Houseparent Outreach Update
New Song’s houseparent outreach marketing program is now in full swing, with connections being made with dozens of employment sources across the country. What began in the second week of January as by far the most thorough, comprehensive effort we’ve ever made to find houseparent couples is now, two months later, beginning to produce some promising results.
Over the past two months several of our staff have focused on this outreach effort as their top priority, collectively devoting more than 100 hours to identify prospective candidates. So far the marketing campaign has included:
•Emailing 2,800 New Song supporters asking for their help with reaching out for houseparents
•Emailing 500 Truth At Work members requesting their help with the outreach effort
•Placing ads in two national Christian magazines (Christianity Today, circulation of 120,000; World Magazine, circulation 100,000)
•Communicating with alumni departments of 25 seminaries (letters, calls and emails to each)
•Reaching out to the alumni departments of 12 Midwestern Christian colleges (letters, calls, and emails to each)
•Connecting with 8 missionary sending organizations (letters, calls, and emails to each)
•Postings on 15 job boards and employment websites
•Reaching out to 12 Indiana homeschool networks
•Advertising on two south-central Indiana Christian radio stations
•Continuing to network with pastors and others through personal meetings
Upcoming marketing efforts will include mailing postcards to New Song’s 4,800 ministry supporters encouraging them to help us, and requests to an additional 50 churches asking pastors to put our need for houseparents in their church bulletins (In November we sent 90 letters to churches). We also hope to attend missionary conferences and reach out to missionaries directly through LinkedIn. In addition, we’ll continue to develop new houseparent outreach activities in the coming weeks.
We’re starting to see some good results from these efforts. In the past three weeks we’ve been contacted by 15 couples who are interested in learning more about houseparenting. As of the time of this article (early March), we’ve spoken with four of these couples, all of whom were very nice couples who are concerned about the plight of fatherless, neglected children.
Please stay connected with us through our website and through our email updates to keep up to date on our houseparent outreach effort. You may sign up to receive email updates about houseparents to stay informed.
We appreciate your continued prayers for New Song and look forward to caring for at-risk children soon, in God’s perfect timing.