About

Vision

  • The Sperm Bank of California envisions a world where everyone is free to choose whether, when, how, and with whom to build a family.

Mission

  • The Sperm Bank of California provides research-based sperm donation and sperm storage programs that serve the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities, single people, people experiencing infertility, and people preparing for future family-building.
  • Our commitment extends beyond conception to support the lifelong well-being of donor-conceived people, families, parents, donors, and people preserving their fertility.

Values

  • For more than 40 years, The Sperm Bank of California has provided equitable, informed, and supportive pathways to family-building and fertility preservation.
  • We are committed to improving access for individuals facing barriers to family-building and fertility preservation. Starting with programs for lesbian couples and single women, we continue the work expanding access for Black/BIPOC and Trans*/nonbinary/queer members of our community. To reduce these barriers, we recruit and welcome Black/BIPOC donors, maintain an Equity Policy, advocate for regulations that do not discriminate against queer sperm donors, train staff to best support our community, and work to advance inclusive parentage laws.
  • We offer unwavering support to our families and our donors, now and in the future, through a limited number of families assisted by each donor, our ongoing family services and resources for parents, donor-conceived people, donors, and the donors’ families. We support open communication in families, provide access to donor information, and offer options for mutual consent contact.
  • We provide ethical and visionary leadership in donor-assisted family-building  through our policies, published research, and by working closely with reproductive health professionals, donor-conceived people, parents and donors.
  • Our policies and actions are guided by the long-term implications for parents, donor-conceived people, donors, and the donors’ families and individuals preserving their fertility for the future.

History

The Sperm Bank of California (TSBC) began operations on October 5, 1982 in Oakland, California. In the early 1980’s there were no sperm banks that would serve unmarried people.  TSBC began as a project of the Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center, a family planning clinic. The clinic offered fertility awareness classes intended to help people prevent pregnancy.  However, lesbian couples and single women trying to conceive at home with known donors were also attending the classes.  TSBC was founded to provide a legally protected and medically safe family building option to all people regardless of marital status or sexual orientation.

TSBC and Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center shared facilities until 1988, when TSBC split off to incorporate as an independent nonprofit corporation and move to a larger site in Oakland. In 1995, we moved to our present location in downtown Berkeley.

TSBC has a history of ground-breaking work in the field of reproductive technologies. We are the FIRST sperm bank in the United States to:

  • provide donor-conceived adults with the option to obtain the donor’s identity (our Identity-Release® Program)
  • offer an option for families who share a donor to connect (Our Family Contact List)
  • serve lesbian couples and single people
  • provide extensive personal and family medical histories about donors
  • conduct research on the well-being of donor-conceived families and donors
  • document conceptions and monitor birth rates
  • track and limit the number of births per donor
  • offer instruction on how to perform inseminations at home
  • operate as a nonprofit organization