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Important Changes to the Eternal Family Program

Over the last several years, America World’s Eternal Family Program has helped many of you raise money to offset your adoption costs. This program has helped many families overcome the financial barriers in their adoption process and we will continue to offer it as a way to help unite children with families.

As you know, adoption is often an expensive undertaking. At America World, our commitment to orphan care goes beyond adoption services to providing life-saving humanitarian aid for children under the care of our orphanage partners. We believe that providing this aid is essential to our ministry of caring for orphaned and vulnerable children. In order to better meet these commitments we are making a few changes to the administration of the Eternal Family Program.

The Eternal Family Program will continue to be open to all America World families who want to raise money for their adoption costs. In order to offset the administrative costs associated with tracking and processing the large number of contributions we receive, effective June 1, 2014 an administrative fee of 5% will be charged to each contribution made. Please note that the administrative fee will not apply to adoption grants received from qualified granting organizations. While this is not a significant fee in the grand scheme, it will help us to ensure the continued growth and effectiveness of the Eternal Family Program.

A second change that will be effective on June 1 affects cases where families raise more than their adoption costs. In such cases, the excess funds will be retained by America World and go directly toward furthering our ministry to orphaned and vulnerable children.

Finally, we are no longer able to retroactively refund fees your family paid to America World prior to receiving Eternal Family contributions. Contributions received through the Eternal Family Program may only be applied to fees incurred after contributions are received.

Many of you have been successful in raising funds for your adoptions under the previous system, and we want to reassure you that we will continue to honor the system that existed when you began fundraising. If you have an Eternal Family Program balance prior to the June 1 implementation date, your family will be grandfathered in.

Thank you for your understanding. If you have any questions, please contact Andrew Brown at 703-356-8447, Ext. 131.  

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