Why Is International Adoption SO Expensive? (Part 1)

We regularly receive two questions about our adoption. The most common question is, “Why Ethiopia?” (check out Why NOT Ethiopia? to read my response). The second most common question we get is, “Why does international adoption cost SO much?” It’s alright. You don’t have to hide your shock when I tell you that our adoption is going to cost roughly $40,000. When we first added everything up, the figure shocked me, too.

            We get some interesting reactions when we disclose the estimated total of our adoption, such as, “Isn’t that just a rip off?” “That’s just child trafficking!” and, “You know, you could spend that money better by [insert a thousand other ways we could spend a huge amount of money].” We also hear a lot from people who would genuinely love to adopt internationally but are afraid of becoming part of some racket. Hopefully, the following will help relieve some of those concerns.

Fundraising Flops

            Fundraising has been a necessary part of our adoption journey. We have been extremely blessed by the generosity of others, and the amount of money raised at some of our fundraising events has floored us. But every now and then we have an idea that completely flops. One such idea was selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

We had been talking for a couple of weeks about doing a Krispy Kreme fundraiser. You can buy a dozen doughnuts for $3.75 and sell it at their suggested price of $8, thus making a $4.25 profit. To participate, you have to buy a minimum of 25 dozen. We had a coupon for 20 gift certificates if we bought a minimum of 100 dozen doughnuts, and even though t

hat was lot of doughnuts, we would only have to sell 44 boxes to break even. No big deal, surely. Saturday was going to be Sweetest Day and we decided that would be the perfect opportunity for a doughnut fundraiser.

We contacted the store where we had done our bake sale last year and asked if we could do another fundraiser. They said sure. We knew we were taking a risk (100 dozen doughnuts is not cheap) but they’re doughnuts! Everybody loves doughnuts! And it was Sweetest Day! People were going to be looking for sweet stuff anyway. AND we have two completely adorable little boys! Who could refuse when a three year old comes up and says, “Would you like to buy some dough-uts?” Well…. Apparently…. My kid is not as cute as I think he is ;) That in addition to a few other problems made this the most hilariously disastrous fundraiser we’ve done yet.