While it is difficult to know exactly how often Australian women meet sperm donors online, the growth in online platforms for sperm donors and women to connect suggests the phenomenon is increasing. One reason cited for growth in the practice is that it gives donors the opportunity to develop a relationship with their donor offspring while the children are young. Drawing on qualitative interviews with sperm donors and media coverage of the phenomenon, this chapter considers the experience of donors who meet their recipient online and who have early contact with their offspring. It explores why donors choose to donate outside of the formal clinic environment, their expectations from early contact, and whether these expectations evolve over time. It concludes by considering the implications of increasing informal donation in a country where formal donation is legally regulated.

In recent decades, a number of jurisdictions have moved towards more open practices in donor conception, including legislating for the rights of donor-conceived people to trace their donor. In such contexts, the donor’s role is ambivalent. They are not expected to enact a parental role in relation to people conceived from their donation. However, they are expected to ‘be available’ for some form of relationship. Our UK-based research found that donors typically navigate these dual obligations by articulating a moral commitment to ‘following the lead’ of the families they help to create and particularly the people conceived from their donation. In this chapter, we illustrate how sperm and egg donors imagine and enact this commitment but also show that it is easier to say than to do. The embedded nature of donors’ personal lives and relationships create challenges in letting others decide their role in relation to recipient families.

The basic princples of cryobiology are described for both slow freezing and vitrification of spermatozoa. Specific aspects of cryopreserving human spermatozoa are discussed in detail, incluidng the formulation of cryopreservation media and their proper use. Alternative packaging devices are discussed in relation to the achievement of correct cooling and warming curves as well as effective biocontainment. High security straws are recommended as the best method to use from both perspectives, and a standard operating procedure (SOP) for easy use at the bench is provided. SOPs for human sperm vitrification techniques are also gven. Quality control and risk management aspects of sperm freezing and for cryobank organzation are described. Finally, there is a section on sperm donation.