[tobeafamily]

Some other ideas:

1. Post a flyer in your car windows. Amazing how many people will walk up to a car and read what's in the window. Ask your friends & family to do the same. Keep it simple "Loving couple hopes to adopt. Please call Sue & Joe anytime at XXX".

2. Post flyers (with tearoffs) on public bulletin boards at landromats, grocery stores, delis, anywhere they are.

3. Leave business cards in public places - restroom stalls in movie theaters, malls, concert venues, sporting events, on gas pumps, with wait staff tips at restaurants, in your envelopes with bills, at ATM machines, on bulletin boards, with your deposits at the bank - give to the teller if you go to the counter, at airports, train stations, on buses & subways. Anywhere where there is a lot of traffic. Ask friends & family to do the same. DH and I each set a goal to leave 10 cards a day places - as much a stress reliever as a networking activity. Though we did get calls, and continued to get them almost a year after we stopped distribution!

3. Tell everyone. I mean everyone. Your postal carrier. Paper delivery person. Colleagues at work. We developed a master email list of everyone we could think of, asked them to help and kept them updated on our progress - every potential contact, quiet weeks. It was one of those 'update' emails that connected us to our son's bfamily.

4. Insert a short 'ad' for yourselves in the tag line of your email, ask friends & family to do the same.

5. You can advertise in some 'national' papers like the Thrifty Nickel and USA Today. Can't say what success you'd have.

6. Have a garage sale and tell everyone who comes that you're adopting. Ask friends/neighbors who are doing the same to do this as well.

7. If you send holiday cards, include some business cards, a "Dear expectant parent" letter and a note asking them to pass these on to everyone in your list.

For us, the key was to keep ourselves present, and keep ourselves active. The lady who helped us connect was an old work friend (at a company I'd left a few years before) who I still traded jokes with on email. She said if I hadn't kept in touch on the adoption, she likely never would have thought of me, but she had just gotten an 'update' from us when she heard....

Oh and if you advertise, do remember to answer the phone AT ALL TIMES. We had friends who got a call one Sunday morning from a new mom - had given birth the day before. They were the FIFTH ad in the paper that day and the ONLY ones who answered their phone. Within an hour they had met this young lady and her husband and all had agreed on placement. Before the first of the other potential aparents had even called back....

JMHO, best,

Regina