Finding Friday - Part 3: Pass-Along Cards

Before I start, I'll reiterate the love and respect we feel for our children's birth mothers, and for the many birth mothers we've met along our adoption journey. The purpose of these efforts in "finding" is to help make a connection with an expectant mother who has chosen to place her child for adoption, not to pressure or judge any woman who has found herself in the difficult position of an unexpected pregnancy. Choosing between adoption and single parenting is a very personal and sacred decision in our eyes.

Finding Friday - Part 3: Pass-Along Cards
In Finding Friday part 1 I talked about letting all your friends and family know that you are certified to adopt through an email blitz and/or a holiday newsletter. This is a great first step, and probably the most important.

Getting yourselves online (see part 2) by setting up your online agency profile, as well as an adoption website or blog is also essential. Having information about yourselves online makes it easy for people to pass on your information, and allows a prospective birth family to find out a little about you without the need to contact you first.

It can also be helpful to set up a non-identifying email address specifically for adoption. We chose an address that doesn't include our last names, and most email accounts let you change the settings so that your last name doesn't show up in emails you send out. We have no problem sharing our names, email addresses, cell phone numbers, etc. with our children's birth mothers, but we are careful about what we make available to the whole world.

We also set up an 800 number through Kall8.com so that anyone can contact us from any phone - even a pay phone. We don't have our number posted online for privacy reasons and to avoid prank calls, but having an 800 number played a crucial role in Ruby's adoption and we were so glad we had one set up.

Pass-Along Cards
Once you have a variety of ways in place for people to contact you, pass-along cards are a great way to spread the word that you are hoping to adopt. We included our adoption website, email address, and agency online profile. You could also include your 800 number. We loved our cards designed by spacesforfaces.com for our cards, and weve heard of others using vistaprint.com.
You can pass these cards out everywhere you go. We included a few in each of the Christmas newsletters we sent out so our friends and family can have them handy if they hear of an expectant mother considering adoption.

You can leave them with your check at restaurants. I've left them at bus stops/bus seats, redbox kiosks, gas pumps, rest stops, and in free newspaper boxes. We never had a contact come from leaving them at these random places, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen, and we wanted to open any doors we could.

You can also ask to post them on bulletin boards at libraries, grocery stores, laundromats, apartments, cafes, car washes, etc. Leave some with your health care professionals - OB/GYN, pediatrician, dentist, etc. Hair dressers are great resources as well (Here is an example of a recent successful placement involving a hair stylist and pass-along cards). Get creative! At around 5 cents a piece for your cards, it's not a big investment to spread them around.