Exploring egg sharing to build your family – the 101 with Cofertility

Thinking about using donor eggs? This is the egg sharing program to know

Watch our expert webinar session with Lauren Makler, CEO and Co-Founder of Cofertility, the human-first fertility ecosystem that empowers everyone to own their own family-building journey.

From Lauren’s own personal journey to what’s behind the egg sharing program model, she’ll share the 101 on using donor eggs to build your family.

Discover how it works, distinguishing it from traditional egg donation, learn the perks of utilizing donor eggs through this collaborative process. Explore the criteria for egg sharing and uncover how Cofertility can be your guiding light throughout this journey.

Get notes and insight on:

• What egg sharing is, and how it works
• How it differs from standard egg donation
• The benefits of using donor eggs in this way
• Egg sharing criteria
• How Cofertility can support your family building journey

When you’re ready to explore their range of donor profiles, connect with Cofertility – they’re here to help you find your match, offering a you-centered approach, baby guarantee, and lifetime support.

Transcript

Eloise Edington 

Welcome. Hi to those who are joining. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Lauren Mackler, who is CEO and co-founder of Cofertility.
Welcome!

Lauren Makler
Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Eloise Edington 

Of course! We are going to be talking about exploring egg sharing to build your family — the 101 with Cofertility.

It’s an area that I’m intrigued to learn more about, as I’m sure other people who are joining and watching this back are too. So thank you so much in advance for your time today.

Lauren Makler

Yes, absolutely. Hi everyone, my name is Lauren Makler. I am the CEO and one of the co-founders of an organization called Cofertility. Cofertility is a new kind of egg donation platform.

We essentially help facilitate egg donation in the sense that intended parents who need an egg donor to conceive can come to Cofertility and can find that donor through us. However, our model is really different.

Traditional egg donation, especially in the United States, is facilitated through a model that involves cash compensation for the donor. So the intended parent typically pays the donor $10,000 or more as part of the egg donation process, and that compensation goes up depending on someone’s background—whether that’s their heritage, or their education, different things like that.

And that, frankly, is something at Cofertility that we don’t believe in. I’ll talk more about this later, but I just wanted to give you the “What is Cofertility?” before I tell you about myself.

So essentially, at Cofertility, we don’t do cash compensation for egg donation. Instead, the donor keeps half of the eggs retrieved for her own future use, meaning that she has access to egg freezing while helping grow another family at the same time.

This means that ultimately, the experience ends up being less transactional for intended parents and less expensive. This is something that we brought into the world and launched in October of 2022, and I feel so proud of our team for how much we’ve been able to accomplish in that time.

Back to myself — I guess this venture for me is absolutely, I think of it as sort of both a labor of love and really my life’s work. Prior to starting Cofertility, I spent eight years at Uber.

I helped launch Uber across the East Coast of the United States in the very early days, when people thought I was crazy that I was working at this taxi company. But I just had this feeling that it was going to be huge and it was going to have a big impact.

Then I actually saw an opportunity for Uber in the healthcare space. I saw data that said in the United States, millions of people miss a doctor’s appointment every year because they don’t have access to a reliable ride. And I felt like, well, Uber has reliable rides in spades — so how can we do something about that?

So I pitched our executive leadership team on a business line called Uber Health that essentially allows healthcare organizations to request rides and deliveries on behalf of their patients.

It’s tailored to an elderly and low-income population. That’s now a massive arm of Uber. I really got hooked on creating impact at scale through thinking about old problems in new ways.

I’m someone who had my own health and fertility journey that inspired me to want to start Cofertility.

I’ll give you the quick version. While I was building Uber Health, I was diagnosed with an incredibly rare abdominal disease. I had masses growing throughout my abdomen that needed to be removed, and was told that I’d have to have a number of surgeries where I would most likely lose my ovaries in the process.

I was pretty devastated at that idea, being someone who had hoped to have children someday. So I asked, “Can I freeze my eggs? What are my options here?” And just given the nature of my disease and how little they knew about it, they said, “We don’t feel comfortable freezing your eggs, but perhaps egg donation could be the route for you someday if you do end up losing your ovaries.”

I wasn’t ready to have children at the time, but I’m a total planner. So I started researching egg donation to see what my options might be, and I was really put off by what I saw.

I thought that it really just felt very transactional in nature — this idea that you’re paying someone to do this, and that the more specific you get with the type of donor you want, the greater the cash compensation. That just didn’t feel in alignment with me and my values and the way that I wanted to hopefully grow a family someday.

I also felt it was a little bit weird that all these donors were listed as anonymous. I was like, how is that even possible in this day and age, when things like 23andMe, Ancestry.com, and the advent of at-home genetic testing exist?

It just left me feeling pretty turned off by the whole process. Ultimately, my sister decided to freeze her eggs and donate them to me ahead of my surgeries in case I needed them someday. Long story short, I ended up not losing my ovaries.

However, I did then get to live my life knowing what it felt like to have eggs put away — eggs on ice — and ultimately ended up conceiving my now two-and-a-half-year-old daughter without using my sister’s eggs.

But the minute I held her in my arms, I was like, I have to go build something in this space. I felt that intended parents really deserved more options — more human-centered options that felt in alignment with how they wanted to build their family, given how many people grow their family through egg donation today.

Also, more women should have access to egg freezing. I got to live my life without the pressure of my biological clock. I got to date without thinking about, “Is this the father of my children?” I got to have that freedom, and I felt more women should have access to that.

But I was frustrated that for so many people, the best time to freeze your eggs is when you can least afford it. The best egg quality, best egg quantity — it’s when you likely have the least amount of funds to do something like this. So it felt like this solution, this model of egg sharing but at scale, could really help address the problem for a lot of people.

Eloise Edington 

Thank you so much for sharing your story.

It sounds like you’ve been through a lot, and also to be able to share your professional experience as well as your personal experience in the space is invaluable.

So amazing what you’ve built, and we’re looking forward to hearing more about it.

Lauren Makler

Yeah, so I just wanted to share a little bit more about who we are — sort of why we’re any different. I touched on that a little bit, but I think that we really consider what we do to bring value to two separate audiences.

It’s this idea that, while helping an intended parent grow their family, at the same time we’re also empowering a donor to go preserve her own fertility and to think about her own future family planning.

Because of this, I think — because it’s not for cash compensation and because these women aren’t doing it for income — they’re not inclined to do this with lots of families. They’re inclined to do this with one family and help them meet their family-building goals, while also considering their own future.

As a result, the donors that we’re able to bring onto our platform are incredibly ambitious and thoughtful, and they’re very unique. These are women who think about this process as like, “Oh, this is one way to go enable the career that I have in mind, or the education that I have in mind. And what a nice thing to do for another family at the same time.”

We try really hard — and you’ll see this if you sign up for an account on our platform — to not just showcase someone’s physical attributes or photos of them, or their physical attributes and stats, but to really dive into who they are as a person and what makes them unique.

We really pride ourselves on our profiles, and I hope that’s something that comes through when you take a spin through.

The next thing that we also really pride ourselves on is what we call our “baby guarantee.” What we do is called fresh egg donation, meaning that when you match with an egg donor, that is when she then goes through the process of the egg retrieval — meaning that you have the opportunity to fertilize those eggs on the day of the retrieval and create embryos immediately.

This is compared to frozen egg donation, where you’re like, “Okay, I want this person’s six eggs,” and they’re already frozen.

Then you have to thaw them, and then you fertilize them. Of course, some of those eggs can be lost in the thaw. But with this idea of fresh donation, we don’t necessarily know how many eggs you’ll get at the end of the process.

So it was important to us that we offer what we call our baby guarantee. This baby guarantee is on the coordination fee that Cofertility charges as part of this process.

The idea is that if anything prevents you in this process from bringing your baby home, we will rematch you with another donor at no additional cost. That’s our goal — we want you to have a baby.

This is something that is really hard to find in fresh egg donation and something we really pride ourselves on. I’m happy to talk more about that in the Q&A section as well.

We are also really proud to have incredible medical advisers — reproductive endocrinologists who are at the top of their field and well respected in the space — as well as a fertility psychologist, all of whom have extensive experience working in third-party reproduction and with LGBTQ families especially.

We are proud to work with any and all intended parents who come to us — whether they are coupled or single, whatever the reason is that you need an egg donor, we’re here for you.

A lot of folks ask, “How does it work?” And I think this is sometimes a question especially around fresh egg donation — what does the process look like if somebody hasn’t gone through the egg freezing yet?

This is just a quick breakdown of that process:

The first step in our process is that an intended parent creates an account with us. It’s free to create an account. We do not gatekeep any details or information. That’s so important to us. I hate that so much — it’s cringey that some organizations make you pay to even see a donor’s full profile. I just don’t think that’s right.

With us, you create an account, answer a few questions to help us better understand who you are so we can help you match. As soon as you do that, you have access to all of our donors’ profiles. Everyone who’s listed on our platform is available to match immediately.

These donors are women who’ve already been through initial screening with us. Our clinical operations team reviews their application, which involves not only their lifestyle and behavioral factors, and their medical history, but also the medical history of their grandparents on both sides, parents, siblings, half-siblings, and any potential offspring.

These donors are ready and excited to match. Our donors are based throughout the United States, and we know that our intended parents come from everywhere. Geography should not be a limiting factor.

So say you’re based in Seattle, and your favorite donor — the one you want to move forward with — lives in New York City. That is not a problem. We have a lot of different options and ways that you can work with that donor. It could involve doing the cycle at a clinic local to the donor, where the intended parent becomes a patient remotely of that clinic.

It could also involve the donor traveling to your clinic in Seattle. There are a lot of different ways that we work out the logistics, and this is what our team manages all the time.

We’re happy to talk through that if that’s something people want to learn more about. But geography should never be a limiter. It’s hard enough to find a donor that you like; you shouldn’t be forced, based on geography, to only have somebody who’s within a certain mile radius of your clinic.

Once you place a hold on the match — and on our website, you can actually place a hold right there — this is a really important step. Our donors match really quickly. As soon as you place a hold on the match, it removes the donor from the website so no other intended parent can even see their profile.

A lot of times we have intended parents who are like, “We decided to sleep on it, and we woke up in the morning and the donor wasn’t there anymore.” The reason for that is because someone else matched with her. We don’t share this to pressure anybody, but so that you’re not surprised if you had your eye on someone and suddenly she’s not there anymore.

The minute you feel good about the donor, you place a hold on the match. You’re then assigned a Member Advocate from the Cofertility team. These Member Advocates are truly amazing.

They are incredibly well-versed in third-party reproduction and the ways in which this process works. They serve essentially as your project manager for the entire process.

They are the person working with you, the clinics, and directly with the donor to make the entire thing happen. They will connect with you to make sure they understand all of your preferences for the match. They’ll then connect with the donor to make sure she’s in alignment with all of those preferences.

You also, at that point, have the opportunity to do what’s called a match meeting. You don’t have to do this — it’s totally optional — but if you want to, along with your Member Advocate, you can have a call with the donor directly. We provide conversation starters to help you get to know one another and to decide for sure if this is the person you want to move forward with.

It’s a mutual match. We want to make sure that the donor also feels comfortable with where her eggs are going. This shouldn’t be a blind process for her either.

Once we have the mutual match confirmation, the donor goes for additional in-person screening. The FDA has requirements around when some of the screening is completed in relation to an egg donation. We also want the clinic and the physician overseeing the match to feel bought-in that this donor is a great fit for you as the intended parent.

That screening is scheduled. It also involves a genetic carrier screen as well as a psych eval. Once that’s done, you and the donor enter into a legal agreement phase. This typically takes one to two weeks. Cofertility helps to provide third-party reproduction attorneys who help manage this process as well.

Once you have legal clearance, the egg retrieval is scheduled. On the day of the egg retrieval, the mature egg yield is split in two. Half of the eggs go to the intended parents, half of the eggs go to the donor. If there’s an odd number of eggs, the odd egg goes to the intended parent.

You can fertilize those eggs right away, or you can freeze those eggs and ship them — whichever you prefer.

Once you have embryos, you can either do further genetic testing or schedule a transfer.

A lot of people want to know in that initial phase — choosing a donor — it can feel pretty overwhelming. It can feel daunting. We usually have anywhere from 150 to 200+ donors at any given time, and we add new donors every day. So it can feel overwhelming — like, how do I choose? Where do I even start?

It’s important to think about a few different things. Of course, the first questions you might want to ask yourself are: What traits are important to me or to me and my partner, as we are thinking about what type of donor we want? Those could be physical traits, those could be personality traits.

Our profiles go as far as to indicate: Do they consider themselves a right-brained person or a left brain person? Are they an introvert, an ambivert, or an extrovert? How would they rate themselves on a scale of one to five in athleticism, or in their singing ability, or in different things like that?

As well as like what color hair did you have as a child? Anything you might want to know, we probably have asked. Also, if you think of questions that you do care about that aren’t included in the profile, we’re always more than happy to reach out to the donor and get that answered for you.

Starting with what do we even care about, just so that you’re not looking at 150 plus profiles without any indication, is a good place to start. I also think thinking about heritage or ethnicity is something that’s important to get alignment on before you start searching.

I think some open-mindedness and flexibility can be helpful so that you’re not totally closing yourself off to donors who might otherwise be a great fit for you.

Then sometimes, again like I mentioned, it could be personality traits, hobbies, or professional goals. We’ve had intended parents in the past who maybe both of them worked in STEM and they were like, “We really want a donor who works in STEM,” just so that we have more chance or likelihood of feeling like we can relate to this child someday.

Or I’ve had intended parents who were like, “We just knew when we saw her smile. It didn’t matter anything else; it was just that smile that really was something we connected with.” Or we had the same favorite book and at that point, we just knew this was the donor for us.

I would say that no two intended parent experiences are the same in terms of what drew them to a specific donor or what helped them choose.

I do think the next two questions are also pretty important, and this will dive in a little bit further, but it’s important to know upfront: What type of relationship do you want to have with the donor? Or what type of relationship do you want your child to have the enablement to even have?

The next slide I think gets into this a bit more, but basically this idea that there are varying degrees of what at Cofertility we call disclosure, and the type of relationship you want with the donor you want your child to have access to might help you in the beginning stage of even searching for your donor.

I can talk more about this.

Eloise Edington 

Someone has just asked, “Is donation known or anonymous exactly?”

Lauren Makler

Great question!

At Cofertility, we use the words disclosed and undisclosed. Frankly, we’re kind of allergic to the word anonymous, and the reason we don’t like that word is because we just don’t believe it’s possible in this day and age.

So again, with at-home DNA testing, even if your donor never takes a DNA test and your child takes one someday, there’s a world where they can figure out who the donor is if their great uncle took the test.

We want everyone who’s going into this process to go in with eyes wide open knowing that anonymity isn’t really possible.

At Cofertility, we use the word undisclosed to mean that you’re not sharing contact information and you’re not sharing full names between the intended parents and the donor. Disclosed is the opposite of that, where it means you are sharing contact information and names. However, it doesn’t mean that you need to use them.

We call it a spectrum because there really are varying degrees of what the relationship between the two parties and what the communication between the two parties can look like. You as the intended parent get to say upfront, “Here’s what I’m looking for in this relationship.”

We have some intended parents who choose a disclosed relationship, where they know one another’s names, they have contact information, but they agree upfront with the donor that they’re not going to be in touch, that they aren’t planning to have a relationship.

They’re doing this exchange in case the donor-conceived child someday wants to reach out to the donor and have access to further information.

In other cases, we’ve had intended parents who maybe go into it with that feeling, but then get to know the donor in the match meeting and then are like, “Oh my gosh, we thought we didn’t want any contact, but she seems great.

We’d love to send her an email once a year with an update, or know when she has children someday,” so that we can just stay informed and feel like we have that level of information if our child wants it someday.

On the other hand, some folks do go into it with an undisclosed relationship feeling like that’s what’s best for them, and that is totally okay too. It really has to be something that sits well with you and feels right as you grow your family.

We’ve consulted quite a bit with an organization called the US Donor Conceived Council, a nonprofit made up of donor-conceived people who advocate for the rights of future donor-conceived people. They feel very strongly about disclosed donation being ultimately what’s best for the donor-conceived person.

What they find is that having an undisclosed donation can mean your child may have to search for information about that donor, may want to hire a private investigator, may really feel frustrated by a lack of information someday.

We do want to consider the donor-conceived perspective, but our feeling is that as long as everyone is thoughtful, aware, and making a decision eyes wide open, we absolutely support whichever process or relationship you decide on.

It’s important to note that in either situation, the legal agreement between the intended parents and the donor is a great place to be very specific about what the spectrum of communication or what that relationship is that you would like to see.

It can be completely unique to you or something standard, but all the third-party reproduction attorneys we work with are very thoughtful about the best setup for those relationships.

Research does show that there are benefits to disclosed donation, and that the ability to get to know the donor might be something that you and your child do feel value in later in life.

The Donor Conceived Council says that if you enter a disclosed relationship, even without regular ongoing contact, it means your child is less likely to be rejected someday if they do reach out to the donor.

So even though anonymity isn’t a thing, of course you could find out who the undisclosed donor is, but if they had said, “Hey, I signed up for an undisclosed donation,” it’s more likely that they may say, “I don’t want to talk to the child someday.” That’s something to keep in mind.

On our website, when you’re looking at donors, it says in their profile what type of relationship with the intended parents they are looking for.

You’ll see they’re either exclusively wanting disclosed, exclusively wanting undisclosed, or open to either. This is important because at Cofertility, we’re never going to ask a donor to change her mind.

If she says she wants disclosed and you as the intended parent really want undisclosed, it’s not a good fit, and we’re not going to ask either party to change their mind.

If you’re both in alignment, that’s great — a perfect match.

If she says either, it usually means she’s willing to honor what the intended parent wants.

The last thing I wanted to share is that I know for so many people going through this journey as an intended parent, it can feel incredibly lonely and isolating, and you probably think you don’t know anybody who has donor-conceived children.

What I’ll tell you, from my experience starting this company, is how many people tell me: Literally this happened at the dentist last week. My dental hygienist, I told her what I do for work, and she said, “I don’t talk about this often, but my two kids are donor conceived.”

A former coworker of mine told me the same thing.

There are definitely more people than you realize going through this.

At the root of it is knowledge — really being able to propel you and help you make these choices and decide what’s right for you.

We’re really proud of the content on our website. It is constantly refreshed and created from inputs we get from real intended parents.

Questions we get regularly, we write answers, and in most cases, our fertility psychologist helps with this content.

It can be just a wealth of information.

I don’t want you to feel alone in this process.

At any point, you’re able to get on a one-on-one call with someone from the Cofertility team who can help you navigate this process.

It really feels like egg donation is fertility’s last taboo, and we’re here to change that.

Eloise Edington 

Thank you so much for sharing. It’s incredible to see that it comes from a place of shared experience, as we said before.

There’s so much that goes into this from a psychological point of view, including taking on board donor-conceived adult views on thought process, disclosing, for example.

I guess it would be useful to understand: When you talk about the process, when people are signing up, what stage of the journey are they normally at?

Lauren Makler

Do you mean on the intended parent side?

Eloise Edington 

Yes, yes. On the intended parent side

Lauren Makler

We find that a lot of the people signing up and creating accounts with us are people who maybe have had that conversation with their reproductive endocrinologists where they’ve heard, “Your best path forward might be donor eggs. It’s probably time to explore that.”

Often, we’re the first place someone comes where it feels like, “Oh wow, okay, I feel like I could actually do this.”

In other cases, maybe other models they see out there don’t resonate quite as much or feel as in alignment with how they want to grow their family.

Quite often, it is when they’ve had that conversation with their doctor.

Sometimes it’s after unsuccessful rounds of IVF or IUI.

In other cases, it’s diminished ovarian reserve, where it’s just like, “Hey, we knew from the start this was going to have to be the route we take to grow our family, given the facts we have.”

Sometimes it’s not following an unsuccessful round.

In other cases, it could be cancer survivors or folks who have had early menopause.

I just met with an intended parent who went through early menopause in her mid-20s and is now in her late 20s pursuing egg donation.

There are many reasons somebody might come to us needing an egg donor, and we’re here for it.

Eloise Edington 

You touched on fresh eggs earlier. Is sharing possible with frozen eggs? Are there advantages to either?

Lauren Makler

As of right now, Cofertility offers fresh egg donation. We are hoping to offer frozen soon, so stay tuned for that.

The advantages I would say to working with fresh egg donation I touched on a bit before, but essentially, when you’re working with a traditional egg bank, typically you’re getting six eggs in a lot, sometimes up to eight, and hopefully all of those eggs are thawed properly and you’re able to fertilize them all.

But there’s a chance that that’s not the case and that you ultimately don’t get what you need from that initial first lot and then you end up needing a second lot of eggs.

At Cofertility, on average, from one split cycle with a Cofertility donor, intended parents are getting between 12 and 13 mature eggs. That’s almost twice, or more than twice in some cases, what you’re getting with a frozen egg bank. Of course, it’s an average and not a guarantee, but that is the outcome we’re seeing, which is excellent.

The advantage truly with fresh egg donation is that you can fertilize those eggs the same day they are retrieved.

You don’t have to thaw them, and they’re able to fertilize right away, which there’s some benefit to. But of course, there are people seeing success with both options, which is why we’re pursuing both. I would not turn yourself off to one or the other.

Eloise Edington 

Great, thank you. What about age limits? Any age limits for egg sharing?

Lauren Makler

An egg donor needs to be between — and this is in the US — between the ages of 21 and 34. We absolutely follow those requirements. We also look at a donor’s AMH to make sure that her ovarian reserve is of a quantity that appears to really make sense for someone to do a split cycle. We also look at her follicle count.

On the intended parents’ side, Cofertility does not have an age limit for egg sharing or for using an egg donor. However, it’s important to know that some clinics in the US do have age limits.

The age limit can be either for carrying a pregnancy, whether it’s the gestational carrier or you as the recipient mom. Some just have age requirements, sometimes it’s of the combined age of two intended parents as a couple.

At Cofertility, we really honor the rules of each clinic we work with, but often if one clinic isn’t open to it, there are others who may be.

Eloise Edington 

What about diversity of donors? Does this affect times?

Lauren Makler

Good point, sure. At Cofertility, we are super proud of how diverse our egg donors are.

We have donors that represent over 55 ethnicities. What’s nice is we hear from so many intended parents, “I can’t believe you have more than one donor in this category.” We really pride ourselves on choice.

I will be honest though, there are certain heritages where donors match much more quickly than others. We just have a lot of demand in certain categories. There are times we have it so that you can set up email preferences on our website. Every time a new donor who meets your criteria is added, you get an email.

There are certain backgrounds where donors will match within 30 minutes of being listed on the platform, so it’s just about being ready to match as soon as you see a donor come through who meets your criteria or that you are ready to work with.

Of course, we add new donors every day, so while you might feel like they don’t have anybody today who meets your criteria, there’s a good chance we might tomorrow or the next day. It’s not like we add donors once a month and you’ll be waiting that long — it’s just a matter of time and also how quick you are to pull the trigger.

I hope that helps answer that.

Eloise Edington 

Definitely. When an intended parent signs up, how much support do they get from Cofertility in terms of matching and what they’re looking for?

Lauren Makler

When you sign up for an account, someone will call you for sure. Usually within a couple days of signing up, we’ll call you.

If that’s not something you want to wait for, we have intended parents who sign up and email us almost immediately asking specific questions about specific donors or if we can help with their search, which we’re more than happy to do.

We also offer the ability to set up a Zoom call with someone on our team where you can ask any and all questions specifically about Cofertility or specific to your search.

We’ll get on and talk about what you’re looking for in a donor and can show you donors either on the call or send a follow-up custom email with a curated list of donors that meet your criteria.

I love doing that; it’s probably my favorite part of my job. I consider them teasing me that I’m the chief matchmaker rather than the CEO, just because that’s truly so fun to do.

Eloise Edington 

Amazing. What happens if someone’s clinic can’t collect enough eggs?

Lauren Makler

Typically, that’s part of why we feel so strongly about the clinical screening phase. When the donor, we have the AMH upfront so we’ll know if she’s likely to be a good candidate for a split cycle.

The antral follicle count and initial transvaginal ultrasound tell us quite a bit about someone’s fertility.

If at that in-person screening her antral follicle count isn’t consistent with the AMH, your member advocate and the physician overseeing the match are likely to tell you, “This donor isn’t a good fit for a split cycle. Let’s find another donor and we’ll rematch you.”

Something important when selecting your donor is: Yes, choose your first choice and be excited about her, but have openness knowing that biology isn’t a perfect science. Be open to the idea that it may have to be with another donor.

If that’s the case, it’s really about remaining focused on the outcome and being flexible on the journey.

Typically, in that scenario, we can stop the cycle before it gets to the point where there aren’t enough eggs.

If it turns out to be an anomaly where the donor’s egg quality doesn’t work out, or sometimes sperm quality impacts whether you have viable embryos, we’ll rematch you with another donor.

We can’t refund the cost you’ve spent with the clinic because you’re spending that with them, but we can make good on the Cofertility coordination fee, which we’re really proud to offer.

Eloise Edington 

Amazing. At what point would someone be parting with money?

Lauren Makler

When you match with a donor, you place a hold on her with a $500 deposit that goes toward your Cofertility coordination fee. This is paid, I believe, within the first two weeks of holding the match.

Then we set up an escrow account where the next phase of funding gets put into that account. It’s a bit of a pay-as-you-go model.

You pay for the upfront screening. Once the screening is cleared, you pay legal fees. Once the legal process is done, then you pay for the cycle, and so forth.

You’re not paying for the cycle until the donor is cleared.

Eloise Edington 

Someone asked: Does the donor pay for their own egg storage, or is that covered by the intended parents?

Lauren Makler

Great question. The second bucket of fees at Cofertility — I’m happy to share our cost sheet as a follow-up — is the administrative expenses.

Lauren Makler

That includes things like it’s a total — it’s like $5,700. It includes the intended parents’ lawyer, the donor’s lawyer, IVF complication insurance for the donor, and a one-time storage fee for the donor’s half of the eggs.

We’ve negotiated a long-term storage rate for up to 10 years of storage that the intended parent covers on behalf of the donor, but again, it’s far less than what you would pay than cash compensation.

Eloise Edington 

Great, that’s really useful to know.

What about geography? Who can you help or who is located where?

Lauren Makler

Our donors are all based in the United States, and we can help intended parents from anywhere. It’s really one of those things — as long as you’re comfortable with the cycle happening in the United States, we can help make this work.

Just yesterday, I spoke to an intended parent in Australia, so we can make this happen no matter where you’re located.

Well, I had treatment in the States with sperm donation, so there we go.

Eloise Edington 

Can someone know who receives their eggs?

Lauren Makler

This is based on the arrangement decided in the early parts of the mutual match.

That’s when you find out if the intended parents and the donor are both comfortable moving forward with either a disclosed donation or an undisclosed donation.

They both have to be in alignment for us to consider it a mutual match. If the donor wants disclosed and the intended parents want undisclosed, that’s not a good fit, and we’re not going to move forward with that match.

But if they both want disclosed, then yes, they can have that information about one another.

Oftentimes, our intended parents will write a short letter to the donor, sharing a bit about themselves to even the playing field a bit, given how much the intended parents know about the donor from their profile.

You can do this without sharing your name or anything like that, but it really does give the donor even more reason to be super excited about participating in this process because they get really invested in you as the intended parent reaching your family-building goals.

The more they know about the type of family that you are part of and the type of family you’re growing, the more enthusiastic they get about making that dream a reality.

Eloise Edington 

Amazing. Do you offer support for intended parents using donor eggs and donor-conceived children in the future?

Lauren Makler

Yes, our member advocates are truly integral in this whole experience. They really do get to know the intended parents quite well and are able to offer them support.

Our medical advisory board is also very involved, especially including our fertility psychologist, who is really supportive and thoughtful about what it means to tell your child they’re donor conceived, how you share that with other family members if you want to, and we’re starting to build out different programming and things like that for intended parents who go through the program and are on the other side — like, okay, now we have this baby in our arms, now what?

We care so much about making sure this isn’t just transactional — it’s not like, “Here, we get you to your eggs and then we’re done.” This is something where we want to help provide resources well into the future.

Eloise Edington 

Amazing. Lastly, can someone change their mind about sharing their eggs?

Lauren Makler

Yes, we give our donors quite a few opportunities upfront to change their mind.

They fill out their application, and after that, when they’re accepted into the program or clinically accepted, we have a one-on-one interview with our team where we get to know them, make sure they are who they say they are, and also have an informed consent call to help them understand what they’re signing up for.

At that point, some women really do drop out, and I’m thrilled about that because I’d rather them drop out then than later in the process once they’ve matched with an intended parent.

At that point, they’re sent an agreement with Cofertility where on paper they’re saying that they know what they’re agreeing to and that they really want to move forward. Even then, at that point, we have women who change their mind.

We really want the people participating in our matches — both intended parents and donors — to be people who are really bought in and ready to do this. Usually, by that stage, there’s little changing of minds, but people are really bought in.

Eloise Edington 

Great, well thank you so much, Lauren, that was absolutely fascinating. Here on the screen you’ll see ways to contact the team. You can email directly at support@cofertility.com. You can also visit their website cofertility.com.

Is there anything you want people watching — back or live — to know about setting up an account and starting the process?

Lauren Makler

Just that I wouldn’t hesitate, and I wouldn’t feel alone. Definitely visit cofertility.com and know that our team is on the other side.

I personally would be happy to get on a call and walk you through our process or help you find your match. We really want you to feel supported in this process, and we’re thrilled to be part of your journey.

Thank you.

Eloise Edington 

Well, thank you so much, Lauren. Fascinating. I do encourage people to check out the website and get in touch with the team as soon as possible to talk about next steps and get some advice.

Yes, thank you so much for your time today. It’s been a pleasure.

Lauren Makler

Thank you so much.

Thanks, everyone, for joining.

Eloise Edington 

Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye, bye.