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I’m going to try to keep this short but include everything that could be relevant. I’ve talked with a few people close to me about it and they say I’m NTA but I want to hear some objective opinions and maybe get some insight into what might be going on from people outside of the situation.

My sister, we’ll call her Susan, is very angry with me/basically not talking to me after a conversation we had. I’m really hurt and don’t understand why. We’ve had issues in the past but nothing we haven’t gotten through, and I thought we were close.

A while ago she decided to adopt a child from overseas, which can cost upwards of $35,000, and one of her daughters, we’ll call her Lisa, started a Go Fund Me (GFM) to fund part of the cost of the adoption. In general I don’t like GFM or the philosophy behind it. I think people should work for what they want, not ask other people to pay for it. Even though I’m a bleeding heart liberal in some ways, I have a Libertarian streak. 

Having said that, it’s not always black and white and when Lisa started a GFM for an emergency dental surgery that sounded very scary over a year ago, I contributed to it, and I contributed to Susan’s adoption GFM in the last month because it’s a really good cause and adoptions are ridiculously expensive, but mostly because I love my sister and wanted her to feel supported. So I contributed to the first one because I was afraid my niece was basically going to die without the surgery (it was a huge tumor inside of her mouth, or something along those lines), and I contributed to the adoption one for the reasons I already stated. I will never contribute to another GFM again as long as I live.

Susan asked me to forward the GFM page to friends/put it on social media. I told her I don’t have social media and she said what about Reddit? (because I’m always sending her stuff from Reddit). I told her Reddit’s not like that, or at least not the way I use it. But I was trying to think of different ways to help her raise money, like doing a raffle or a race or something. I wanted to do something more quickly though and ended up making a donation and sharing the link with several close friends, 5 of whom donated. This was very hard for me to do because I really, really don’t like asking friends to do this kind of thing. Like I said I don’t believe in the GFM mindset to begin with, and I don’t like putting friends in the position of saying yes or no. But I did it for my sister despite feeling very awkward and uncomfortable, which I never told her about. So this might be important—she never had a clue how I feel about GFM, or knew that it was difficult for me to ask my friends. No reason to tell her that and make her feel bad. Either donate happily without complaint, or don’t.

Fast forward to the conversation. We were talking on the phone about a week ago and she told me she’s been having a really hard time. Our whole family is sad right now because my other sister’s husband, our brother-in-law, an amazing, wonderful person, died unexpectedly three months ago. So we’re all grieving for him and for my other sister. Our dad died last December too and even though (or because) I wasn’t close to him, it’s been hard, and I’m sure to differing degrees that was hard on Susan, too. But the bottom line is Susan has been really sad and emotional. The reasons behind why she wanted to adopt and why she ultimately decided not to after all are related to trauma from her past that she’s still working through. There is a lot more to this but the bottom line is she’s having a hard time, and we talked about all of this for maybe over an hour. 

As we were getting off the phone, I said “This is obviously not the most important thing about this situation, but can I ask what you’re doing to the GFM?” It’s in quotes because I worded it very carefully in my head first because I didn’t want her to feel I was discounting all the emotional things she's going through. She said that Lisa was the one who set it up and they were just going to shut it down and donate the money raised to the same adoption agency for the same child, but for the next person in line who wanted to adopt him. 

I suggested that they do a final post explaining briefly that the adoption wasn’t going to happen and what was going to happen to the money, so people would know. I told her I did not want my own money back at all, but that it would be nice to offer people their money back if that’s what they preferred, since although it was going to almost the same thing, it’s not exactly the same thing. Susan really didn’t seem to understand this and said that there was no way to make everyone happy. That even if they did make a final post explaining what they were doing, 50% of the people would still be unhappy. I said that might be true, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing to do. I said that it’s nice when people donate money to let them know what happened to it, especially if what they initially donated for—in this case Susan adopting a child—doesn’t happen. 

Susan said she didn't think this way. That when she donates to a cause, she knows she's "pure of heart" and she has good karma and she doesn't worry about what ends up happening to the money. I said that's not how I approach donating at all. That when I donate to a cause, I'm "pure of heart," too, but that I expect the money to go to what I was donating to and if it doesn't, I think that's fraud. Obviously she and I are on very different spectrums when it comes to charity, and maybe just in our approach to life? I don't know, maybe this is why I'm not understanding why she's so upset.

I said that for instance what about the GFM that Lisa started for the oral surgery over a year ago? The last I heard, as of a couple of months ago when I last asked Susan, Lisa hadn’t had the surgery, and I hadn’t heard any updates. My sister said Lisa had just had the surgery yesterday. I am wondering if this is what upset my sister, that I was asking about that. But all I was saying was that people like updates and to know how the money was used. So she said she was going to check with Lisa and see if there was a way to return people’s money for the adoption GFM and I told her there was no rush. I told her again I did not want my money back, but I wanted to offer my friends their money back in case that’s what they wanted. 

Susan did not seem to understand AT ALL why I was so concerned about my friends. But I felt responsible. Susan said “But all you did was send them a link to tell them this was available to donate to if they wanted to.” I said no, that’s not the way it is at all. They could give their money to a million causes. They only donated to this one because I’m their friend and they care about me, and by virtue of that they care about her. So I felt responsible. She did not get that, not a bit.

So 5 minutes after we get off the phone, I realize none of this is necessary. I call her back and tell her I want to do the donation to the charity, so I will pay my friends back, explain the adoption isn’t going through and so we wanted to return the money. But it will be out of my pocket because I am totally happy to donate to this cause. But my sister doesn’t want to do that. She says she wants to talk to Lisa. Maybe 15 minutes later she texts me and says she’s sending me the money and a few minutes later I have the full amount in my account—the money I donated (even though I said I didn’t want it back) and the money my friends donated. I emailed her that I got the money but I don’t know why she returned my donation , too, when I told her not to. I also didn’t tell her to return my friends’ money—I just wanted to offer it back to them and let them have a say. They probably would have said not to worry about it. 

So I feel like by handling it all this way she twisted what I asked for. I didn’t ask for my money back. I didn’t even ask for my friends’ money back. Just to offer to give it back if they wanted it. Why was that so bad? Why is it so hard to do a final post telling everyone who was kind and generous enough to donate what happened to their money? 

I told her about the site Go Fraud Me and how people use GFM to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing things like lying and saying they have cancer. Not that she’s doing that! Of course not. Just that it makes people cynical. I said in the email that it’s my own personal conviction that when you accept money from people for a charitable cause, you have to be a good steward of those people’s money. I said it that way so she wouldn’t feel I was judging her. It’s MY personal conviction.

But still I felt really bad because I know she’s going through an emotional time, and so I dropped off a really beautiful bouquet of flowers for her later that day. She wasn’t home so I left them on her porch and texted her letting her know I left her something. The flowers were meaningful because she told me during the conversation about how this summer she made everyone a bouquet of flowers from her garden and not one for herself, and this is related to how she never takes care of herself. So I got her fresh flowers. About four hours later she hadn’t responded so I texted and asked if she got the flowers. A couple hours later she responded very coldly. “Yes. Thank you. I don’t want to talk and want to be alone.” So I’ve left her alone but I feel her cold treatment of me is really unfair.

All I did was say that people who give you money o