Just like how the staff of Children International supported me, trusted in me, I want to share it with my students.”

Loreen's story epitomizes the work of Children International, the global nonprofit that uses personal connections to halt the cycle of generational poverty. Yet with around 32,000 children awaiting sponsorship every month, and millions more worldwide who live in extreme poverty on less than $2.15 a day, the organization works tirelessly to realize its goal of ending poverty for good.

When taking stock of the barriers blocking this ambition, Children International leadership recognized the everyday tasks that bogged down mission-critical efforts. “Too much of our human capacity is spent on tasks that don't require human empathy,” says Jason Divis, Application Development Manager at Children International. They knew they could do more good by focusing on what truly matters—and what requires human creativity, caring, and dedication.

The nonprofit worked with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner eGroup Enabling Technologies to prepare a technological foundation that would enable the widespread use of AI, then roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot to its global teams. An enthusiastic Microsoft shop, Children International relies on Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, Sentinel, and more to power its global mission.

Now, staff worldwide are using Copilot and other AI-powered tools to streamline processes, automate manual tasks, and free up thousands of hours every month. This organization-wide shift is empowering Children International staff to reach more children with even more impactful programs, explains Tim Bachta, Vice President of Global IT at Children International. AI complements the personal, compassionate touch every employee brings to work each day. He adds, “As we work hand-in-hand with kids and families to end poverty for good, implementing Microsoft technologies allows us to be more human.” 

Streamlining to scale

An estimated 333 million children live in extreme poverty worldwide, and children are more than twice as likely as adults to experience these conditions. While Children International has helped more than a million children in its nearly 90-year history, it aims to do even more. 

The nonprofit is working to increase its one-on-one interactions by 25% and double its total impact within families, schools, and communities—all in the next four years. “We face the challenge of reaching these goals without increasing costs at the same rate, so we can deliver the most funds possible to the programs helping kids,” Bachta explains.   

Children International is turning to technology to accelerate its progress toward this target. “We’re using technology, especially Copilot and other AI, to streamline, be more efficient, and use our dollars more effectively,” Bachta says. “We’re letting technology do the things computers can do so we can do the things only humans can do.”

The organization recently rolled out a new initiative that teaches best practices of scaling programs throughout its 10-country territory. Using Microsoft Copilot Studio, a technical lead created an agent that draws information from the initiative's training materials and documentation. Staff in the field can ask the Copilot agent questions, receiving an answer with hyperlinks to sources in moments. “It would have been nearly impossible for staff to build this before because they’re not developers. There’s huge time savings for the people using it, too,” Bachta says. “Copilot is helping us bring value to the front lines quicker than ever before.”

Other staff recently leveraged GitHub Copilot to build a participation tracking app that works offline. A project like this would have taken around three months before but, with the assistance of AI-powered tools, a beta version was delivered to stakeholders in a mere two days. “Creating with AI helps us deliver faster so we learn, collaborate, and iterate more quickly; getting better each time,” says John Sudduth, Director of Application Development at Children International.

Tools like these enable field staff to spend more time on mission-critical tasks rather than on administrative work. “The more we delegate manual tasks, the more time we can spend with the children and families in our programs,” Bachta says. “Rather than being tied to the computer, our staff are pushing a boots-on-the-ground mentality.” As staff focus on the field, they reach more children—and Children International draws closer to its mission of eliminating childhood poverty. 

Evolving processes and culture

Children International works to maximize the resources for their interventions in health, education, employment, and empowerment. It makes sense, then, that the organization prioritized Copilot access for field staff. Of their nearly 500 Copilot licenses, about 80% are allocated to the field.

Global champions directed the rollout of Copilot and continue pushing training, which has led to an average Copilot usage of 2,000 hours monthly. Staff with little or no development experience are leveraging Copilot to invent new solutions that solve localized and universal administrative challenges alike. The newfound Copilot literacy also enables them to know what to ask the IT team for, encouraging a collaborative approach that yields proofs of concept in a day or two, not months. “That communication gives everyone a grounding of what could be delivered so we can pivot off that idea rather than starting from a blank slate,” Divis says.

Copilot has inspired a do-it-yourself culture, empowering staff to self-train on GitHub Copilot and build solutions that accelerate development through AI support. For example, in about eight hours, Sudduth used GitHub Copilot to create a script that scans thousands of website photos of children awaiting sponsorship, identifying those with incorrect photo orientation. This script runs monthly, effectively eliminating a recurring issue and saving countless hours a year. 

For more complex automations, staff are using Copilot as a launchpad, then turning to Azure AI Foundry. One recently created OpenAI workflow can quickly review field content created by an external agency. Children International staff didn’t have the time to read and view hundreds of videos, curricula, and other content for age appropriateness, availability of supplies in the field, and other factors, but the AI solution flagged concerning materials in a fraction of the time. That enabled the agency to deliver revisions quickly, providing top-notch content to field programs faster.

The enthusiastic adoption of Copilot and other Microsoft AI platforms has created a sea change within Children International. “I don't know if I've ever seen a bigger transformation in an organization so quickly,” Sudduth says. “The adoption curve is just exploding with the number of people who use Copilot daily. That’s accelerating what is possible through AI." 

Improving the donor experience

Donations and child sponsorships power the responsive, culturally relevant solutions Children International delivers in communities from Colombia to Zambia. The nonprofit continually works to refine supporter outreach, fundraising, and communications to deepen relationships and maximize the resources needed to eliminate childhood poverty.

“Improving the donor experience furthers our mission and work. When we respond to donor needs and preferences, more donors support our programs and more kids get sponsored,” explains Carl Ferrara, Product Innovation Specialist. Children International is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to do just that.

Copilot analyzes open-ended responses from donor surveys. The AI assistant synthesizes thousands of survey entries to identify common themes among positive, negative, and neutral sentiments. “It would take forever to manually tag every single entry—and we don’t have that kind of time,” Ferrara says. “Now it can be done with a couple of clicks in Copilot.” Further, the AI assistant identifies friction points and areas of opportunity so staff can quickly improve the donor experience.

The innovation product development team used Copilot Studio to craft an agent that creates test plans for donor interactions including landing pages, fundraising campaigns, user experience (UX) flows, and new donor products. Instead of manually building out these plans and test criteria, the agent automates the creation and execution of tests to evaluate how donors respond to variables such as pricing arrays, messaging, and page layout.

Further, the Copilot agent analyzes donor feedback as well as behavior—including how they navigate UX flows, where their attention lingers on a page, and which links they click. “We’re using Copilot as a thought partner,” Ferrara says. “Agents help by handling routine tasks and guiding decisions, so our people can focus on building relationships and making a real impact.”

In addition, consolidating siloed systems into Microsoft Dynamics 365 has enabled Children International to streamline operations and reduce technical debt. “The unified cloud-based CRM enables our teams to focus more on delivering impact than managing infrastructure,” Sudduth says. “With centralized data and integrated tools, we’ve adopted a data-driven approach that improves program delivery, enhances fundraising efficiency, and strengthens engagement with supporters. That ultimately helps us serve children and families more effectively.”