I couldn’t believe that in less than 2 weeks after launching our fundraising campaign, we raised over $1000 from generous family and friends!

A few things that I’ve come to realize about fundraising for your adoption:

1). I’ve discovered that family and friends genuinely want to be part of your adoption experience.
2). Family and friends WANT to give. I usually buy baby gifts or cook meals for my friends when they have their first, second, third, etc. babies. I see no difference in friends and family giving toward my adoption in lieu of gifts.
3). Adoption fees are expensive and, in most cases, adopting families must come up with the funds in a short amount of time. Many of us do not have these funds readily available especially if our adoption happens quickly.
4). With many families now adopting from Special Needs programs, there are other medical costs involved once our babies are home. Allowing friends and family to give to our adoption, helps ease this additional financial burden.
5). If some friends and family don’t want to give or can’t give, then they don’t have to give then that’s perfectly fine. However, you will be surprised by the number of people that do.

All of this to say, I’ve seen first hand the generosity of friends and family when it comes to adoption. These wonderful people are now a part of our future child’s adoption story because they are helping to bring her home. For that, I’m forever grateful.

Funnily enough, we did fundraise for our first job out of college. We worked for a Christian non-profit agency and raised money to live and work there for 15 months.

Fundraising can be very stressful, and people treat you differently, and sometimes have an attitude of expectation. I would not want this to affect my parenting at all.

To be blunt about it, our reproduction or how we build our families are our decsions. Can we really expect people to finance this?