”Anyone can become a sperm donor.” Wrong. It is far from ‘Mr. Anyone’, who can become a sperm donor, as many mistakenly believe. From initial application to final approval, potential donors are screened for everything from their sperm quality and overall health to their personality and motivation to become a donor. We only want the very best donors who have the heart and motivation in the right place and who want to help the childless fulfill their biggest dream of having children. That is why only 3-5% of all donor applicants get through the eye of the needle.

First, we are proud of the fact that the vast majority of our donors choose the ID release category. In fact, as many as 75% of our surveyed donors are ID release donors, which means they have chosen to provide extended information about themselves in their profiles. In addition, they have agreed to have their contact information passed on to potential donor children and possibly also meet donor children in the future.

Our donors are generally aware of what their duties as a donor entail and they show great care in their choice of donor category. Our donors keep in mind that both heritage and the environment help shape us as human beings and they sincerely want to give the donor children the opportunity to meet them to have any questions about the donor or themselves answered. As you can see in the quotes from the survey, one of the donors even puts himself in the place of a donor child and thinks that he himself would like the opportunity to meet his donor if he were a donor child himself. And then there are those of our donors who are quite openly looking forward to meeting an adult human being that he has helped put into the world.

Sperm banks vary greatly in their approach to pregnancy limits. At Born, we adhere to country-specific limits for donors who get distributed internationally. In addition, we have set a global pregnancy limit to max 25 or 75 families. It is very important to us that our donors have a real opportunity to live up to their commitment to a personal meeting with each individual donor child if they wish so. That is why we see in the survey that our donors have been with us for both shorter and longer periods. They are stopped as donors when they reach their maximum of 25 or 75 families.

Our donors are an essential part of the sperm bank. It is very important to us that we have an in-depth knowledge of our donors, and we prioritise getting to know them well before they can join our donor program. Personality and inner values are extremely important parameters when choosing the perfect donor match for your family, and we find it interesting to share the fact that almost half of our donors have a girlfriend who supports them in their duties as donors. And in addition, 20 % of our donors have children of their own, which we think testifies to great charity and helpfulness towards other people who also dream of having children and creating a family – just as they have themselves. The donors we select for our donor program are truly all young men with likeable traits.

Our donors give the greatest gift one can give. The majority of our donors have chosen to donate because they want to help the childless to fulfill their wish of having a child. In fact, as many as 94% of the donors surveyed have chosen this as their primary reason for being a donor.

We know that inner values and the donors’ motivations are paramount when choosing the perfect donor match for your family. As part of our screening, we prioritise having more personal interviews with the donors. The donors we select for our donor program are all young men with the heart in the right place, and this survey shows that too. Our donor coordinators carefully select the donors who want to help other people create a family. The three quotes below also show that our donors have chosen to donate for the very right reasons.

In addition, we clearly see that many of our donors have chosen to donate because they have had involuntary infertility close to heart. They have friends who have struggled to have children and therefore have made use of a sperm donor to have children. It has inspired our donors to see the joy it has created for their friends to have children despite difficulties, and in some cases it has even been decisive. Even if you do not want to have children yourself, our donors want to help others who want it more than anything else.

Of course, donors also appreciate the financial compensation, but we embrace and appreciate the fact that it is not the primary cause.

We experience that donors are often initially attracted to the donor profession due to the financial compensation. But when our donor coordinators in the application and screening process tell them about the challenges of infertility and fertility treatment and especially when they learn for the first time that they have helped someone get pregnant, they get a completely different view. They are then motivated to a much greater degree by being able to help childless people.

At Born, we see our donors from a human perspective. Each individual is a human being with a completely unique personality and many talents, and we can vouch for each and every one of them.

When we sent the questionnaire out to our donors, we were particularly curious to find out which of their own qualities they might hope to pass on to potential donor children. Are they focused on their appearance and physique? Their special talents such as to be firm in the kitchen, to be able to ride a unicycle, being a skilled mathematician or to be able to speak four languages? Or is it the inner values ​​such as their being and personality that they hope the most to pass on? As you can see in the result, the answer is the latter – with a good spread to also include the other options.

We are, of course, pleased to see that our hope for a strong focus on inner values ​​holds true. But we are just as happy to see some of the wise and life-affirming comments that came with it.

In fact, there are also some of the answers that we ourselves are surprised by – in the positive way. The donor below shows us an incredibly well-thought mindset, which also made us think again.

Humanity, responsibility, and consideration for the individual – both the parents, the donor children and the donors – are key issues at Born. It is crucial for us that we are a personal sperm bank, where dedicated guidance is paramount. Whether it takes place by e-mail or telephone, the keyword is always presence. We meet you where you are and we guide you all the way.

At the same time, we are uncompromising when it comes to sperm quality and screening and testing of donor applicants before being accepted into the Born donor program.

Every day, we work hard to ensure that both our customers, but in particular also our donors, can feel our values. Therefore, it makes us incredibly happy that the questionnaire survey reflects our values ​​100%. According to our donors, we are personal, helpful, present, dedicated, and responsible. But also professional, which is certainly due to the great work of our donor coordinators in ensuring that all donors live up to our high standards in terms of health status, sperm quality, physique, personality and characteristics. We cannot help but smile that this kind of professionalism as well as our staff’s personal approach to donors, screening process and procedures and their weekly duties at our clinics have surprised a few of them:

Unfortunately, the topic of “sperm donation” is still surrounded by a certain amount of taboo. In our case, the taboo is solely due to ignorance. We are convinced that if there were more general information about both involuntary infertility, fertility treatment and donor children, sperm donation would not be a taboo. But the taboo makes it difficult to recruit donors, and the consequence is that it is difficult to get enough potential donors to help involuntarily childless people achieve their biggest dream.

A donor is a donor, and we want to create the same respect around sperm donors as there is for blood and organ donors, for example. We do not think that sperm donors get the recognition they deserve – just look at the lovely considerations that our donors make. Fortunately, the majority of them think that it is an honest matter to help others and that sperm donation should be in line with blood donation.

At the same time, however, we are happy that the vast majority of our donors openly share and talk about that they donate sperm to women and couples with fertility problems. Our donors are actually helping to fight ignorance in this area and break the taboo. Together with our donors, we want to make it clear that all donors deserve recognition for what they contribute, and we are proud of the fact that our donors are leading the way.