Research has never been easy for me, I tend to get easily distracted... a lot! But when it comes to all things baby research is one of two preparations I can do. The other being fundraising. With the cost of our surrogacy to be around $30,000 (ideally) I have heard horror stories that couples have spent upwards of $200,000!! Now, while we hope to never come near that kind of cost, we are still facing a substantial financial set back. In many situations I have heard of couples borrowing money against their equity of their home or from their IRA's, unfortunately we have no equity and the IRA is not an option either. A personal loan is another route some couples go, and while this is an option, it is our last option as the monthly payments could make it hard to raise the child once he or she is here. That leaves us with trying to make and raise as much of the costs as we possibly can. As you know by now we have started a Kapipal account which is similar to gofundme or other crowdfunding sites but with much smaller fees then the larger sites. Unlike some crowdfunding sites that can charge up to 12% or more, Kapipal charges $0.30 and 2.9% per transaction, which is a large percentage for a smaller donation ($1 donation ends out being $0.66 after the fees) but works out much better for larger donations ($20 is $19.12 after fees).
Today we signed up for a Flower Power fundraiser. This site sells bulbs and seeds for your garden and donates 50% of every sell to our journey! I like this because it is free to sign up and people are buying items instead of just giving you money, it feels less like panhandler then asking for straight donations.
The next fundraiser idea we are planning is a massive (hopefully) garage sale in early spring, and maybe a second one in late spring. I am hoping to have a banner made that has a brief story of what the garage sale is benefiting, and maybe also one or two other attractions such as a bake sale or raffle or something like that.
One fundraiser that I keep reading about is called an "envelope sale" actually it is called a lot of things, but in this fundraiser you have a set number of envelopes, for example 25. Each envelope is numbered 1-25 and guests choose an envelope and donate the dollar amount on the envelope, so #1 would donate $1 (or more), #2 would donate $2, #25 would donate $25, if every envelope is 'sold' 25 envelopes would raise $325, if 100 envelopes were collected at each amount the total will be $5,050, and 50 envelopes would collect $1,275). I love this idea, but the problem is I do not have that many local friends, so I would have to find a way to do it online, and I am struggling to figure that part out. Do you have any ideas to make it work?
Do you have any fundraising ideas or opportunities? Let us know in the comments below!
Today we signed up for a Flower Power fundraiser. This site sells bulbs and seeds for your garden and donates 50% of every sell to our journey! I like this because it is free to sign up and people are buying items instead of just giving you money, it feels less like panhandler then asking for straight donations.
The next fundraiser idea we are planning is a massive (hopefully) garage sale in early spring, and maybe a second one in late spring. I am hoping to have a banner made that has a brief story of what the garage sale is benefiting, and maybe also one or two other attractions such as a bake sale or raffle or something like that.
One fundraiser that I keep reading about is called an "envelope sale" actually it is called a lot of things, but in this fundraiser you have a set number of envelopes, for example 25. Each envelope is numbered 1-25 and guests choose an envelope and donate the dollar amount on the envelope, so #1 would donate $1 (or more), #2 would donate $2, #25 would donate $25, if every envelope is 'sold' 25 envelopes would raise $325, if 100 envelopes were collected at each amount the total will be $5,050, and 50 envelopes would collect $1,275). I love this idea, but the problem is I do not have that many local friends, so I would have to find a way to do it online, and I am struggling to figure that part out. Do you have any ideas to make it work?
Do you have any fundraising ideas or opportunities? Let us know in the comments below!