If you’re wondering how you can best support your adoption agency this holiday season, here are some ideas.
This may not be relevant if you support one of those mega-agencies with million dollar endowments, of course.
But for smaller nonprofits like Abrazo, the best ‘lil adoption agency in Texas, end-of-year giving can be tremendously important. Every gift matters, here!
Abrazo doesn’t have a million dollar budget annually. Our agency owns no property nor stock. We keep the fees we charge for services well-below the national average. Our staff doesn’t drive Porsches nor live in Mcmansions. We have no deep pocket donors or billionaire board members we can call on to to cover any shortfalls at the end of any given year.
We’re not a church-affiliated agency receiving denominational support. Yet all of us who work here are women of faith. We know it’s by the grace of God and the generosity of our friends and families that Abrazo has been able to keep going for twenty-five years.
How to Support Your Adoption Agency Financially
We are a 501c3 organization, so any donations made to Abrazo are tax-deductible. And we make those gifts stretch farther than most. Because being a small nonprofit agency, donations do more here than most people ever realize.
Sometimes, to encourage workplace giving, some companies offer matching funds. Ask your employer if this is possible where you work? One AbrazoDad recently took a new job with a financial planning company. He was surprised to learn they offered a grant to help approved nonprofits. He nominated Abrazo, and just this week helped deliver an unexpected but much-needed corporate donation here.
Checks can be made out to Abrazo or designated for Abrazo’s Angel Account, the Abrazo/Mitchard Birthmother Scholarship Fund or the Abrazo/Wilkins Scholarship Fund for Adoptees & Birthsiblings. Gifts can also be made online through Network for Good or Paypal using this link. Or you can make a donation fee-free on Abrazo’s Facebook page.
These funds are used to offset the costs of medical equipment and respite care for special needs families. Donations also assist with burial costs in fetal demise cases, to provide medication for children in orphanages abroad. Financial gifts help provide post-adoption counseling out-of-state for needy birthparents. Donated funds have helped house homeless birthfamilies and adoptive families after devastating storms. Occasionally, these offset adoptive parent losses in failed matches or scam cases. They power post-adoption search and reunions, assist adoptee rights groups fighting for OBC access in Texas, and much, much more.
How to Support Your Adoption Agency Materially
ant to involve your child/ren, to help them learn the joys of giving? Why
not invite them to help you pick out and fill Christmas stockings, to be sent to Abrazo this month for distribution to the birthsiblings of babies placed for adoption here this year? It’s easy and fun. You decide if your stocking is for a boy and/or girl; pick any age group (this year’s recipients range from ages 2-17) and fill it with small, new toys, gadgets and/or snacks. Mail it to Abrazo no later than 12/20, and we’ll see to it that it gets delivered to a child who truly needs it. (Many thanks to the parents of Ty & Selah and Simon, Veronica & Bridget, whose kind donations this week will make the holidays merrier for several special birthsiblings we know.)
Or if you’re more of an “order-online” donor, then look up Abrazo’s AmazonSmile WishList for our upcoming Birthmother Homecoming Event, taking place in San Antonio in February, 2020. Every two years, we hold a very special retreat called “Homecoming” just for Abrazo’s birthmothers. It includes free self-empowerment workshops, tshirts, a catered lunch and a filled gift bag for every birthmom, so you can donate gift bag items to make the day extra memorable for those who attend.
Looking for more of an easy summer project? Donate 50 small toys, family snacks or corporate giveaway items for our Camp Abrazo packs, given to every birthfamily and adoptive family who come to our summer reunion.
How to Support Your Adoption Agency Publicly
Nonprofit adoption agencies like Abrazo don’t just need your financial and material contributions, welcome though they are. In this day and age, adoption agencies also need your spoken and printed support.
As social workers and counselors, we’re not always all that good at tooting our own horn. We do this work to help children and parents in need, not to sell our own services. And yet, the only way that small adoption programs get the word out about the success of their services is through their clients.
It doesn’t cost you anything to post a positive review or recommendation online, and yet it has a big impact both for those who work here and for those who are in need of adoption help they can trust. Whether you post on Google reviews or Yelp or Facebook (or all of them), your feedback provides assurance that adoption is still relevant, that agencies can be trusted, and that help is available.
Pay it forward! Help support your adoption agency, if you believe in the work they (we) do, because helping your agency helps us help others, too.