My wife and I took very early retirements in order to adopt five young boys. The course we took would make a financial planner’s hair turn gray, but we believe that we were called to the work that we are doing. We live on my pension and subsidies from the state. In order to pay our bills without touching our savings, we have had to learn how to raise money.
Early on, a wealthy colleague that I knew from my working days unexpectedly offered to buy us a house suitable for our adopted family. That story has been told in a previous blog. The experience not only encouraged us, it started us thinking about raising funds.
In order to receive the funds for the house, it was necessary to form a nonprofit charitable organization. We did that. It was not too difficult to convince the IRS that our work fit within their guidelines. It cost $900 in accounting fees to complete the process.
Our grown daughter looked into how she could help us and discovered that Safeway and Kroger had plans which assist charities. The two grocery chains have programs in which customers have a card scanned with each purchase and one percent of what they spend is rebated to a charitable organization. We receive about $1000 per year from these companies.
One of my grown sons is an investment advisor for a large brokerage firm. They have a program which encourages their employees to make contributions to approved charities. We are beginning to receive donations from them.
In addition, friends periodically make donations. One close friend makes a very generous gift every month. Recently, we attended a large birthday party and a good friend slipped a check into my hand.
We have just made a decision which will be a budget buster if we do not get help paying for it. The public schools have failed us in providing for our boys. They need to be in a private school which will cost a lot of money, but it will meet our boys’ needs. So far, a foundation has given us a very generous grant.
We believe that if God calls us to a task, He will see that the needs are met. All in all, we feel pretty good about our little Mom and Pop organization.