Membership Details

To support the DSR website and related ongoing expenses, we charge a fee of $99/year or a one-time payment of $199 for permanent membership. Paying members can add postings, share photos and medical information with their matches, and contact other members. Note: Membership fees are not tax-deductible as they are paying for a service, but donations are as the DSR is a 501(c)3 charity organization.

I cannot tell you how many people RAVE about your customer service & the happy connections that have been made through your work. We are so hopeful to find siblings to help our son connect too, and I just want to say thank you again for providing this possibility for us. -DSR Mom

Membership

Why pay to join? on our Membership page: Paying members can edit their personal details page and postings, see other's usernames, view/add/edit their medical information page (shared with matches), view/edit/add photos, send and see messages from other members, and view the news and video pages. 

We work very hard to protect the privacy of DSR members, so you will never be able to see anyone's personal contact information.

Please keep your email address up-to-date on the DSR! All members (including those with expired memberships) are notified via email when a new match posts, when a member tries to contact you, and when new medical information is added for your donor. If an email comes back as undeliverable, we then send a snail mail letter.

If someone hasn't been to the site for a long time and hasn't updated their email address, we can only hope that they come back to the site at some point and see their new match. This is why it's important to add your posting to the Donor Sibling Registry.

Why is there a membership fee? The DSR is a 501(c)3 charity organization. We provide a service that no one else does — and it takes time and money to maintain the DSR organization, website, and databases. Our worldwide organization has become the "voice" of donor families around the world — speaking at medical, legal, psychology, and infertility symposiums, conferences, universities, and organizations, as well as researching and publishing in medical and legal journals and numerous media outlets. 

We are the go-to organization when the media needs information or guidance concerning donor conception. Wendy and Ryan Kramer started and ran the DSR with their own funds for the first 5 years until we got so big that it was impossible to keep growing without the help of the members, as we receive no outside funding. We currently serve more than 84,000 parents, donor-conceived people, donors, and other relatives from 105 countries around the world. Most of these members are children under 18 (posted by their parents), and many do not renew yearly.

When you log in to the site we’ll tell you if your membership is due and provide a form to pay via credit card. Our easy and safe online payment system allows you to start connecting immediately. For those who prefer to mail a check for permanent membership, you can mail $200 to the DSR at PO Box 1571, Nederland CO, 80466. If you have already paid your membership fee, thank you!

As a non-profit organization, our financial information is public. Our 990 tax returns are posted here on the site.

Corlandos Scott made a video all about the Donor Sibling Registry and how it works!

A note about paying for DSR membership from DSR Member Leslie: 

I joined early on. Soon we had a match. I was a single mom working for local government making barely over poverty wages. Life happened and renewal didn’t happen.
A second match happened and I was one that got that communication that another match had shown up. I renewed and connected with that second match.

A few years lapse happened again (raising a kid is expensive!) but I wanted the lifetime membership badly. I finally used money from an income tax return and made it happen.

The DSR and Wendy have been some of the best money I have ever spent.

Not only did the DSR give my daughter a relationship with a brother and sister that she would have missed out on but gave me the joy of three moms that were negotiating some of the same things I was. I treasure those friendships!
Then there is Wendy. She has been a constant voice for all donor families since day one. How many of us have worried about crazy people and politicians and what they could do to us and our children if draconian laws were allowed to run rampant in our world. Wendy is our voice.

How many of us have been used and harmed by the sperm industry? Without Wendy and the DSR we would still be in the dark about their lies and deceit. We would have no platform to connect and fight for our children’s rights and their very existence.

Personally, Wendy has given so much to collect data and produce documents that help us to communicate better and help us and our children to communicate and negotiate relationships that others have no idea about. She has been my partner as I have learned and grown and figured out how to best parent the miracle that I was given.

Thank you, Wendy and Ryan, and all the DSR staff. I appreciate everything you have done and I could give you more!

DSR Costs

The DSR operates on a yearly budget, including the following expenses:

Website: Ongoing website security monitoring, management, hosting, maintenance, repairs, and updates. Outside developers and daily website operations. $40,000 for a front-end rebuild in 2012; $22,000 in 2013; $14,700 in 2014; $24,000 in 2015; $30,000 in web costs in 2016, including an $18,000 complete re-skinning of the DSR website. 2017-2018 website costs were $35,300, and close to $300,000 was spent in 2018-2020 to completely rebuild the front and back end of the website. $20,000 was spent in 2023.

Merchant and gateway banking fees

Graphic design, copywriters, advertising, videos

Contract labor/part-time employees

Professional fees (e.g., attorney and CPA)

Office supplies, equipment, software, printing, postage

Licenses, memberships, and dues

Research: Implementing and conducting research projects and overseeing subsequent papers through to publication in academic journals

Travel: speaking and presenting our research at conferences and at organizations

Conference and symposium fees

Rent

Insurance: Workers' Comp, Non-profit D & O business

Telephone, internet fees (2 providers)

Business management/accounting

Advertising

Grant research and writing

Writing and editing of educational materials, brochures, and academic papers

Printing all brochures, booklets, and educational materials

Business to business relations, infertility organizations, sperm banks, egg agencies and clinics, mental health professionals, universities, etc. LGBTQ and reproductive medicine industry outreach projects, phone calls, and mailings

Dealing with requests from and working with researchers, bioethicists, attorneys, and authors

Work on changing infertility/donor conception legislation: meetings, phone calls, letters, drafting regulation, advising legislators

Monitoring private DSR Facebook Group page — the place for DSR news, chatting, and member support

Compiling, designing, and emailing our newsletters to all our members 3x/year

Interviews: All PR and media relations, dealing with all television, radio, print, documentary, and film inquiries; helping to produce these pieces by providing all background information, families to interview and include, and advising on pertinent issues to be researched and included

Fielding calls and inquiries from domestic and international bioethicists, physicians, academics, attorneys, specialists, and infertility organizations

Carefully monitoring all new members and manually approving all new posts and photos. Contacting members when posts need to be adjusted or posting needs to occur. All site monitoring. This extremely complicated database website requires an incredible amount of day-to-day attention to every new member and every new and edited posting. This is our life's work, and we strive to give our members our very best, for many years to come.