So, the weekend is almost over. Since we got our FSP up and running on Tuesday we have gotten $735 in donations. I'm happy with this but know we will need a lot more to be able to bring Sterling home. Therefore, I've already started planning (at least in my head) our BIG fundraiser.
We are going to plan a summer lake party. My goal is to get a few bands we know to donate their time and talent to come out and play at the lake house of one of our friends. We are going to **try** to get a local restaurant to cater for limited cost and also to get a local brewhouse to donate a keg or two. We will see how that goes. As part of this we will hold a silent auction or perhaps a raffle. I've created a letter I am sending out to 60 local businesses asking for support in the form of gift cards or product donations for us to auction off. We will see what kind of response we get. Hopefully it's decent.
I am also toying with the idea of making personalized charms for necklaces/charm bracelets/phone charms/key chains. These will need to be ordered. I think I can probably get away with selling them for $5. I am unsure about this idea because they won't make that much but I figure even I make $100 its $100 more than we had before.
We got permission from our church to run our letter in the monthly church bulletin. Luckily, Brian has friends at his school who are willing to spread the message on and try very hard to get people to help us. Brian's brother (Sterling's Uncle Paul) and one of my best friends (Kimberly) have been soooooo supportive and helpful in constantly posting our status and our need. Uncle Paul even made Sterling his own Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Bring-Sterling-Home/177540588966986) We are so grateful to all of these people.
I'm a bit in panic mode right now. Just reading other family blogs about how much money is really needed while you are in country is very surreal. We are probably going to need about $15,000 more than we have now - which is just a phenomenol amount of money. Even if we could get $10,000 I'd be happy and we could figure out the other pieces later. I pray for all the families in this situation. The average adopting family is not rich - most are middle class working families. Coming up with this kind of money is a challenge for all of us. What we do is spend a lot of time praying and talking to each other to keep ourselves on the Path.
Keep in mind, atleast he already had over $10,000 in his grant fund. That should help alot and that's $10,000 you don't have to raise!
ReplyDeleteYay! So cool. I wish we lived in Florida and we'd be there! Good luck!
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