[tem0627]

Check with yours and/or your husband's work. Some places of business will offer adoption grants. For instance, the US military offers a $2000 grant once the military member's adoption has been finalized. Another thing to consider is asking your church to help support you by matching any donations from friends and family up to an amount they are comfortable with. So, if you raise $2000 and they match it, there's a good chunk of change right there. Plus any donation made through the church should be tax deductible!

Also, hopefully you know about the adoption tax credit that will be available to you once you've adopted. I think it is just under $11K now and you can use it over 5 years! Some agencies also have connections with local banks to do 0% financing on an adoption. So, when you do receive your tax refund, you can it down or potentially completely off!

Here are some things we have done to finance our adoption.

Scrapbook Night Fundraiser - this was our best one so far, I think I made (after paying $40 for food) about $400. We got our local Scrapbooking store to donate some items (it ended up being about $200 worth) and I provided food for everyone (I love to cook, so that worked well). I advertised that everyone that showed up got put into a drawing for the scrapbook supplies. I set up a night at our church where we could get together for 5 kid-free hours and I charged $20 per person to come. People loved it and have all asked to do it again and want to pay another $20 to do it again!

We've been selling a couple of secret family recipes, of which we've made about $200; plus a producer in Los Angeles asked us to consider being part of his new series called, "My Secret Family Recipe". I am in the process of trying to hunt down more information on the history behind the recipes.

Raffles are great if your state allows it. See if a local business (like massages, food, or hotel) will donate a gift card and raffle it off. Make sure you check with your local government to see if this is legal where you live.

Put together a family cookbook or meal planner and sell those. I did the meal planner and included an organized shopping list. It's been selling and people have been letting me know they've enjoyed it!

It can be a lot of work; but it's definitely been worth it for us!

HTH's!