It’s the moment that becoming an egg donor starts to feel real. Matching with your intended parent(s) leads to the official start of your egg donation journey. The matching process at Growing Generations consists of these main components: the application, matching, screenings, and egg retrieval.
Application
After taking a quick online survey to determine if you are eligible, you will complete an application and online profile for intended parents. Before the profile goes live on our private donor list, you will also have a phone consultation to ask all of your questions about how egg donation works at our agency. Once this is complete, and you’ve been chosen to move forward, we will need you to sign some documents, provide photos for your profile and send us ID and education verification.
We encourage you to provide high-quality photos for your online profile. These images play a large role in the intended parents’ first impressions of you. Equally important are well-thought-out answers to the essay-question portion of your profile. Properly formatted grammar and appealing photos tend to help donor profiles be accepted more quickly.
Matching
The actual process of matching with intended parents begins the instant your profile is uploaded to our online database. As soon as your information is live, intended parents currently seeking a donor will receive an email alerting them that a new donor has been uploaded.
Some donors find that they are selected in a matter of days or weeks from profile publication. Other donors will have a much longer wait. A longer wait does not reflect your desirability as a donor. Intended parents are often seeking very specific traits in a donor and can be very picky in their selection processes. We ask you to be patient as you wait to be chosen. You don’t need to plan your life around waiting to be selected.
Once your donor profile has been chosen, you will receive an email or phone call from Growing Generations. Please note that you will not be given information about the family who has chosen your profile. However, you will be allowed to ask about their family type (gay/straight, married/single) and if they reside internationally or within the United States, but that is all of the information that is typically shared. In rare cases, the intended parents may ask to meet you, usually over a video call. If this is the case, you will be compensated $250 for your time.
Next Steps
It’s important to respond to communication with Growing Generations staff promptly after being selected. We will first inquire about any dates you are unavailable for upcoming screenings and egg retrieval. The entire donation process hinges on these dates, so we’re happy to plan around your schedule.
Once dates have been agreed upon by the intended parents, and we have the necessary paperwork and funding in from the parents, you will be introduced to your case specialist. This person is a Growing Generations employee who will be with you for the rest of your donation journey. He or she will help you through the screening and paperwork phase, including a psychological screening that may occur where you live or at the clinic where your retrieval will take place. Once your results have been reviewed and accepted by the intended parents, you’ll move along to your medical screening. The medical screening will be completed at the clinic where your retrieval will take place.
After you have been cleared to move forward, you will be given a legal referral. The legal team will contact you to draft the contracts between yourself and the intended parents. Following contract completion, you are considered matched and ready to begin the medical processes leading up to the egg retrieval.