Danielle Winston, co-founder of The Seed Scout, is joining me today to share what they’ve done with their concierge known sperm donor services to completely change how we approach donor conception.
Danielle is an attorney and co-founded The Seed Scout with her wife, Paige Kennedy-Winston, who is a pediatrician. Through their experiences growing their own family, they saw a way to make things better for families looking to conceive with a sperm donor and the donor-conceived people who are brought into the world through their services.
We talked about the challenges of traditional sperm banks, especially around issues of anonymity and diversity, and how hearing directly from donor-conceived people shaped the way they do things at The Seed Scout.
In this conversation, Danielle and I discussed:
- How The Seed Scout is different from traditional sperm banks
- The extensive screening process used to make sure donors are aligned with their clients
- Why it was so important to learn about and build from the perspective of donor-conceived individuals
- How The Seed Scout guides families through the legal and logistical aspects of donor conception to ensure a smooth, ethical process
- How they balance the seriousness of family planning with creating a fun and fulfilling experience for their clients
Resources:
Full Transcript:
Dr. Aimee: Hi, Danielle. Thanks for joining.
Danielle Winston: Hey. How are you?
Dr. Aimee: I’m doing great. I shared with everyone a little bit more about you, but I just want to hear about how you started The Seed Scout and why.
Danielle Winston: I started it because my wife went through this process of looking at donors on sperm banks and we felt like it was impersonal and not necessarily child focused. We really wanted to have a lower family sibling count for our kids and we wanted updated medical records, and we found all these kind of ethical issues that we had, and we wanted to create an option where people who felt similarly to us could find a donor that way.
Dr. Aimee: Why is having a known sperm donor so important?
Danielle Winston: So important. Honestly, donor-conceived people are telling everyone why it’s so important, and we need to listen because that’s the best way to figure out how our kids are going to feel.
I think part of the reason is that not having updated medical records can really have a life or death impact on kids, and not knowing what to even test them for, like if their donor was diagnosed with something a few years later or their parents were. That is so big for these kids.
The other part is that no one really wants to be 200th in line to reach out for a donor, no one wants to have 200 half-siblings, no one wants to feel like they are one in a million and that they don’t even know the people they’re genetically related to. They deserve better than that. We should be doing better for them.
The other part is that it is very difficult to comprehend the fact that 18-year-olds are allowed to donate. I think if we can make sure that we can evaluate their maturity and the reasons for them donating, and that the parents can meet the donors and know for a fact that they are good people, that they’re kind, and that they’re going to be amazing if kids reach out, that is so important. That’s part of the reason why I think using a known donor is just incredible, it makes this experience so different.
Dr. Aimee: You mentioned that donor-conceived people often oppose anonymous donation agreements. How has this perspective influenced the development of your service? How did that influence you?
Danielle Winston: We talked to so many donor-conceived people before starting this company. We really built this company around what they would have wanted. We have a three-family limit to make sure that there’s not a ton of half-siblings for these kids, or that they won’t know who the donor is until they’re 18 or ever, anything like that. A lot of people confuse using a donor that’s “open at 18” versus a known donor. This is totally different. Kids can know their donor from age 0. We’d already introduced our kid before he even turned 1 to his donor. He won’t remember it, but still, we did that.
We shaped the company around it. We also have a mandatory yearly check-in so parents can always be in touch with the donor and know if he changes his contact information. Donors feel better and happier and more connected to kids if they reach out one day of just knowing that they got to see pictures of them growing up and that they have been in touch with the parents, they know their parents.
The other part is that we require donors to be responsive to kids to make sure that they are coming into a psychologically amazing situation where donors are kind and loving and thoughtful about the way that these kids were conceived. The donors are all 23 and older, so we’re really making sure that they have the emotional maturity and the ability to make a decision like this. If the US doesn’t trust them to drink, then we should not trust them to be donors. Right? My big thing is that I really do want donors to understand what they’re doing and to be fully consenting to how many kids are going to be out there, how many families they donate to, who they donate to, what it means, the implications. We have psychological evaluations to make sure that we’re counseling them on it and all that kind of stuff.
We have families report births to each other. Everyone who uses the same donor has to report births to each other to make sure that a donor-conceived child born from The Seed Scout matches are not doing 23&Me and having anxiety every time there’s a holiday season where people are buying 23&Me tests and they’re going to find out about more half-siblings. I don’t want that. I don’t think anyone else wants that. We’re just really trying to make it better for them.
Dr. Aimee: Why is it that these commercial sperm banks aren’t doing this? I have been asking for known donors from the beginning of my career as a fertility doctor. I’m hopeful that now things are going to change, especially with your company, and then the commercial banks are going to hopefully follow your lead. But why is this so hard, why aren’t they doing this already?
Danielle Winston: Because it’s all about profit. We live in America, everything is about profit. These banks pay a donor $100 per donation and they make probably $20,000 from each client, from each person that buys sperm from them. But for known donors, when they do a collection, if they have a three-family limit, they have to retire that donor after three families. With a five-family limit, they have to retire them after five families. If they do known donation for the donor that the client knows, they only make $3,000 or so from them, so money-wise it just doesn’t add up. They are not incentivized to make this known donation path.
I also think that they believe that it will be more complicated for them to have to disclose more or to have people meet. It is a lot of work for us, too, but I think it’s really important work. Even coordinating and introducing clients, and introducing them to each other, and introducing them to the donor, and to make sure that the donor is being responsive about questions that are being asked on our part and going over medical history, all of that stuff takes time, but at the end of the day, to me, it’s the people we’re creating that are the most important. The time it takes for us is nothing compared to the lifetime that these people are going to have.
Dr. Aimee: It’s a very high-touch process, but it’s extremely worth it.
Danielle Winston: So worth it.
Dr. Aimee: I hope that other fertility doctors will see our interview today and reach out to work with you as well. All of my patients who are looking for a sperm donor, you’re number one on the referral list.
Danielle Winston: Thank you.
Dr. Aimee: Talk us through what that experience is like. If one of my patients wants to work with you, where do they get started?
Danielle Winston: They sign up with us, we show them options. We have an intake form that asks what you’re looking for in a donor. We try to ask questions about it to make sure that we understand exactly what they’re hoping to find, whether it’s nationality wise, hair color, eye color, looks like their partner, education, anything like that. We want to just understand what they’re hoping to find. Then we try to show them a subset of our donors, which we have 450+ donors right now. We try to narrow it down to the ones that we think would match their criteria and would be really good matches for them.
We show them those donor options. They then pick their four favorite donors. We give them family pictures and more information, all that kind of stuff. Then we introduce them to the two donors they want to meet with. They get to know them, they ask them questions, they hear stories about their life, all of those kinds of meaningful things. Then they pick the donor they want to work with and we walk them through all of the steps from start to finish until the donations have reached their clinic.
We do that to make it easier for clinics to make it more seamless for donors, so they don’t have to wait and see what’s the next step and asking. Then, more importantly, we want to make it easy for clients so that they don’t feel like it’s impossible to use a known donor. We just want to say, “Here are the people we recommend that we’ve worked with, here’s how to reach them, here’s how to go through it,” and then get to the finish line.
Dr. Aimee: Awesome. Thank you, Danielle. Thank you for all of the work that you’re doing. I’m so glad that The Seed Scout is here.
Danielle Winston: Thank you.
Dr. Aimee: I feel like in order for someone to really have informed consent around using a sperm donor, they need to know about The Seed Scout, known donation, and all of the benefits for donor-conceived people, families, for generations.
Danielle Winston: Yes.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you for all you’re doing. I appreciate it.
Danielle Winston: Thank you for speaking up about it.
Dr. Aimee: Of course.
Danielle Winston: I appreciate that. The support means everything.
Dr. Aimee: Thanks again. Have a lovely day. We’ll talk soon.
