Everyone and their brother has an opinion on this. This is a topic in adoption that really bothers me. I've been reading some facebook posts in a couple of adoption groups, and there was a post that really made my panties bunch up. Basically, it stated that some expectant moms make an adoption plan for their children because they cannot afford to raise a child. Why fund raise... if a couple can't afford an adoption, they shouldn't adopt.
This bothers me. A lot. Mainly because we had a couple of fundraisers before we even knew about our daughter/her birth mom.
Here's the deal: when you go buy a new car, do you pay everything up front or do you finance it? Most people finance it because the do not have $20,000 plus to buy a car.
Adoption through an agency is very expensive: usually runs minimum $22,000. I know that's crazy, and I still don't completely understand where all of that money goes. Who has that kind of money to just put down? If you do, great! Good for you!
But it is the same as the car: can you afford the car payments? Yes? Good. With adoption: Can you afford to provide food, a roof, clothing, and tons of love, and spoil this child? Yes? Great! They just can't afford the initial money for the adoption process. And really, when a woman gets pregnant, do they need to pay $20,000 plus when they have a baby? Nope!
Not many have access to that much money. Our agency had turned us down because we did not know where those funds were going to come from and we were so heart broken. We started by selling everything of value we had on ebay (lots of jewelry). Then we had a yard sale. Then we started adoption tee-shirt sales. and I was baby sitting for three different families. At that point, we probably had like 3000. We decided to hold a spaghetti dinner (my mother in law-who was dying to be a grandmother, made all the delicious food), we had people donate things to auctioned off, we bought some things to auction off, and we did a 50/50 so people were getting something for there money. We made like 6500 from this. It was amazing! (side note: we did have quite a few people donate money to us because they wanted to, that is fine, too. But I like the idea of people getting something for their money, whether it is a tee-shirt, food or a raffle ticket.)
We did not need to have any other fundraisers at this point (though I think we were planning on some), because a few short months later, we were self matched with an expectant mom who wanted a private adoption. That ended up being the best thing because it costs us around 8500 (including two lawyers, paperwork, and court costs) which was amazing.
So, in summary: there is nothing wrong with fundraising. As long as you have proof of what you are using it for, it shouldn't matter. Most people cannot fork over 20, 000 bucks for a car, why would they be able to do this for an adoption? In order for people to "buy in" we had to open up to tell our story. Our very infertile story. It was hard. And then we had to put the whole adoption process out for people who were helping us to see. We felt like we owed it to them.
Looking back: would we do it all over again? Absolutely! It was SO worth it. All you have to do is look at my 4.5 year old daughter to see that it was. While we probably aren't going to fundraise this next adoption go around (starting soon!), I do recommend it. Besides, have you seen the amounts people raise on gofundme accounts and there is is absolutely no proof of any of that?
