Finding a Donor Through
Takes3 / FAQs

The process is simple: you choose a donor from our database, and then your donor goes to your clinic for the screening and donation.

The first step is to look at the database: you may request access codes on the login page. All you need to do is to submit your name, the name and location of your clinic, and a list of your search criteria, and we will respond promptly with a unique user name and password.

There is no fee to look at the database and request more information about the donors. As long as you are a patient at SART-registered IVF clinic in the US, you are welcome to view the database. We work with all kinds of couples and individuals.

Once you have chosen an available donor, we will email you our service agreement, which you sign and return to us along with the agency fee. Then we send the complete match materials to your clinic, and they begin the donor’s screening. After the screening, the egg donor contract is drafted and the compensation and other funds are held in trust. After the retrieval, any unused funds in trust are returned along with a complete disbursement list.

Kathy Benardo, the director of the egg donor program, can be reached directly at kbenardo@assistedfertility.com.

NAFG advertises electronically on various Web and social media venues. Additionally, we are often contacted by friends and relatives of former and current donors who are interested in seeing if they qualify and can go on to donate.

All candidates fill out our preliminary electronic questionnaire, accessible through our Web site, as well as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s uniform donor questionnaire. You will be able to review the non-confidential portions of both questionnaires.

Current photos of all our donors appear on our site. These photos are taken by us whenever possible. In addition, we ask for the donor’s own current digital photos and childhood photos (if available), a copy of a current photo ID (to verify the likeness / corroborate identity), and any school and test score transcripts available, if applicable. If a candidate has donated before, we will share all the results from her previous donation that are available to us. We will have the medical records from her previous cycle(s) to send to your clinic for review before you make a commitment.

All candidates are interviewed by phone and whenever possible, in person. We conduct basic background checks to make sure that each donor’s social security number corresponds to the name and date of birth provided, and that there are no criminal records or outstanding warrants associated with the candidate.

We are unable to perform any medical tests. This will be the responsibility of your own IVF clinic. However, we ask many follow-up questions regarding each donor’s family medical history, as indicated on the questionnaire. If any prohibitive conditions exist the donor is disqualified. Most applications are indeed rejected for a variety of reasons.

Once you reserve a donor, it typically takes about three months to get to the retrieval. You should not reserve a donor until your clinic confirms that you are cleared to start a donor cycle.

If a donor is marked as “Reserved,” she is currently engaged by another recipient or is taking a break in between donations. Every reserved donor is in a different stage of the process; we can provide approximate availability dates for any reserved donors of interest. If you are very interested in a donor who is currently unavailable, we will contact you after the results of her retrieval are known and if she has agreed to donate again. There are no formal waiting lists, and you cannot reserve a donor in advance of her ability to start.

Kathy Benardo, the director of the egg donor program, can be reached directly at kbenardo@assistedfertility.com.

Yes. If you choose a donor from out of state (or beyond commuting distance from your clinic), she would need to make a one-day trip for her screening (typically requiring an overnight stay), then spend about a week near the clinic for the donation. The donor would typically have one local appointment for her screening and two for her monitoring. We set up the local testing in cooperation with your clinic and make all travel arrangements. Depending on various factors (distance, hotel rates, etc.), figure on up to another $6,000 in travel expenses for an out of town donor, not including costs for local testing, which vary according to the number of tests required (a local monitoring appointment that includes blood tests and an ultrasound averages about $800).

You should reserve a donor when you are a registered patient at an IVF clinic and have finished all your own testing in order to begin a donor cycle. Once you have narrowed down your selection to a single candidate, we will approach her with the opportunity to confirm her availability and schedule. Then we will send you our service agreement to sign and return with the agency fee, and we will send the complete match documentation to your clinic so that they may schedule your donor’s screening.

Kathy Benardo, the director of the egg donor program, can be reached directly at kbenardo@assistedfertility.com.

If the donor does not begin her screening appointments (because she withdraws before then or her clinical questionnaire disqualifies her), you are entitled to a total refund, or to choose another donor at no additional charge. This only happens on rare occasions, as we do our best to offer only the most motivated / qualified candidates.

Once the process enters the screening phase, our fee is non-refundable. However, if medical issues concerning the donor arise during the screening or stimulation phases which would prevent a retrieval, you may choose another candidate from our pool within twelve months at no additional charge.

If the retrieval takes place, no matter the outcome, the donor is entitled to her full compensation. Fee terms are outlined in our service agreement, provided to you when you reserve a donor.

The egg donor contract, negotiated between the recipient(s) and donor through their respective attorneys, describes all the rights and responsibilities of both parties. This includes scheduling, compensation, expenses, and issues of custody, confidentiality, parental rights, etc. It is signed by both parties anonymously. Takes3 has professional relationships with independent attorneys who concentrate in assisted reproduction law and we will refer a lawyer to the donor, and recommend one to the recipient, if desired. The contract must be signed by both parties before the donor begins her medications.

The level of communication is up to you and your donor, and Takes3 serves as liaison.

Commercial egg donation in the United States has traditionally been mutually anonymous. There was a fear, as with adoption many years ago, that any breach of anonymity could be disruptive.

But as egg donation has become more widespread and better understood, there is less pressure for rigid anonymity. We have experienced increasing desire for recipients to have the potential for some kind of communication with their donors, if not for themselves, then for their children. The most common request we get from recipients is for an openness for future contact on the donor’s part, should their child desire it. However, we respect donors’ reluctance to agree to a breach of their privacy at some unknown point when they could be in a very different stage in their lives.

To accommodate the needs for both communication and privacy between donor and recipient, Takes3’s unique message board allows communication between the parties while keeping their identities private.

If you do not desire communication, you still receive photos and a great deal of information about your donor, but you never meet her, speak to her, or know her first or last name. Generally donors have no information at all about their recipients. Some recipients write notes of gratitude to their donors (transmitted through us), and donors appreciate them.

However, when both donor and recipient desire an in-person meeting, it can be arranged to occur at your clinic (supervised by a social worker) or arranged through us. (This meeting would always take place during or after the actual donation; recipients do not meet donors preliminarily before they are reserved or as part of the screening process.) Even when recipients and donors meet in person, names do not have to be revealed; both parties decide what they are comfortable with.

The most typical arrangements for us are mutually anonymous, with the donor open to possible contact in the future (through third parties), should the potential offspring desire it. Most donors are open to this.

Keep in mind that you will always have photos and a full description of your donor for your reference, and to show your child if you choose. Your IVF clinic will keep records on file in case any medical emergency arises which would require communication with your donor.

NAFG is the original (founded in 2006) company which is behind the creation and distribution of the Takes3 database and format. The same professionals who are involved with NAFG on a day-to-day basis are also actively involved with the Takes3 initiative.

Takes3/NAFG will endeavor to maintain, to the extent feasible, Donor/Carrier identifying information and Recipient Parent/Intended Parent identifying information for an indefinite period of time. When an Egg Donor Agreement or Gestational Carrier Agreement governs the relationship between the Parties, it customarily indicates instances when the identities of the participants may and/or must be revealed. NAFG will do its part to comply with the terms of these Agreements. The IVF clinics involved and individual attorneys involved should also be considered a resource when and if necessary.

The Northeast Assisted Fertility Group is registered with the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART) and is licensed by the state of New York. NAFG’s president and founder, Sanford M. Benardo has been a leading assisted reproduction lawyer for many years. He is a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the legal professionals group of the ASRM and is past president of the American College of Assisted Reproduction and Adoption Lawyers. NAFG abides by the ASRM’s ethical guidelines for egg donation. Please see the Who We Are page for more information on our staff.

Takes3 has a highly selective donor pool of educated women from all over the US (but mostly from the Northeast). We have excellent, long-standing working relationships with first-rate clinics in the Northeast, who have consistently referred their patients to us for years. We have facilitated several thousand donor matches.

The large majority of our candidates are available for fresh cycles: once you choose a donor, she will go to your clinic for the screening tests, monitoring, and retrieval. The whole process takes about three months from start to finish. We also maintain a small and highly selective frozen egg bank.