The number of pregnant women coming to the agency seeking adoption for their children has dropped.
They need more money to send to the international programs to help with orphanages, but without additional money coming into the agency, it's very hard.
Many of the countries that our agency works with are experiencing their own problems; waiting parents are facing longer waiting times.
The agency has already tried to cut costs in many ways:
They are starting to do fundraising for the agency.
They are lookng at new ways to encourage pregnant women to consider adoption and choose the agency (Facebook, Myspace, etc.)
They are seeking donations from current waiting parents and relatives as well as families who have adopted previously.
They are raising their fees.
They are hoping that the fees, donations, and fundraising combined with new families that will hopefully come to the agency will be enough to keep the agency going for the next year.
We thought that they might be shutting down some of their offices or doing more layoffs. We hoped they weren't closing. We're willing to deal with the increase in fees. It could be much worse. They could be completely shutting down, and then we would lose the money we've invested. It would cost us even more (money and time) to move to another agency. Plus many agencies are facing these problems, too, because of the economy.
I'm glad that we know what's going on now. We'll deal with it. It's just hard. We're going to try to do some more networking in our community and amongst friends and family.
