While reading through an adoption fundraiser page on Facebook, we found out about shoe fundraisers to help fund our adoption.  Hm, I thought, this is a good idea and an opportunity to help someone else.

We spent 90 days collecting shoe donations from all over.  Those shoes are then weighed and we receive a certain amount per pound.  The shoes are then re-used/re-purposed by microenterprises in third world countries.

In order for us to get the full amount per pound, we had a set goal of 100 bags of 25 pairs of shoes.  That’s 2500 pairs of shoes.  Two thousand, five hundred.

We set it up and then sent out a plea to Facebook.

And boy did they respond!  We had local businesses, doctors and dentists offices set up.  Our neighbor asked people in stores…like normal shoppers.  She was also responsible for getting boxes set up in local gyms!  We even had a friend drive eight hours to bring us the stash she scored from a local consignment sale (over 13 bags!).
We had several pick ups, thankfully, so we didn’t have a garage of over 100 bags for 90 days.

It was definitely a family affair.  The kids were super troopers pairing shoes and rubber banding and bagging them.

When all was said and done we had over 115 bags and made over $1100!  This had to be one of our most favorite fundraisers because it brought our community and our family together.  It was definitely a lot of work but it was so incredibly worth it.