Can we go a step back: What was the thinking behind the rebbe giving pple money for tzedaka? Is the mitzvah just to give money (ie: anyone's money?) or to give your own money to tzedaka?

you are asking about when the Rebbe gave out dollar bills to people? I dont know. Recipients of the dollar were meant to give that as tzedaka?
I dont know how the dollar worked.

People would "redeem" the dollar with their own money, usually more than a dollar, and give it to tzedaka. (the actual dollar bill the rebbe gave would be kept) So every dollar the Rebbe distributed to give to tzedaka, resulted in even more than he distributed being given away.

i am more of a skeptic and would want to know a lot more. when she got pregnant, was she taking hormones, doing IUI, IVF, whatever? if so, i, in my cynicism, would be more likely to thank the doctors than the rebbe.

I believe the reason why the Rebbe gave out the dollars to be given (or exchanged for others which were given) to tzedaka is that when 2 Jews meet something beneficial should result from the meeting.

Ben, as someone who went through many years of infertility treatments, I can tell you that treatments are by no means the total picture of what it takes to get pregnant. If it were the case, it would take each couple exactly one try while using assisted methods to get pregnant (or, at the very most, one try at each type of treatment). Of course Hashem plays into it.

In our case, we often wonder if there is any single factor that was "the one". Was it finding that new doctor? Was it the holistic treatments we were getting in tandem with the standard methods? Was it being a little more fit? Or could it have just been that after seven years, Hashem decided we were doing everything in our power and granted our request?

I don't have an answer, but if someone wants to put that credit - that single action that made the difference - into column of a tzaddik's bracha, I'd buy that. I will admit, though, that I, personally, would have a hard time attributing it to a bracha received TWENTY years earlier.

Is there an expiration date on a tzaddik's brachah? I think the point of the story is that the Rebbe practically guaranteed them a child, and his words were not disappointed. Is the tzaddik's bracha ever the sole reason something happens? The Rebbe connected his brochos with doing a mitzvah. A bracha is like rain: if the field is plowed and sown, it will have an effect. And yes, doctors can only make the natural channels through which Hashem's brachah can be fulfilled, but they by no means guarantee success, as is well known.

Can we find some people who were blessed with something they didn't receive?

I know a few such cases, but oddly they don't make the pages of Mishpacha magazine.

I received brachas in the past that didn't, and won't, happen. I don't remember all right now but one immediately comes to mind and it expired and can no longer happen. I was given a bracha by a tzaddik that I would have a boy within a year and make a pidyon haben (and he would be the kohen at it).
My eldest is a girl (born a little more than a year after the bracha) and I have other kids as well. So that bracha is impossible to ever come true at this point.

Rafi, you must have done something wrong to make that bracha turn out false ... :-)

I can think of one way for them to be sure that it was the Rebbes bracha that caused the pregnancy to be granted by Hashem - and that is if they were Meshichists! There's no way that a bracha given by the Mashiach himself wouldn't come true ... 1/2:-)

Mark

Have you ever heard of the Rebbe's brocha going unfulfilled?

Sometimes the creation of a proper keli takes a while.