Membership Drive

We have an exciting announcement!
As you may or may not already know, half of all membership money we collect from you goes to help support the international organization. This means that $15 of every $30 membership goes to our local group. For the month of June, Babywearing International is letting all BWI groups keep 100% of any new memberships collected during this month!

What does this mean?
We use your membership money to help purchase new carriers for the lending library. For example, one $60 mei tai currently takes us 4 memberships to purchase. For this entire month, it would only take 2 memberships to pay for that same mei tai. This is perfect timing for us as we get our new group up and running. So, if you've been thinking about joining but haven't taken the plunge, this is the time to do it! Spread the word and let's try to bring in as many new members as we can this month. We would love to purchase more new and exciting things to add to our lending library for you! For more about how the library works see below.

If you are a current member and would like to get in on the fun, you can! Anyone can renew this month for another calendar year and we still get to keep the whole $30! Yay!!!!! Please let us know if any of you would like to do this!

Giveaway!
We are going to be doing a fun giveaway this month. Every membership purchased during the month of June will be eligible for one entry in the drawing. If you bring a friend to a meeting and your friend becomes a member, both you AND your friend will receive entries in the drawing. Look for more details on this soon!

Carrier Trade-In
We will also be offering a carrier trade-in program for the month of June. While we welcome and appreciate carrier donations any day of the year, during June you will receive a 12-month membership credit when you donate a gently used carrier to our library! There are a few restrictions on this: The traded in carrier should have a retail value of at least $50. We are looking for carriers that are a good fit for the library, and acceptance will be at the discretion of the leaders. We're excluding narrow based carriers (such as Baby Bjorn carriers), stretchy wraps, and pouches; as these items are not requested as often, and we have enough to meet our current needs. The carriers can be mailed to a leader, dropped off with a leader, or brought to a meeting! Note: Carriers traded in for the promotion will not be provided a tax-deductible receipt, since the BWI membership offered in exchange includes a benefit of services to the recipient through the lending library.

Where to find us:
We will be having at least 3 meetings during the month of June with a potential 4th meeting to be added. Meetings are posted under the events tab and will be in Rockford, Sugar Grove, and DeKalb. If you would like to meet up with a leader to donate a carrier, we have leaders living in Montgomery, Elburn, Algonquin, and Harvard. We also have a babywearing dad who works in Rockford and would be willing to meet up to take carrier donations. We hope to see you all this month!


How the Lending Library works
We have a library of baby carriers that we take to every meeting for people to try out. If you are a member you can take one carrier home each month to try out. Memberships are optional and cost $30 a year. You don't have to be a member to come to meetings and try carriers out but being a member is a great opportunity to see how different carriers will work for you and your little one. You will also help us add to our library. We like to keep it full of a variety of different styles and brands for you to try.