unbelievable

We got an email from the adoption grant manager tonight - they denied us again for the same confusing reason. o_O

"Less than 50% of the total reported adoption costs have been funded. This includes the assumption that all liquid assets such as savings will be applied to the adoption costs."

I just cannot believe we were denied for this. We only requested a grant totalling 19.75% of our adoption costs. The revised application I submitted actually itemized every single penny we have and where we got it from, clearly showing we've handled over 80% of the costs already or have saved for them.

After the failure of our yard sale, this is such a blow.

:(

* Update 9/4 *

I spoke with the grants manager today. She was very nice and explained that apparently it comes down to the figures in certain fields on the form. Even though I explained on the form that we've paid all expenses to date and have saved for most of the remaining expenses to come in Serbia, all they do is type the amount paid to date and the computer calculates the percentage - which is less than 50%.

So, we're going to fill out the form a different way this time and it will be reviewed the first few days of October. By then we'll probably have bought our plane tickets and we just bought our 3000 Euros for our facilitator fees so we should have spent over 50% anyways.

We're not counting on anything and will continue to plug away at savings and fundraising but I will maintain a little hope that our persistence with this grant will be rewarded. :)