I realize most adoption agencies are "in it" for the money just like any other business, but some of the fee schedules are so over-the-top ridiculous that they truly
are selling babies. There is absolutely no way it can cost them over $15,000 to place a baby in an adoptive home. (And for what it's worth, that amount is probably about $5-10,000 more than what they
should be charging.) Anything over $3-5K is too high for a special needs baby, IMO.
But what really chaps my hide is when facilitators tack on their fees on top of the agency fees, just for passing on information about which agency has an available child.
One special needs situation a year or two ago had several different facilitors' fees tacked on, so the final fee amount was over $10,000!!!!! If I ever hear of something through a facilitator, I try to determine who the placing agency is through a different source, just so I can bypass the facilitator! Yeah, maybe facilitators fill a need by getting the word out, but in this day & age of the internet, surely it can't be all that tough for individual agencies to "advertise" their available situations themselves, to help keep the cost down for adoptive families.
I have a couple of good fundraising ideas that we've either heard about or used with fairly good success. During our first adoption journey, we asked our church if they'd be willing to sponsor a silent auction for us. We went around to area businesses and asked them if they'd be willing to donate something for the auction. We also made up several themed baskets which did very well. We ended up making over $1,200 with only about 10-15 families present for the auction. All except a couple of people were from our church, so if we had advertised more, we might have brought in more people from the community. Another good idea is to ask your friends & family to donate unused/unwanted items for a garage sale....a friend of ours did this and made several thousand dollars. The only thing that I wouldn't like about his option would be getting rid of what didn't sell, but I suppose you could take it all to a consignment store.
Good luck with your search!
~Patrice
