Why two different fund raisers?

That’s a great question with a short answer, but a slightly longer explanation.

The short answer is prudence and flexibility. Allow us to explain by starting with prudence. As we researched the best ways to raise money to help cover adoption costs we discovered several not-for-profit organizations that offer significant benefits to both donors and recipients.

Tax-deductible Receipts for Donors
This is a big one for U.S. tax payers. When donors give, they will receive a tax-deductible receipt to help offset taxes their taxes come April 15th.

Matching Corporate Donations
Many U.S. corporations match employee donations given to charitable organizations. So if you are U.S. taxpayer and give to our adoption fund, it’s more than likely your employer will match that donation. That’s double the gift!

Matching grants
Some adoption grants offer to match donations so long as donations are being given to a not-for-profit organization.

It’s easy to see from those three examples why raising money using a not-for-profit makes sense. So why not just raise all the funds in this manner? Well, there are strict federal regulations that dictate how money raised in this manner can be used. In short, all of the money raised in this way can’t come to us personally. All of the funds raised can’t be used at our discretion and we won’t see any of it.

So how does it benefit us? We apply for those funds to be paid out to providers (like adoption agencies, hospitals, attorneys, etc). But remember we said there are strict federal rules regarding how money can be spent? These funds can only be used for eligible purposes that are outlined by the IRS.

Which brings us to our second reason, flexibility. We quickly realized that while there are significant benefits that come from raising money using a not-for-profit organization, there are some significant limitations too. For example, it’s likely we’ll have to travel out of of state to meet the birth mom and baby. While flights and hotel fees are covered as an eligible expense, food while we’re out of state won’t be. Considering it’s likely we’ll be gone for up to two weeks (that’s typical for out of state adoption), we’ll also need to pay for a baby sitter to watch our biological children at home while we’re gone, or if we want to bring them with us (maybe flights are cheaper than childcare!) none of those flights count as eligible expenses. Astonishingly a crib, car seat, change table and even diapers or medical expenses once we return home with the baby or not eligible expenses so you can see why we’d like to raise money for those.

We’ve also got a considerable network of friends and family who live outside of the United States, so the tax benefits listed above aren’t actually benefits to them. So we figured if we could maximize the benefits of using a not-for-profit fund raising organization while minimizing the limitations inherent with that model by using a different fund raising tool that allows us to direct access to those funds we could have the best of both worlds. That’s why we’re fund raising with both Lifesong for Adoptions (the not-for-profit option) and GoFundMe. We hope donors can give in which ever way benefits them.

Now, if you’ve got this far, congratulations! You may have more questions, and we’d be happy to try and answer them. Just use the form at the bottom of this page to get in touch. We’d love to connect and if you’d like to give, you can use the links below.