Couples desperate for children turn to crowdfunding
Fertility
adoptions). He notes, however, that such efffffffffffforts tend to raise only 20 percent of Humans, like other aniwhat more traditional medmals, live to reproduce. And ical assistance campaigns when they can’t, they’re willbring in. ing to pay a lot for a helpA big driver of child-related ing hand. In America, some campaigns is a lack of insuruse credit cards, 401(k)s, ance. Insurance coverage and even loans to pay for for IVF is available at only in vitro fertilization that can 26 percent of companies, cost as much as $12,000 for according to a 2016 Society each round. of Human Resource Manage
The newest way to fund ment Employee Benefifits surt he f a mily u ni t i s t o a s k vey, and those who do cover strangers. Crowdfunding the treatments may cap the has become a popular mechlifetime maximum benefifit as anism for many couples who low as $5,000. can’t afffford the high costs For those who aren’t comof IVF, or adoption and surfor t abl e with t radi t i onal rogacy. crowdfunding sites, there’s
“It’s not an easy thing to a crowdfunding option on share publicly,” says Crystal a s o p h i s t i c a t e d f e r t i l i t y Barrett, 33, who used youapp from Glow Inc., a comcaring.com to raise money pany headed by PayPal cofor medications and other founder Max Levchin and costs while undergoing sevMike Huang, a former direceral cycles of IVF treatment. tor of product management “But my husband and I were at Google. kind of between a rock and a The informational and hard place.” Within 45 days tracking app lets women of posting their cash goal input all sorts of data to monin December, she and husitor their reproductive health band Josh reached their tarand alerts them and their get of $1,500. She is now six partner to the best time to months pregnant. conceive. Glow also has a
The Barretts’ campaign nonprofit Glow First prow a s m o d e s t c o m p a r e d gram, which it calls crowdwith the actual cost of funding for babies. Users which can rise to more than of the app c an choose to $20,000. Crystal kept their give $50 a month to a shared needs front and center with pool of money for 10 months potential online donors by while trying to get pregnant using social media and blognaturally (the site states 10 ging regularly about her test months is how long it takes results, ultrasounds, and most women to get pregwhat she’d heard about cernant). tain medications. “It was,” After those 10 months, she said, “a job in itself.” money in the fund is split
F u n d i n g f o r I V F h a s evenly among the women become a robust category in the group who hadn’t yet at GoFundMe.com, where conceived, sending a check more than $3.6 million has direc tly to an acc redited been raised across more than fertility clinic of the user’s 1,700 IVF campaigns, with choice. The program’s fifirst almost 37,000 individual s u c h g ro u p, nu mber i n g donations. Total IVF gifts and fewer than 50 women, had campaigns have increased every year since the company’s launch in 2010.
On Giveforward.com, the site Barrett used, the category that includes both IVF and adoptions is the fastest growing, up 429 percent over the fifirst eight months of this year compared with the same period in 2015, according to Josh Chapman, the company’s chief executive offifficer. (He said the increase is evenly split between IVF and an $1,800 payout per eligible person-three times their contribution.
A third Glow endeavor, Glow for Enterprise, aims to be a wellness benefifit for workplace health plans. So far, it’s found mainly in technology companies and is available to employees of Lyft, Pivotal, Zefr, EventBrite, Evernote, and Domo, according to Glow.
T h e i d e a i s f o r t h e employer to pay the $50 per employee, per month, for however many of their employees enroll in the program. Employers wouldn’t know the names of those who enroll; users would prove their proof of employment to Glow First by entering their work e-mail or scanning a pay stub.
Barbara Collura, CEO of Resolve:
The National Infertilit y Organi z at i on, s ays she’s noticed a lot of prospective parents turning to crowdf u n d i n g b u t w a s m o r e shocked to see another trend. The group did a survey asking women who had done an IVF cycle in the past three years how they paid for outof-pocket costs.
“Most people used a credit card, about 26 percent used a loan from the bank, and 20 percent cited donations from friends and familiesthat would be your crowdfunding,” said Collura.
Ten percent chose the “other” category, and many people wrote in that they’d raided their 401(k) retirement savings.
As it turns out, early on in her IVF treatments, Crystal Barrett did that, too. “I didn’t want to,” she said. “But I was paying off the credit card and personal loans I’d also taken out for IVF.”