We’ve read many stories about how adopting parents hold garage sales to earn money for their adoption. The garage sale is a creative solution to a common challenge for people who are trying to afford the high cost of adoption.
What the articles consistently fail to mention, however, is that the main benefit from the garage sale may actually be the awareness it generates for the adopting parents’ plans to adopt. When you consider how common it is for a match between adopting parents and expectant parents considering adoption to occur through mutual contacts (networking 101, right?), imagine how a garage sale can increase the number of people who know about a family’s plans to adopt.
- Friends and family who donated items for the sale.
- People in the neighborhood who saw signs advertising the sale.
- Anyone else who saw other advertisements that the family may have placed in newspapers, on Craigslist, or in the classifieds at their employer.
- Of course, the shoppers at the sale know.
- What if you get local interest from newscasters or writers? Consider everyone who reads the article or sees the TV newscast?
- A little press can snowball much more easily these days thanks to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
One story we read talked about how thousands of people had heard in a unique and memorable way about a family’s plans to adopt because of their garage sale and the publicity that it generated. If any of those people hear about a woman with an unplanned pregnancy who is considering adoption, who do you think they will think of?
