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Raising Funds for Fertility Treatments
Raising money for fertility treatments is very different than raising it for adoption. Friends and family may be readily available to help with fundraising for adoption, but not for fertility treatments. This may not seem fair, but it is reality. The following ideas will work for both fertility treatment and adoption.*Get a part time job. I know, I know. It sounds simple, but it is true. Just working a few extra hours a week can really add up.*Cut out non-essentials. You would be amazed at how many areas in your life are unnecessary. A few way to cut back: ~Set up a Baby Fund savings account and add to it as often as you can. ~Get rid of cable/satellite TV entirely or drop down to the basics. Add the savings to your Bbay Fund automatically each month. ~Increase your auto insurance deductible. If it is currently at $250 increase it to $500 to reduce your bill. Add the savings to your Baby Fund. ~Eat at home! We all spend way too much money going out to eat. Limit yourself to once a month and put what you would have spent eating out into your Baby Fund. ~Cancel subscriptions: magazines, newspapers, movies, etc. ~ Shop sales and use coupons. You may only save $10-$20 dollars, but every bit helps.*Sell items on ebay or Craigslist. Sometimes it is hard to part with items, but ask yourself if that item means more to you than a baby. You will find many things that you will be willing to part with and add to your Baby Fund. Half.com and Amazon.com are other ways to sell items.*Yard Sale. A well planned yard sale can raise money pretty quickly. Advertise well, display items nicely, price competitively. Ask friends and family for any items that they would be willing to donate to your sale.*Set up an account at ChipIn.com. This will allow family and friends to donate money to you via Paypal. Be careful with this as no one likes to be asked for money. A good way to let people know without sounding needy is to add their widget to your website, blog, etc.*Monetize your blog or website. If you have a lot of traffic this can bring in a few dollars. Adsense.com is common one. Just be sure to read their Terms & Conditions as they watch for fraud carefully. Do not ask anyone to click on ads or click on them yourself.*Independent Sales. Consider selling Avon, Mary Kay, Tupperware, Pampered Chef, etc. Be sure to review everything and find out how much money you would have to invest, whether you need to keep inventory on hand, what happens to inventory if you quit selling, etc.*Babysitting. You can offer to babysit for friends and coworkers
whenever they need you and take in a little extra cash with very little work or planning. You can also take
babysitting to a whole new level and plan a night of childcare at a local daycare! You may need to use the
daycare's employees but if not you can enlist the help of friends and family. Daycare centers have a
ready-made base of parents so you can put up sign-up sheets and hopefully have a full house of children on
your big night. Your expenses will be the food and snacks/juice and the workers if you need or choose to use
them. ~*Example: Hannah did this fundraiser from 6-11 p.m. as a Parent's Night Out on
Friday nights. She charged $25 for 1 child, $45 for 2 children and $15 for each additional child in each
family. It was only available for the children who attended that daycare and other related children. She did
this 1-2 times a month for 6 months. She averaged 30-40 children from age 2-12 and paid 3 workers $7 an hour.
She served pizza, popcorn and juice. Her expenses were usually around $200 and her profit was about $500, so
over the course of 6 months she made about $4,000 for her adoption fund. Great job, Hannah!**Crop 'Til You Drop - You scrapbookers know what I'm talking about,
don't you! This is where you get together all of your friends and family that love to scrapbook (or want to
learn!) and you have 6 or 8 glorious hours of no kids or husbands needing you, no phones ringing off the wall
and no housework to call to you! This can be a great fundraiser since your costs can be minimal. You can
have it at your house or a donated facility, serve soda and snacks, and even get some scrapping supplies
donated from a store or consultant to use as giveaways! Saturdays work well and you can charge $10-20 per
person.*Hint: Consider asking a scrapbooking consultant to come to your crop. She can demonstrate techniques,
help people with their pages, sell her products and give you a portion of her sales!**found on Affording Adoption
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Raising Funds for AdoptionYou will find that there are many ways to raise money for adoption. Often times friends and family are more than happy to help you with fundraising endeavors. The ideas listed for the Fertility Treatments can be used as well, but these ideas for Adoption will not necessarily work for Fertility Treatments.*Affording Adoptions: this is a great site with many, many ideas.
*Fundraising for Adoption: this is a Yahoo and I am not a member of it and cannot verify any information on it.*Adoption Financing: includes information on financing options, grants, loans and links to sites of people raising money for adoption expenses,
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