How To Find an Egg Donor: The First Steps To Take
If you are considering egg donation to build your family, Everie’s experienced team will support you through the entire egg donation process. From answering initial questions to educating recipient parents about the benefits of disclosed donation, we’re ready to help you find your egg donor match and the donation type that fits you best.
Below, we’ll outline the steps you can take to begin your egg donation journey.
Step 1: Why Parents Seek an Egg Donor
People choose egg donation to build their families for a variety of reasons, including:
Infertility
Existing health conditions or genetic concerns
LGBTQIA+ family building
Choosing egg donation as your path to parenthood is a personal decision. Our compassionate team can guide you through the process.
Step 2: Choose an Egg Bank, Egg Donor Agency (or Both)
As you research you will become familiar with two different options for egg donation: an egg bank (which offers frozen eggs) or an egg donation agency (which offers fresh egg donations). Everie Egg Donation is a third option, offering both frozen and fresh egg donation options for parents.
Everie is a fresh and frozen known egg donor program. This means that recipient parents who choose to work with us have the most options available to them: They can choose the type of cycle that works for them – frozen or fresh – and they have the ability to choose known egg donation (and the level of communications and information shared), no matter which cycle type they choose.
It’s important to understand the benefits of a fresh or frozen egg donation before choosing your path.
Step 3: Determine the Type of Egg Donation You’d Like
Everie offers three types of egg donation to parents and egg donors: known, semi-known, and ID release donations.
Known Egg Donation: This type of egg donation welcomes an active, ongoing relationship between the egg donor, the recipient parents and any children they create together. A known egg donor chooses to disclose her full identity and contact information. In addition to meeting with the family she is helping to grow, she is open to cultivating a relationship with them.
Semi-Known Donation: Both parties are willing to meet—virtually or in person—but choose to limit which parts of their identities are disclosed. You may not know your donor’s last name, for example, and contact details are not exchanged.
ID Release Egg Donation: The egg donor and recipient parents’ identities are kept confidential from each other but allow information to be released to any children conceived from the donor’s eggs when the donor-conceived is of legal age.
Why don’t we offer De-Identified Egg Donation? Simply put, anonymity in egg donation is a misnomer, as there is no way to guarantee a donor’s identity can’t be found. At Everie, our process is designed to be forward-thinking, and we aim to support everyone in the process (recipients and donors alike) to engage in matches that provide open pathways and sharing of information over time. Our goal is to change the landscape of egg donation from transactional to one built through meaningful connection.
Step 4: Search an Egg Donor Database
Searching for the right egg donor may feel like the most overwhelming step.
For some, having an idea of what they are looking for in an egg donor (or not looking for) can help narrow the search. Everie’s donor database makes searching easy, allowing you to filter criteria to find the right match.
Examples of filters and searchable criteria include:
Cycle type (fresh or frozen)
Type of egg donation (disclosed or non-disclosed)
Availability
Prior egg donor
Ethnicity
Eye color
Age
The Everie team can provide guidance on how to define your egg donor selection criteria. You can register for our egg donor database and begin your donor search. Learn more about how to begin searching donor databases and what to look for in a donor on our website.
Step 5: Match With an Egg Donor
The time will come when you find her: the right donor match to help you build your family. When this happens, your Everie support team will facilitate a connection with her by sharing your parent profile with potential donor matches.
At the heart of our approach to egg donor matching process is the Mutual Match™. Traditionally, egg donors are excluded from the matching process and often don’t know who uses their eggs. With Everie, our donors play an active role in the decision-making process. Mutual Matching™ gives donors a voice to say “yes” to the parents interested in them and “yes” to whose families they will help grow.
Step 6: Egg Retrievals and Embryo Creation
Once you match with your donor you will move one step further on your path to parenthood. The type of donation cycle you have chosen—fresh or frozen—will determine your next steps.
Frozen egg donation: Parents will utilize the frozen eggs to create embryos with their fertility clinic. The embryo(s) will then be transferred into the recipient parent or a gestational surrogate.
Fresh egg donation: The egg donor will have a medical screening and receive her retrieval protocol. She’ll begin her medications and be monitored on her progress until she’s ready for her retrieval. Once her eggs are retrieved, they could be fertilized at that point or frozen to be fertilized later. Once created, embryos can be transferred into the recipient parent or a gestational carrier.
The type of egg donation and cycle type you choose is personal to you and your family-building plans. The Everie team will support you on whichever path you take. If you have questions about egg donation, we’re happy to answer them. You can email us at info@everiedonation.com.
FAQs
Do I have to find an egg donor near me?
Your egg donor can live anywhere and does not need to live near you or your clinic. If you choose a frozen egg donor, her eggs will be shipped to your clinic. If you choose a fresh egg donor, she will travel to your clinic for her medical screening and egg retrieval.
Do I have to meet my donor?
The level of communication you choose for your egg donation is up to you and your donor. While Everie promotes disclosed (known) donations, we will support you at whatever level of disclosure you are comfortable with.
Can I do an anonymous egg donation?
While you can choose a de-identified donation type—where no identifying information is exchanged between donors and parents and no communication happens—anonymous egg donation doesn’t really exist anymore. With the advancement in genetic testing kits and social media, it’s very hard to truly remain “anonymous.” However, we will uphold our role in not sharing any information between parties.