After having three people ask me this exact same question over the last week I thought I would address it here. The question they were asking was "Why bother with all this fundraising? Just apply for/get one of those adoption grants."
It seems as if the impression most people have is that there are millions of dollars available in adoption grants and all you have to do is apply and you will have all the money you need for your adoption. This could not be further from the truth. We applied for a total of five grants. We were turned down for two of them, and the other three we still have not heard back from even after many months. We still have three application packages that we are working on, which each take about 10 hours to complete.
To put things in perspective consider this information that was shared by one of the groups we applied to:
-- They had a total of 12 grants to give for a total of just under $40,000
-- They had 1,300 applications
-- Giving the requested grant to each of these families would have required over $500,000
The bottom line is that the need for adoption grants greatly exceeds the amount of funds that are available. So if you have been holding back from supporting an adopting family because you believe they can/will "just get a grant" please reconsider. Adopting families need the support of their churches, families, and friends to carry out God's plan to care for the orphan.
Yes. It is so hard to get a grant and each grant has it's conditions. As a single female wihout any religious affiliation, I'm Christian but didn't attend church at the time of my first adoption, so I was out for most grants to start. Other issues can be 'you already have x number of kids why do you need a grant' or whatever the grant is geared too. I'm a silent reader of your blog but finally had to post in support.
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