Adopting a newborn baby is expensive.
Depending on which path you choose, whether you sign up with an agency or go the independent route with an attorney and try to find an open adoption match on your own, bringing a baby home can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
To help defray the costs, many waiting parents today are going online and creating their own fundraising pages through Facebook and GoFundMe.
Then there’s 9-year-old Kiefer Martin. The Fargo, North Dakota boy is raising money for his baby sister’s adoption the old school way—with a lemonade stand.
His mother, Emily, says their family has been fostering children for years. But now they’re looking for a more permanent placement.
“In foster care we have been having a lot of boys, and we have only had 2 girls, so we want a girl,” she says. “They want someone to come home to stay, so that’s our goal is to let them come home and stay forever.”
To reach his goal, Kiefer needs to sell a lot of lemonade. And though he still has a long way to go, he’s excited about the support he’s received so far.
“One person was just going to put in $1.00, but then he saw it was for adopting and then he gave us $10.00,” he says.
Kiefer’s fundraising campaign comes on the heels of the story about another 9-year-old named Tristan who sold hundreds of cups of lemonade and cookies to cover the legal fees of his own adoption.
After his story went viral, Tristan’s family raised more than $18,000 from in-person sales and donations through an online crowdfunding page—far more than the $5,000 to $10,000 they needed to adopt the Missouri boy.
The additional money has gone into an education fund.
Kiefer’s adoption story has just began, and nobody knows where it will end up. As he says, “we have to go pick up the baby where ever it’s born, and we said we would pick em’ up anywhere in the United States.”
With any luck, his fundraising campaign—and his parents’ plan to bring him home a baby sister—will be just as successful and inspirational.
Update to us from Kiefer’s mother via Facebook: “Kiefer is very excited to have his new baby sister home! He loves every second of being a big brother.”
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