These are awesome!
I was struck a few days ago by a campaign in which a woman (friend of a friend) was hoping for $10K to go to some place (Croatia, I think) for some last-ditch effort to get pregnant. In her pic, I think she's at LEAST in her 40s, and somewhat overweight(so, double-whammy for conception and smooth pregnancy). I had so many problems with this, I did not even know where to begin. Mostly I thought of two things, though. 1) LOTS of children need a parent in the US. LOTS and LOTS of children around the world would give limbs, eyes, etc to get a shot at growing up in the United States. Adopt. Foster, then adopt. Whatever. If your goal in life is to "be a MOM" as her begging story describes, you do not need to pull all the stops for a pregnancy in your 40s. Especially since the plan was for an entire donor embryo so it wouldn't even be her genetics, anyway. 2) Just what do you think daycare and a normal birth costs? Around $900/mo and $15K last I heard, which may be a few years old. If you can't come up with $10K of savings, how are you going to pay at least that for daycare each year, or potentially more for a birth (dep on health insurance)? Sounded like she was doing this solo, so yeah, there's gonna be daycare. Never mind all the other expenses that come up with bearing and raising a child, even for Mustachians. No, just because you've always WANTED to be pregnant doesn't mean other people should pay for that.
I actually did have sympathy for a local business one of these, however. This was an indie movie theater that had started by purchasing (I think) used equipment. Then after a few years, the film industry announced they were going all-digital and the theater did not have the sudden capital to install the digital players. I understand that a business needs to grow some capital for material improvements, and I think they actually had been planning to upgrade eventually, but the sudden imposed deadline would not have been possible. Then they would have been stuck in a catch-22: with no films available to play on their equipment, they would not be generating any revenue. I believe they ran it like a true fundraiser: donors received a set of free movie tickets and other branded stuff (beer glass, Tshirt etc) depending on their level of gift.