When people on forums and groups ask for agency recommendations, I always mention Nightlight Christian Adoptions. Even though we didn’t sign with them, we probably should have. Why did I like them so much?
- Despite the word “Christian” in their name, they do not discriminate on the basis of religion or sexual orientation.
- They do not charge different fees based on a child’s race.
- At the time (2011), their fees were more reasonable than those of other agencies.
- They allow gender specification.
I recently went to their web site to jog my memory, and I was happy to find this statement in their FAQs:
What is your agency’s philosophy about open and closed adoptions?
Our agency recommends open adoptions as we believe it is the healthiest situation for all members of the adoption triad (i.e., birthparents, adoptee, and adoptive parents). We are open to creating a dialog and educating families who are apprehensive about open adoption. We rarely have a birthmother who is considering closed adoption. If after discussing the possibility of open adoption, you strongly feel that you would like to have a closed adoption, you may want to work with another agency.
Another reason to like them!
Their web site is also a lot more straightforward and honest than others. I have a post in the works about some of the doozies I’ve seen on other web sites.
Holding to the Ground 
Thank you for the information. Children are a tender issue. Need responsible organization to control. I agree with your thoughts in the blog.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting!
i had a commenter recently who said he learned so much from my blog because they never talked about open adoption in any of his adoptive parenting classes, and a big WTF ran through my head. there really needs to be some standardization.
Oh my! That’s one of the reasons I’m not keen on facilitators – there usually isn’t any kind of orientation or support. We had to take webinars on adoptive parenting and parenting transracially to pass our home study, but I don’t recall if there was any information about open adoption.
Yes, standardization would be lovely!
We considered using Nightlight around four years ago because we were interested in their new embryo donation program. Turns out this agency was very reluctant to work with us because we are a same sex couple and Nightlight openly stated they couldn’t accept our application because they will never accept a donor parent open our family structure. Needless to say, we ended up going through a fertility clinic in our state for the process. Maybe this agency is a good fit for someone that has a more “traditional” family structure…
That’s very much not what I was told about the domestic adoption program. I specifically asked about same sex couples and they said they worked with them. I’m very sorry to hear about your experience.