How to Afford Adoption: Adoptive Families Share

Have you been wondering how you’ll afford to adopt a baby? Here are tips from other adoptive parents:

Fundraise, starting with your personal network:

“Our most successful adoption fundraiser was a yard sale. Our friends even donated items from their garages to sell.”

“We put on a GoFundMe campaign, a yard sale, and an adoption t-shirt sale. Also, we were blessed to receive an adoption grant! We plan to apply to more adoption grants too. To date, we’ve raised about $13,000!”

“I’m known jokingly as the ‘fashion guru’ in my group of friends and have tons of clothes. So, when we were fundraising for our adoption, I sold lots of pieces on Poshmark and ThredUp. My girlfriends donated a few of their gently-used designer duds to the cause, too!”

“My husband and I did a puzzle piece adoption fundraiser! We sold pieces of a 1,000 piece puzzle for $10 each. On the back of each piece is the name of the person who bought it. It looks so cute! Also, I sell LuLaRoe on top of my full-time job, and it has really added to our adoption funds!”

“We uploaded a couple of videos to youcaring.com, sharing why we’re turning to adoption to start our family. So many people shared our videos that we reached our goal in three months!”

“People were so generous…we did tons of adoption fundraisers! A silent auction, a pancake breakfast, a GoFundMe page, and I opened an etsy store with my handmade gloves and hats.”

See where you can save:

“We both work so we decided to see if we could live on one of our incomes, and stash the other income in an adoption account. We did this for three months! After that we knew we could take at least a portion of our total income and keep saving. We even had it auto-deposited so that we didn’t see it on our paychecks. We saved a lot pretty quickly!”

“We cut back on little things here and there. I started trimming my husband’s hair, we stopped dining out as often, and stuck to a spending budget.”

Ask for help:

“We asked our church if they offer grants to help people adopt. We’d heard many churches have adoption or foster care ministries and want to support church members pursue adoption. We were glad we asked because we didn’t even know this ministry was already a part of our church!”

“My company’s staff got together and donated items for a massive three-day garage sale to help us adopt. We ended up making over $5,000! Our neighborhood association also donated a prize, and we sold raffle tickets to win it. We raised around $4,000 for the raffle. All the money went toward our adoption savings account!”

“We also mailed out cards that announced our hopes to adopt and provided a link for donations of any amounts, as well as for prayer. The response was humbling!”

“At first we weren’t sure about a personal bank loan, but with our good credit we got a great rate and very reasonable terms. It allowed us to start our adoption sooner, and to continue to fund-raise and save through the process, which quickly reimbursed the loan.”

Most adoptive parents combine different resources and efforts to fund their adoption. Every little bit counts! If you’re willing and determined your adoption dreams can come true.

Talk with someone about how you can start your adoption planning today!