How to Match Your Adoption in 2024

The adoption world is changing. And if you don't have multiple different types of your adoption profile and share it multiple times a week, it's going to take longer for you to match. It doesn't matter if you're working with an adoption agency, or consultant, or are self-matching. Everything comes down to you having different types of profiles and sharing them many times a week. 

I recently conducted a study of my clients who have matched over the last eight years to understand what different types of profiles they had, how often they shared them, and how long it took for them to match. 

Now before I share those results with you, let's level set on the word match. Matching means an expectant parent picks you. That doesn't mean the amount of time it takes for a baby to come home. Because an expectant parent may pick you when she's six months or six days pregnant. So matching simply that an expectant parent picks you. 

So let's get into the results. My clients who had four different types of profiles, and shared them on average four times a week matched within nine to 12 months. My clients who were primarily working with adoption agencies, who only had two different types of profiles, and only shared it either through their agency or maybe once or twice a week themselves matched within 12 to 18 months. 

Now, what are the different types of profiles? How should you be sharing it? How often should you be sharing it? And really, how does that all come together? That's exactly what I'm breaking down for you in this blog post. 

So first, let's start by understanding what the different types of profiles are. You might also see me refer to them as adoption profile tools. 

An Adoption Profile Book

Let’s start with the most old-school, basic profile type that most of us think about, which is an adoption profile book. An adoption profile book is mostly used these days by some old-school agencies, attorneys, or consultants as a way to physically share your profile or your story with an expectant parent. 

One big secret tip that helps my clients match faster is taking that profile book and including a QR code that helps someone get easily and quickly to your website so that they can watch your video. We’ll discuss more about that below. 

But when it comes to the profile book, here are a few things that you should keep in mind. You should be focused on different elements of your story on each page. But you want to make sure that the whole thing comes together as a story. Your profile books should feel like one cohesive unit that is engaging. But it is also important for you to know not everybody wants to read. That's why including that QR code inside that profile book is a helpful way to get someone to your video and photos and to learn about you differently. This could ultimately help you match much faster. I have clients who come to me and say that the agency is telling them that it's going to take a year or longer to match. Then within just a few short weeks or months, they're coming back and saying we matched and the agency is just blown away. Then when I asked to see other profile books, or if I look at the agency's website and look at other profile books that they have there for people, they don't have links or QR codes where people can engage with those profiles differently. 

So what I can tell you is that when I talk with expectant parents, 85% of them want to see a video. They want to hear your voice. They want to see you in action. Having a QR code inside your profile book when you're working with an agency or a consultant can help you match a lot faster within that agency or consultant’s pool. Especially when those other profiles don't have QR codes inside their books or the option of seeing videos, photos, etc.

An Adoption Profile Website

The next type of profile we're going to talk about is your adoption profile website. You can think of this as being similar to the adoption profile book. But it’s on the web, and can be accessed from the palm of your hand from any location. When I talk with expectant parents, and I talk about either websites or books, they tell me that they don't want to lug around a book because it's so bulky and heavy. 

And quite honestly, if they're just starting to consider adoption, they don't want to risk someone finding that book. But by visiting a website and learning more about it, it’s easy for them to conceal their adoption plan by clearing their browser history or closing the tab. 

On the adoption profile website, you want to treat the content similar to a book. It’s a bit longer form than what you would find on social media or a flyer or business card.

On that profile website, you want to break it up into logical chunks about your family. You want to tell your story. You want to tell more about what you'd like to do as a family. And then you want to talk about each family member individually. It also gives you a great opportunity to bring in things like references. There is real power in having other people speak on behalf of your family. And in fact, expectant families that I've talked to tell me that it is really important for them to see what your village has to say because they also want to get to know your village as well. 

So on your adoption profile website, what's important is that you have the opportunity for people to get to know you. Another tip that's important that I know makes a big difference for my clients is making sure that your profile is what's called mobile optimized, which means it looks good on your phone. I cannot tell you the number of people who will send me their profiles to review and it's a website they've built themselves because you can tell it kind of looks cheap and doesn't have a good cohesive flow either to the content or to the design itself. But then when you look at it on your phone, it's horrible. You have to scratch pictures up and you have to try to zoom in to read the text. It’s a bad experience.

I'm all about saving money and DIY things when it comes to building your profile elements if that's something that you have expertise in. But if it's not my friend, just know that it's hurting you way more than it's helping you. 

Including Videos in your Profile

Now this next tool is one of the unsung heroes of adoption profile tools. And that is video. When I polled expectant parents and asked them what different types of profiles they wanted to see, they replied that they picked a family that had a video over a family that didn’t have a video. Why? Because they found it easier to get to know them. This a big deal. Having an adoption profile video, or multiple videos, really does help people get to know you differently. You may be wondering what should be in the video and where it goes. This video would go on your website and it would go on social media. Heck, you could even list it on YouTube unlisted and just have a QR code that you have on a flyer or in your book to get people there to watch it. 

Now, in this video, what's important is that it is cohesive with your other profile elements. It should tell the same story that you tell in your book, on your social media, or wherever else you're sharing your profile. It must look and feel the same. So if you're using a particular type of font, colors, or things of that nature, you want to use those in the video as well. Then you do want to repeat photos and stories between all of those other profile elements. 

I often have clients that ask if they should repeat the story.  The answer is yes. Repetition builds trust with the expected family. It also helps their brain remember the information. Now, I also spoke about the different types of profile videos that you might want to include. I would always suggest that you have one profile video that is just getting to know your family as a whole. This is who we are and this is why we want to adopt, and here are some things about our family and our life. 

The other type of profile video that expectant parents tell me they value is from your references. 

Even though you may not be sure that your references would want to record videos for you, you’d be surprised how easy it can be for them. 

I give my clients a script that they can give to their references to follow. The script is easy to follow and says, in short, “This is who I am, this is why I’m speaking to you, and this is what you should know about these potential adoptive parents”. Creating your profile video for either yourself or for them can be way easier than you think. Just sit across from a window that has beautiful natural light spilling into the room, set your phone on a stack of books about eye level, and just begin speaking. You can always go back and edit out all the items, and remove all of the takes that you don't want people to see. it is normal to feel nervous as you start your video, my friend.

Adoption-Specific Social Media Accounts

The next type of adoption profile I suggest you have is an adoption-specific social media account. More specifically, I would recommend Facebook over Instagram. While a lot of people do use Instagram, and it is a highly popular platform, more of my clients are matching on Facebook because of the shareability factor. With Instagram, you don't see a whole lot of sharing and reposting and things of that nature. My clients primarily use Facebook because their grandma will share it and other adults will share it. The sharing of all of that from a social perspective leads to more connections than someone just reviewing a static post on Instagram. 

Now, you can certainly use Instagram along with Facebook. Facebook Meta makes it easy for you to post between the two platforms and you can schedule the content between the two. It doesn't hurt to do that. But the platform you want to be active on rather than just scheduling will be Facebook because of the shareability factor. 

Why do you need an adoption-specific Facebook account? That is because you don't necessarily want somebody scrolling through all the things on your personal Facebook profile to get to know you. So somebody randomly tagged you that you went out on the weekend and had dinner with them. That's not necessarily part of the story that you want an expectant parent and potential adoption match to be focused on. You want them to be focused on the part of the story where you have fun with your friends and family and that you have a tight-knit community in your local area that you are a part of. Those types of things are the stories that you want to curate. You don't want to see that you went out to the barbecue joint on Saturday night. That's not part of the story. 

The other is obviously from a privacy perspective, there are a lot of scammers that do prey on hopeful adoptive families on social media. So it can be helpful to have your adoption-specific public profile separate from your personal profile, which you might prefer to keep private.

Of course, once a birth family places their child with you for adoption, you may wish to share your personal profile with them. But that’s your choice at that point. To share your profile during the matching process, it’s better to have a separate adoption-specific profile.

So what needs to be on this adoption profile that is specific on social media? Again, you want to tell your story. I teach my clients to create their story as an outline. Think of stories you might want to share with a potential match about your family, your friends, your community, etc. 

On social media, potential matches want to read a little bit about you. They want to see the pretty pictures. They want to flip through the carousel of images. And then if they want to get to know you from there, then they're going to click out to your website. So make sure to link to your website from social.

Sharing Your Profile In Real Life

 All right, now let's talk about the final profile types that I suggest that you have, which are ways to share this in real life. Now, I know this is gonna sound weird, because you're like, why do I need a flyer or brochure or business card as a profile? And in those things, I really can't say much about my family. So why would I use them?

You should use them because it is a way to share your profile with other people. So whenever it comes to sharing your profile, you want to think about where are some natural places that you go to every day where you could also potentially intersect with somebody who could be considering placing a child or somebody who would know someone who will be placing the child. This could be places like the bank, the dentist, the doctor, restaurants, or the laundromat. And what you want to think through is, what is a natural thing to put there that someone could be exposed to that could share it with somebody else, or go and look at it themselves. 

Here is an example from my adoption.  We told our OBGYN that we were considering adoption. And so having a simple brochure there about our family allowed him to pass it off to an expectant parent who came in and said, I'm pregnant, I don't know my options, I don't know what to do. And he was able to give them our information as potential adoptive parents. 

Here is another example from a client. We made this simple flyer that just had their picture and a headline that said “hoping to adopt”. And then it had a QR code with a simple arrow that said scan more to learn about us. Very, very simple graphic. And she put that up at a laundromat. In just two short weeks, she brought home her baby. 

So you want to think about where you go and what natural ways you could be sharing your profile. Could you give a business card to your dentist so they could share it when someone casually mentions someone in their family is pregnant and unsure what to do about it?  It becomes an easy part of the conversation at that point because they can easily share that information and your card with that person to share with their family member.

Asking your friends and family to share your information is also important. It doesn't matter if you're working with an adoption agency or a consultant and you think it's their job to match you. Yeah, it is their job to match you. And they will match you on the timeline that ultimately ends up working out from their perspective, meaning they have a whole other list of families. As expectant families come in, they kind of work on that list right based upon who matches from a characteristic perspective. But nobody is going to be as motivated to match your adoption as you and your family will be. You'll be surprised at how often your friends and family who truly care about you are willing to share your profile on your behalf. And that is the real secret sauce here, my friend. If they're willing to share your profile, you've got to make it easy for them to share it and you've got to make it easy for an expectant parent to get to know you. 

The combination of those three is ultimately what leads my clients to success because they put themselves in the driver's seat to match their adoption.