One of the most common points of confusion for anyone new to egg donation is the difference between an agency and a clinic. The two work closely together, but they do very different jobs, and understanding who handles what makes the whole process far easier to navigate.
Whether you’re an Intended Parent or thinking about becoming an egg donor, knowing where the agency’s role ends and the clinic’s begins helps you know exactly who to turn to at each step. Here’s a clear breakdown.
Fertility Match is a Canadian egg donation matching agency that connects Intended Parents with carefully screened donors, founded by people who understand this journey firsthand. That makes us the agency side of this picture, never the clinic.
The short version
At its simplest, the split works like this: an egg donation agency matches and coordinates, while a fertility clinic provides the medical care. Fertility Match is an agency, so we handle the matching, the logistics, and the support. A fertility clinic, which is a separate medical facility, handles everything clinical. You’ll typically work with both, each doing what it does best.
What an egg donation agency does
The agency’s role is to find the right donor and manage everything around the match. At Fertility Match, that includes:
- Recruiting and screening egg donor applicants
- Maintaining Canada’s Most Advanced Donor Database
- Matching donors with Intended Parents
- Coordinating scheduling, travel, and logistics
- Managing the reimbursement trusts
- Arranging legal referrals for both sides
- Protecting donor privacy and supporting everyone through the journey
What an agency doesn’t do is provide medical care. We don’t have doctors on staff, we don’t perform procedures, and we don’t store eggs or embryos.
What a fertility clinic does
The clinic is where all of the medical and laboratory work happens. That includes:
- Conducting the comprehensive medical screening and clearance
- Prescribing and monitoring the fertility medications
- Performing the egg retrieval
- Fertilizing the eggs and creating embryos
- Transferring the embryos
- Storing eggs and embryos
In short, anything involving medicine, a procedure, or a laboratory is the clinic’s domain, not the agency’s.
Why the distinction matters
Keeping these roles clear saves a lot of confusion. It means you always know who to call: the clinic for anything medical, and the agency for anything to do with your donor match, coordination, reimbursement, or legal referrals. It also explains why you generally need both. An agency can’t perform your cycle, and a clinic won’t recruit and match your donor.
How they work together
In a typical journey, the two roles hand off smoothly from one to the next:
- Fertility Match matches you with your donor and coordinates the details
- The fertility clinic screens and medically clears the donor
- The legal agreements are put in place, with independent advice for everyone
- Fertility Match manages scheduling, travel, and reimbursement throughout
- The clinic carries out the cycle, the retrieval, and the embryo transfer
Our overview of the egg donation process in Canada shows how these steps connect from start to finish.
Do you need both an agency and a clinic?
For most people, yes. The agency finds and coordinates your donor, and the clinic provides the treatment. Many Intended Parents come to us already established as a patient at a fertility clinic, while others are just beginning and use our directory of fertility clinics across Canada to find one. If you’re considering donating, you can start on our Become an Egg Donor qualification page, and the clinic side comes later, once you’re matched.
Who to ask about what
As a quick reference: bring anything about your medications, monitoring, the retrieval, or your medical history to your fertility clinic. Bring anything about finding or choosing a donor, scheduling, travel, reimbursement, or legal referrals to Fertility Match. Between the two, every part of your journey is covered.
Taking the next step
Egg donation runs on a simple partnership: an agency to match and coordinate, and a clinic to provide the medical care. Once you see how the two fit together, the process stops feeling complicated and starts feeling like a team working on your behalf.
Have questions about who handles each step of your journey? You can contact our team or call 1-833-33-MATCH to learn how we work alongside your clinic.
